Question and Answer

Do you have an opinion regarding Geroge Russell's "Lydian Chromatic" approach to improvisation? Are there other approaches, or teaching methods, you prefer?

hi mike,

i got the "lydian chromatic" book when i was in high school and studied from it for a year or so - and honestly, i wasn't really at a level where i could understand much about it in any deep way at that time. i would like to look at it and try to learn from it again, with a little bit more experience under my belt - i think i could get more out of it now and i have been wanting to revisit it. i have always admired mr. russell's writing and organizational skills -- and especially his ambition to find unique ways of presenting music that remain his and his alone. i will also always be thankful that he created a situation that allowed us to see an interesting juxtapostion of bill evans and paul bley during a time when they were both making important strides in the development of their languages (to me, the fact that those two guys came up at around the same time and came up with such wildly different yet somehow resonant to their times versions of the jazz piano vocabulary has always interested me). i know that mr. russell continues to this day to stick really hard to his own personal point of view as to what the implications of his harmonic language offer the world -- and i really admire that.

thanks for writing in from pat