Bottom Line: A must for any jazz pianist, beginning to advanced, who wants more material to work on.

Visit the website for examples and to purchase: http://humboldt1.com/~jazz

Written, edited, and published by Darius Brotman

Contributions by Dieter Feldkamp and others

The Jazz Piano StudyLetter is a compilation of twenty jazz piano news letters from May, 1993 to October, 2000, in a single bound book.

The first of 238 pages says, "A rare compendium of concepts and devices, exercises, analyses, reviews, and speculations of interest to pianists an all jazz musicians whether beginning or advanced."

The StudyLetter has on average around ten articles per section. There is a clear table of contents and index section to make it easy to find whatever it is you're looking for. There are sections on technique, style analysis on jazz piano greats, improvisation, original arrangements, disussions on the harmonies used by jazz greats, listening, reviews, voicings, basics, advanced harmony and techniques, and literally, much much more.

The book is rather large at 238 pages and you'd think a review of the book would also be large, but because the book is a collection of articles, it would take another book to review them all. When I started examining this book for review, I thought I'd check out a few bits and pieces, but soon I found myself starting from the beginning and working my way through every page. Guess what- I'll be going through it several more times in the coming months. Why? Read on below.

I am amazed by the sheer amount of STUFF in this book, and what is further amazing is that nearly everything I'm seeing as I go through it is GOOD STUFF. Almost every page of the Jazz Piano StudyLetter contains sheet music examples along with the articles, so it is very easy to put this book on the piano and work things out.

In front of me is an article on dimished scale voicings that explainins in simple terms how to get one of the cool sounds you hear all the time coming out of top jazz pianists. Another page is about how Lennie Tristano practices scales, accompanied by an entire page of sheetmusic that shows them. In another spot there are two pages of a Gene Harris transcription.

When I opened this book the smile on my face could have frightened small children. The information is legit, the writing is clear and easy to understand, and the sheet music examples are sensible and formatted well. Darius Brotman certainly has some very deep knowledge when it comes to jazz and he has a gift in being able to share it in a way that not only advanced players can appreciate, but beginners will as well.

I would be proud to say I wrote this book because this book is exactly what LearnJazzPiano.com is all about. Tricks of the trade, difficult concepts explained so that they are easily understood, and plenty of material to work on and learn from. I'm pleased to say that this book is worth much more than the $45 price tag and I guarantee you'll be very happy if you order it.

Darius Broman has done a very good job with this compendium and in my opinion, it's worth every cent as one of the best collections of jazz piano information around.

Scot Ranney