An E-mail I received from Sarah Jane Cion
 

Hi!  I am so honored and flattered!  That would be wonderful!  The only thing I can think of that would be some fun, personal info would be some stories from the intro to my new book "Modern Jazz Piano Revealed, The Musician's Guide to Jazz Piano" which I will paste below this email! 

    Please tell me the web address of your site, and when I will be posted as artist
   of the month - WOW! 

    Thank you so much for enjoying my music!
    With wamest regards and many thanks,
    Sarah Jane Cion :-)

Introduction.

Jazz is a living, breathing thing - an entity - and a growing energy all its own. I'm excited to present the building blocks that provide the foundation for jazz improvisation; this book is geared toward the student who has already achieved an intermediate level of sight-reading and technical facility, but who has had limited exposure to jazz along the way.

     I believe this book provides a fresh entree into the world of harmony, rhythm and improvisation, which are essential to jazz but often overlooked by classical teachers in their efforts to teach the notes written on a page.
I'm always surprised when a student looks at me in wonder as I explain the basic concepts of intervals, 7th chords, harmonic progressions and the symmetrical nature of the 12 tone scale. These are concepts they had never been exposed to --  and I am sure this is not only because this simply is not a priority of the traditional classical piano teacher, but also because the teachers themselves probably were unaware of basic jazz harmony.

     I started to write this book because of all the students I've taught over the years.  Time and time again, I would see their faces light up, as if I had just unlocked the door to the outside world of sunlight!  But over and over again, I'd find myself scrawling out the same exercises, for various students, in my messy handwriting.  And so I thought it would be clearer for them and future students, and easier for me, to put some of these teaching ideas down on paper in a nice, neat way.  I soon realized that this would be valuable for a wider audience as well.

     As a teacher, I've found some interesting ways to explain things that I had absorbed organically, having been introduced to jazz at a very young age.
 You see, I started listening to jazz when I was just fourteen.  I didn't have the luxury of an academic environment, or access to myriad teachers, methods, classes, books, or ensembles that many starting out in jazz have today.

     I started playing the piano when I was only four.  My family had a beautiful Steinway Grand in the house -  a wedding gift from my grandfather to my parents.  My mother would diligently take me to my lessons every week. 
I remember sitting with her at the piano, and she would help me practice out of my first John Thompson book, my feet barely reaching over the edge of the piano bench.  I had various classical teachers throughout my childhood, but
there's one I remember with particular fondness: Eileen Goldstein.  She was well known for teaching the Pace Method, a style of teaching that encourages
children to play by ear and imparts theory in a fun, playful way.  At this point, my mother was taking me to not one, but two lessons a week - a partner lesson and a group lesson.   Around the age of 7, I was introduced to Scott
Joplin's music, and soon after practicing the "easy" versions, I was playing the "Rags" by heart.  
One of my favorite childhood memories is of going on a family vacation to Disneyland and there, on Main Street, at one of the old-time ice-cream parlors, was a piano player dressed in a red and white candy-striped suit.  I approached him and asked if I could play.  He gave me a patronizing look and said he was sorry, but no; he had heard "Chopsticks" one too many times.  
Somehow, during his break, I decided to go up to the piano anyway, and play "Maple Leaf Rag."  A small crowd started to gather.  I continued on with "The Entertainer" and, when I finished, to my young ears sounded as if a thunderous applause arose from the crowd.  The last thing I remember is turning around to see that candy-striped piano player, his mouth agape, his eyes wide as saucers.  Needless to say, my parents had not tried to stop me from showing him up!

     Somehow, during the course of the next couple of years, I began to play by ear.  I reproduced on the piano what I heard on the radio, and also began composing my own tunes.  As primitive as my method of notation was at the time, I would write down the letter names of the notes to remember certain melodies.  One of the things I loved most was to call the local radio station  before I left to catch the bus to school in the morning.  The DJ's knew me there, as I would often call to request  certain favorite songs.  Eventually, I would offer to play and sing  new compositions for them over the phone.  One day, unbeknownst to me, one particular DJ put me on the air.  That morning, my parents' radio alarm-clock went off, and they were shocked into the new day hearing their 11 year old daughter singing and playing over the local airwaves!
 
     By the time I was thirteen, I had reached a certain level of proficiency in my classical playing.  My teacher had assigned me some Chopin "Etudes," The Ravel "Sonatine" and a Mozart concerto that we would perform at the next recital with two pianos.  My parents noticed that I was slacking off a bit on my practicing, that I was spending more time playing from the books of Broadway show tunes, the 'real version' of the Scott Joplin 'Rags,' and various popular sheet music that cascaded atop our piano.  Our record collection, outside of an extensive classical repertoire, included 8 track tapes of John Denver, Karen Carpenter, and several Broadway shows.   One day, my dad asked if I would be interested in taking some jazz piano lessons.  I remember looking at him and asking, "Jazz?  What's jazz?"  To which he replied, "I'm not exactly sure myself.  But perhaps we can find you a teacher."

