[Dixielandjazz] Jonathan Russell & Regina Carter at her "Master Class"

[Steve barbone]

My little pal Jonathan had a very successful master class with Jazz Master
violinist Regina Carter. Here are some excerpts from his Mom's note.
Makes this old fart wish he was young again and had J's talent and
enthusiasm for the music.

Don't miss this young man at the Sacramento Jubilee, because he will blow
you away.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Hey Steve-

Well, things went really well at the Regina Carter Master Class. She is
so very lovely. There were four players- two 20 year olds- both playing
some form of  Be-Bop, and a 16 year old from Manhattan School of music
Prep division, who was a "jazz novice"- she wanted a wide range of
players. They probably picked Jonathan assuming he'd be the least of the
players...NOT...In a nutshell, J's classical teacher (who is very
critical of J's technique and usually doesn't say more than-"I thought
he did pretty good") was there, and he thought J was "great" . . .

He also really connected to what she (Regina) had to say. Jonathan got up
and got applause throughout his lesson (then again, he had a lot of fans
there, and a bunch of kids from his music school).

He played Lady Be Good, and it was beautiful- did some trading with piano
(wonderful 21 year old player). She worked on getting him to breath more,
and play less on the first lead, and by the second attempt, he nailed it.
And of course, all his leads were different.

He was the only one there who actually knew the words to his tune. Then she
had him play it as a ballad, which he did beautifully (my friend who was
sitting next to me sat there crying, and Regina said; "Look- you've made the
woman in the first row cry- that's always a good sign." Her point of turning
it into a ballad was that you should take a tune and play it as many
different ways as you can to really learn the tune.

She asked Jonathan if he'd ever done that before  with the song- he hadn't.
You got the feeling she was testing him to see if he was all pre rehearsed.
So, she didn't make a big fuss about him - she is very professional- but you
could see she was impressed. She smiled a whole lot, and later on thanked us
for bringing him down and said he was great - and very cute..

So, that's it, Regina Carter now knows my kid. I really liked a lot of what
she had to say- she is against just working on other people's riffs-although
she does think transcribing them and figuring out what other people are
doing is a good idea. But she basically believes in immersing yourself in
the music and just listening- and NOT reading every book out there about how
to play jazz. 

Eve