Thomas J. West Music

I love when things like this happen.

Out of the blue on Twitter, I get a message from Dave Frank, a jazz pianist from New York City, inviting me to his new online jazz master class on YouTube. It's a 54 minute tribute to his teacher, famed jazz pianist and jazz educator Lennie Tristano, including two full performances and a lot of great knowledge and direct experience with Lennie's methods and artistry.

Notes on the master class can be downloaded from Dave Frank Jazz dot com.

Watch on YouTube

Dave demonstrates right off the bat - not only Tristano's music, but his own virtuosity and mastery of the piano. Dave shares his personal experiences with Tristano, including the mildly explicit first telephone conversation they had. Dave plays Tristano recordings for the audience while displaying images of Tristano. He then goes into Tristano's innovative walking bass line style, followed by the primary swing eighth melodic line in the right hand, followed by right hand chord clusters with the melodic note being the top voice. Tristano would emphasize the top and bottom note of those clusters, which gives the piano the sound of a big band. This is just the beginning of the great information on this video.

One of the amazing things about the way Dave demonstrates these concepts is that once he introduces the walking bass line, he plays it continuously for about 5 minutes flawlessly while he lectures and demonstrates with the right hand. The left hand is so "auto-pilot" he is able to lecture and demonstrate as if someone else was playing it for him.

Thanks to Dave Frank for creating a great series of online master classes, found on his YouTube Channel. Thanks also for reaching out on Twitter and making me aware of such a great resource for jazz music education.

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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