     The Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts had a small jazz department -  actually, a one man jazz department.  His name was Peter Cassino, and when I called him one day and said that I was fourteen, he said he was sorry, but "I don't accept any jazz piano students under the age of eighteen.  You see, one just needs too much classical facility to play jazz, and in my experience I've only come across one exception in my life, a young man named Larry Goldings.  He's only 13, but he's a prodigy, and he is my only exception."  [In case some of you don't know, Larry Goldings is now a Warner Brothers Recording Artist, and has played and recorded with jazz giants such as John Hendricks, James Moody, Jim Hall, Pat Martino, Maceo Parker, Pat Metheny, Elvin Jones, John Scofield, and Michael Brecker.] 
Somehow, my father was able to convince Mr. Cassino to allow me to audition."Just an audition," he said.  "You can listen to her play, and then whatever you decide, we will respect."   I have no recollection of the audition; I can only imagine I played one of the Chopin "Etudes" or some simple Bach "Preludes" that I'd been working on for years.  All I know is that I became Peter Cassino's second exception, and my lessons began.

     Mr. Cassino required me to get a copy of "The Real Book," the jazz player's most important 'fake book.'  I was a little baffled by the names, until I realized that in this oxymoron I was getting my first taste of the jazz musicians' style of humor.  Mr. Cassino explained that the book was an illegal collection of chord charts; since all the tunes had been transcribed and copied from recordings and then duplicated (thus bypassing publishers), the composers would never receive royalties... and it wasn't available in stores. Nonetheless, this was something we had to have.  One day my dad came home and  presented me with the thick, blue, shiny-covered "The Real Book, Volume I," which I still have today, in its present form, full of tattered edges, water-stains, penciled-in alternate chord changes, and note corrections.  This was the book that held the key to unlocking the mysteries of jazz for me, and led me to a career as a jazz musician.   It contained a large portion of the standard jazz repertoire, not quite complete, yet holy nonetheless, and it was the 'bible' from which I studied diligently for years to come.  A few years later, I found out that my father had gone down to Boylston Street in Boston, near the Berklee School of Music, and found 'the man' in tattered overalls and a floppy hat, reeking of marijuana, and from him had discretely purchased this coveted book.  I realize just how determined my dad must have sensed I was the minute I knew I would be studying this new kind of piano music.  He even let his feelings of moral and legal responsibility fall by the wayside in order to provide me with this necessary and irreplaceable anthology.  For that I will be forever grateful. 

     One of the first things I remember Peter Cassino telling me was that I had to have the LP, "Kind of Blue," by Miles Davis.  Jazz was a music that was to be felt, listened to, and absorbed by the soul.  I remember going to a used record store, finding the record, and bringing it home to play on the old  turntable/speaker/am/fm radio set that sat atop my dresser.  When I put on that record, I felt an urgencyinside, and I knew that this was the music I really wanted to play.  There were two pianists on that recording - Wynton Kelly and Bill Evans.  When I listened to Bill Evans, I felt that I was hearing an angel from another world.  He was the first and greatest influence on my foray into the world of jazz piano, and continues to be to this day.
   
     The first tunes Mr. Cassino assigned for me to learn in "The Real Book"  were "All the Things You Are" and "There Will Never Be Another You."  He showed me how I could play the melody in the right hand, and walk a bass line in the left, simultaneously.  This seemed infinitely easier than learning a classical piece. Here was a way to play music with only two notes going at once- it seemed too easy!  Ah, but then came the time to improvise.  Mr. Cassino would sit to my left on the piano bench and play a bass-line-and-chord accompaniment, and I would try to solo with my right hand an octave above.   He'd solo for 8 bars, and then I would try.  We did this for weeks on end, but I just couldn't seem to break through.  Peter didn't have any particular method of teaching improvisation: he would simply play, and I would try to imitate.  I remember how incredibly frustrated I felt as this went on week after week and I seemed unable to break free of my preconceived ideas about how I was supposed to play music.  There were no written notes, no solos to read - just a chord symbol and a melody line.  It was a virtual free fall! 
       
