"Jazz music is a lifestyle. It’s not notes, chords and arpeggios. Today’s improvisation is too based on the knowledge of chords and the way they practice the chords. It’s not a melodic thing anymore like the older days. It was much more important to play shorter and to play more variable, valid stuff. Today, a lot of solos are long and uninteresting and the influence usually comes from John Coltrane’s group. He himself was a master musician, but he put so much emphasis on chord knowledge and technique, and now the kids want to show how fast they can play. This is the same with piano players and most instrumentalists—it’s speed. That’s gonna change again and hopefully the kids who are now 16 and 17 years old have a little more sense and maybe some more stories to tell."
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Reflecting on the new generation's take on jazz music
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Joe Zawinul
Josef Erich Zawinul (7 July 1932 – 11 September 2007) was an Austrian pianist, keyboardist and composer. He was the co-founder of jazz fusion bands Weather Report and the Zawinul Syndicate.
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