This is Kenny G’s official Christmas video and features clips from five of the best traditional holiday movies ever. There is good reason they are viewed continually by millions every year … nothing compares, period! With Hollywood icons like Burgess Meredith and Jimmy Stewart in the background of Kenny’s gently nostalgic performance, the experience is nothing less than pure emotional magic.
Do you realize there is no Thanksgiving jazz? The only Thanksgiving song I could even think of was “Over The River and Through the Woods” but I couldn’t find a jazz rendition. The closest I could come was “My Favorite Things” but what a find it was, holiday or not. None other than Joey Alexander, that kid prodigy from Indonesia, once again dazzles us with his piano prowess.
To have reached this level of technical proficiency and have such a sophisticated harmonic understanding at the tender age of 12 is nothing short of astonishing! I couldn’t decide which of these performances to share and the contrast between the two is most outstanding when heard side-by-side. So here are both … and Happy Thanksgiving. What is going on inside this young man’s head is enough to make many established jazz pianists blush!.
Joey Alexander performs the title track from his debut album “My Favorite Things” in studio, along with the intricate bass work of Larry Grenadier.
Joey plays jazz piano like old timer, but he’s only 11-years-old for this solo performance. They say he started playing at six … then “got serious” at seven.
Red Cross is a Charlie Parker tune performed live by The Art Farmer Quartet at the Smithsonian in 1982. The group includes Art on flugelhorn, Fred Hersch on piano, Denis Irvin playing bass and Billy Hart is the drummer.
The Summer Knows is a beautiful, romantic song from the motion picture “Summer of ’42.” Here, Art Farmer does it gentle justice on his flugelhorn, along with Cedar Walton on piano, Sam Jones at the bass, and Billy Higgins on drums.
Here’s some rare footage of 3 of the top jazz guitarists of all time, Kenny Burrell, Barney Kessel and Grant Green. The videos were recorded in 1969 for a French TV show that never aired … along with Burrell, Kessel and Green, are Larry Ridley on bass and Don Lamond on drums. The video TO THE RIGHT features all 3 guitarists with an easy swinging tune of “Rhythm Changes”.
BELOW on the upper left all 3 men again collaborate on the familiar blues theme “Blue Mist”. Although the performance is incomplete, I included it because of some great guitar licks that’ll make you glad you have ears! Upper right Kenny steps forward with “Imagination.” Lower left offers Barney with “I’m Glad There Is You”, while at the lower right Grant dazzles with his virtuosity on “I Wish You Love.”
Lionel Hampton was in the Benny Goodman Band and a gig in 1939 required them to fly from Los Angeles to Atlantic City New Jersey. It was the first time Hampton had been on a plane. He began whistling a tune while waiting for the plane to taxi and Goodman asked him what it was. Lionel simply said, “I don’t know. We can call it Flying Home, I guess.” (Hampton later confessed that the tune was a way for him to keep his mind off of the upcoming flight.) They played it for the first time with the Goodman Quartet that night and later that year Goodman recorded the first version of the song. This rendition was filmed in 1965 and features a baritone sax solo that would have made Gerry Mulligan blush!
Sinatra said Ella Fitzgerald was the best singer he ever heard and the only one who made him nervous to sing with, because he had to be up to her standards. “The best way to start any musical evening is with this girl. It don’t get better than this,” Frank said about performing with Ella. Beyond that, there isn’t much to say about two of the greatest singers of all time. You just sit back and listen!
“Night In Tunisia”, a Dizzy Gillespie tune, was recorded in Holland in 1964. It features Dex on tenor sax, George Gruntz as the piano man, Guy Pedersen playing bass and Danaiel Humair at the drums. As for the song itself, “A Night in Tunisia” was one of the signature pieces of Gillespie’s bebop big band and has become a jazz classic in its own right.
But Beautiful features the unlikely pairing of Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. It’s from their DVD “Cheek To Cheek – Live” and is, in fact, a beautiful stylistic blending of the old and the new into the traditional!
It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) is a lively performance of the classic Duke Ellington tune, also from the Cheek To Cheek video, featuring Tony Bennett and highlighting Lady Gaga’s surprising jazz virtuosity.
This rare performance of A-Train is from the Legends of Jazz, Piano Masters series with Ramsey Lewis hosting. For the first time in more than forty years, a American national network, PBS, aired a weekly program devoted to jazz. The series aired in 2006 and lasted only 13 weeks, but has become available on both DVD and CD for continuing enjoyment by jazz buffs everywhere.
It’s always a beautiful day in this neighborhood when Wynton Marsalis is in town. A young Wynton lends his trumpet to the mix as he joins the great jazz pianist Johnny Costa, guitarist Joe Negri and drummer Bobby Rawsthone for a memorable rendition of a Mister Rogers classic tune, “Its You I Like,” plus a straight ahead trumpet rendition of “Blue Monk”. Few people realize that Fred Rogers was a hard core jazz buff, composer and actually played the drums quite well!
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