     I consoled myself by practicing what did come easily to me: harmonizing a melody (building chords below the written melody line to create beautiful sounds), but still I could not improvise.  A year passed, and I knew Peter was also getting frustrated with my lack of ability to play an improvised solo.  One day he told me it was time to start transcribing.  By this time I had acquired quite a collection of used LP's:  the Bill Evans Trio, the Oscar Peterson Trio, the Wynton Kelly Trio.  I also had some Miles Davis with Herbie Hancock and Red Garland, John Coltrane with McCoy Tyner, some Dave McKenna (the legendary Boston pianist) solo piano recordings, Marian McPartland, and Tommy Flanagan.  Peter told me to try to transcribe something simple, like Wynton Kelly on the first few bars of "Someday My Prince Will Come" from Miles' album of the same title.   As it turned out, transcribing came fairly easily to me.  I had a little old-fashioned tape recorder that I kept on my piano, and I would rewind the cassette with my left hand, as many times as I needed, and find the notes on the piano with my right hand.  I'd write the solo down, note for note.  The rhythmic aspect wasn't a problem for me, as the solo seemed to comprise mainly quarter notes, 8th notes, triplets and 16th notes  interspersed with all sorts of combinations of rests. This was a snap compared to the intricate, sometimes indecipherable rhythmic pennings of Bela Bartok!  I transcribed the entire solo in a few hours' time, and after many days of practicing, I was playing along with the recording - reading it back, note for note - so that my phrasing was almost indistinguishable from the pianist's on the recording. 

     I brought the tape and the transcription to the next lesson, and I think I nearly gave Peter a heart attack!   He was very impressed, and his encouragement meant a great deal to me.  It pleased us both to see I was finally making progress, so I began to transcribe as many solos as I could get my hands on.  This was the true beginning for me, because as I played along with Oscar Peterson, Wynton Kelly, Tommy Flanagan, Bill Evans and Herbie Hancock, I began to see how they navigated in and out of the harmonic structures of standard tunes, weaving their magic with scale tones, approach notes, arpeggiation and rhythmic swing. 
   
     I remember waking up one morning, going to the piano, and playing an improvised solo over All the Things You Are.  For the first time, it came flowing out - perhaps a bit choppy at first, but as I continued to play it became increasingly more fluid and swinging.  I was improvising!  It was like the light suddenly switched on, and I could play - what a feeling!

     Around the same time, Peter Cassino started a small jazz ensemble and a jazz big-band at the Longy School, and I participated in both groups.  By now I had learned how to play simple left hand chords, a la Bill Evans, and to give up the bass-line that was so necessary, at the outset, to ground a beginning solo pianist.  That role was now taken over by a real acoustic bass player, and I began to study the left hand voicings and rhythmic 'compings' of Red Garland, Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly.

     I remember finding out that Dizzy Gillespie was going to be performing at a jazz club in Harvard Square one fall night, and my father was more than willing to take me to hear this living legend.   We stood in line with the rest of the people, until at last we descended into the dark, cave-like chamber where night and day blended into one.  It was my first experience in a jazz club, so I didn't know what to expect when the man at the door looked at me, then asked my father how old I was.  Upon learning I was sixteen, he shook his head; I was not to be admitted.  My heart sank, but my dad put up a protest, and the man motioned him inside, while indicating that I was to wait by the door.  A few moments later, my dad came back and, while my heart pounded, we were led to a table near the back of the room.  My father had managed to convince the club manager that I was a serious student of the music and was
there to listen, not to drink.

     It turned out to be one of the most memorable nights of my life, and to this day we love to reminisce about how funny Mr. Gillespie was, how he flattered the audience with exaggerated compliments, like the one about what a great honor it was to be performing in one of the "Great Jazz Meccas - the Great Capitol of the Jazz World - Boston assachusetts."   His horn looked funny, with the bell bent upward, toward the sky, and every time he took a breath his cheeks puffed out like a huge bullfrog's.  Somehow, it was both grotesque and captivating all at once.  And then there was his sound - that incredible sound!  Those incredible lines, and that rhythm, hypnotizing, electrifying, stirring up within me feelings that could not be matched by merely listening to a record.  This was my first live concert, and it was here that I realized that jazz had to be a major part of my life.

     That process of discovery has continued to inspire me throughout the years like nothing else.  Now I have the pleasure of watching my own students discover the wonder and the joys of hearing and playing jazz--this is what led me to put into book form some of the concepts that allowed me to make these wonderful discoveries myself.  Each concept is offered here with an explanation and exercises, practical tools for the student to work with. 
This book should supplement working with a jazz piano teacher, because nothing replaces the experience of listening, imitating, and receiving personal guidance on the path.  And keep in mind that the most important thing to do as you learn to play jazz is to listen, listen, listen!!!  Enjoy!

Music and You musicandyou@musicandyou.com                  619-994-3995