When I was young, I did not know that I would fall in love with jazz music that much but things started to change by just a single “mistake” click on one of the YouTube videos.
On that heavily raining, cozy day, I could vividly remember the first modern jazz music that I now listen to for ages, the music was called “Temple of Dreams” by Jonathan Fritzén.
During the initial exposure to the instrumental music, I didn’t know which genre of music it actually belonged to. All I could imagine at that time was a picture of myself enjoying a glass of wine with a background music playing the smooth melodies embellished with clean detached notes. Since then, my interest in jazz started to develop and my journey to the world of jazz music began.
Throughout the years of listening to jazz, I have developed personalized preferences and acoustical acuity toward smooth jazz pieces. Hence, I have listed a range of smooth jazz artists and their respective musical work that I highly recommend you add in your playlist:
1.Gregg Karukas – Night Shift
Night Shift is definitely a representative of his extraordinary work in jazz community in my opinion. In this particular jazz piece, I love how GK started off the sequences with coupled harmonious notes. This is definitely a must-have music for a break or unwinding after school/work.
2. Gregg Karukas – Soul Kisses
Again this cleverly-written song started off with cleanly separated piano notes and finished off by the improvisations accompanied with the tenor saxophonist. This could be your upcoming holiday track!
3. Freddie Ravel- Sunny Side Up
I just love how Freddie tickles the ivories. Rather than the other two, Sunny Side Up could really hype you up in the morning.
4. Shilts- A Promise is a Promise
I am extremely admiring how Shilts could bring his bright tone on his alto saxophone into a spotlight. If you do love bright sound and uptempo jazz, Jeff Kashiwa – (Show me love) could be your next playlist too.
5. Euge Groove – Slow Jam
Euge Grove plays various style of saxophone music including funk as in the “XXL”. Exceptionally, this was one of the smooth jazz piece that is packed with sad sentiments and affections.
6. Jessy J – Hot Sauce
Who says she can’t play? I love the wildness of her tenor saxophone sound and the latter altissimo G growls. The combination of note bending and vibrato techniques paint the harmonies up!
I hope that this short blog article could help you understand jazz better – if not then there there are a lot of interesting news articles about jazz music and how it relates to your cognitive abilities. In this article, I have mentioned quite a number of artists and their respective work. And here’s another bonus, they are easily accessible on YouTube and I hope you could have your own fun time discovering this genre of music, too! Let me know what you think.
Related Posts:
- Southampton Students perform alongside internationally renowned jazz trio
- Soundings Blog: Music at Southampton, Jazz
Great article, totally what I needed.