Jason Lyon Music

Category: e) Rants & Ramblings

  • Skeletal Comping

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    Jason
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    Confession time. I actually enjoy comping more than soloing. It’s like a fascinating, constantly shifting, multi-dimensional puzzle to solve, with no limit to the possible solutions but your own imagination. Co-operating is as important as leading. Playing not just the piano, but playing the music. Here’s something I find interesting. Listen to a recording of…

  • Gareth Lockrane with JLT Review

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    Jason
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    Thanks to Sammy Stein for writing this review/interview. On a corner of a main road in the busy, noisy borough of Kennington, London, sits an unassuming building, easy to walk past but turn in and you find yourself in the place of wonder and magic that is Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec. Downstairs is a bistro restaurant…

  • Little Niles

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    Jason
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    Somebody recently sent me this video clip of the band doing a Randy Weston number last year. It’s a great tune and deserves to be played more often. Tony Kofi (as), Jason Lyon (p), Henry Gilbert (b), Joel Prime (d)

  • With One Foot on the Platform…

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    Jason
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    Well, you’ve got to do something when you’re waiting for a train, right? The piece, incidentally, is Liszt’s El Contrabandista, which makes the Mephisto Waltz look like Für Elise… Bот блестящee представление. Sometimes you get amazing surprises on street pianos (and they don’t always come from passing concert pianists).

  • How to Rehearse

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    Jason
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    January is a good time for nagging, I find. And often restating the bleeding obvious, even to yourself. The main point about rehearsals is that they should be efficient use of everyone’s time. THE GOOD A good rehearsal involves everyone looking at the charts you’ve brought along, maybe asking a few questions, then running it…

  • Jazz London Live

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    Jason
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    If you’re ever in London or thereabouts and feel like a bit of jazz, please check out JazzLondonLive for extensive listings, gig and venue co-ordinates and musician biogs. This site was launched last year to take on the baton from Mary Greig’s venerable bible, Jazz in London (40-odd years in print and never missed a month). JLL is still growing,…

  • 1959 and All That

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    Jason
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    There was a documentary a while ago on 1959 as the year that changed jazz for ever. It focused on Miles’ Kind of Blue, Brubeck’s Time Out, Mingus’ Ah Um and Coleman’s Shape of Jazz to Come. Of course, jazz had pretty much become set as bebop/hard bop, and there was a desire to explore…

  • On Holiday

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    Jason
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    Merry Christmas, Chag Channukah Sammeach, Joyous Kwanzaa and Happy Have a Nice Time Whoever You Are.

  • A Couple of Christmas Crackers

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    Jason
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    These two pieces are instantly recognisable as classic yuletide stuff, but they’re not hymns, carols or ’70s pop hits. They’re similar in feel and have interesting histories that you may not know. PROKOFIEV’S TROIKA In the early ’30s Prokofiev produced a score for a highly influential Soviet film called Lieutenant Kije. It was a brave and…

  • A Backstage Emergency in Fairytale Land

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    Jason
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    .. he Narrator has called the denizens of fairytale land together for urgent talks. He’s not in the best of moods. He casts a weary gaze around the green room and speaks. “Right, I’m told we’ve got a problem on our hands. Tonight’s story is supposed to be the Three Little Pigs, is that right…