poojalooba_cow asked:


I’m attending the “Fifth Annual Snow College/Juilliard Jazz Workshop” on July 6-11. Juilliard jazz faculty like Carl Allen and Ben Wolfe come down to Snow College for a week and teach kids about jazz and it’s awesome. Part of the process is splitting off into combos to practice and play songs with during the week, and to put you in combos you go through a “soft audition” at the beginning of the workshop where you play some jazz stuff like scales and basic twelve-bar stuff and based on your skill, you’re placed in a combo with players of your skill. The official guidelines say:

More advanced players should be prepared to play:
-A 12 bar blues in B flat, C minor, F and E flat (various tempos, melody and solo). This should be a jazz standard (i.e. Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, etc.)
-Major and minor scales
-Up tempo standard (of their choice)
-Sight reading

I play piano, and I’ve got all of those twelve-bar blues forms down and all the scales and I’m a decent sight reader. The only problem is, I’m having a really hard time finding two songs to play (a “twelve-bar jazz standard” and an “up tempo standard”). I’ve looked at stuff like Boogie a la King by Nat King Cole and 18th Street Stomp by Fats Waller and other stuff but I can’t find sheet music anywhere, and with only a month I’d rather not sit down and transcribe these songs by ear (I could do it if I absolutely had to, though). I also have a book of “Jump Swing” songs but they’re kind of lame and watered-down with lame piano-bass lines or weird boogie riffs that don’t fit the bill, but I could maybe also turn to one of those in a pinch. I’ve also got a fake book full of jazz standards that I could turn to if I had to.

I’m asking if anybody has any suggestions on good solo-piano jazz pieces that fit the requirements (twelve-bar standard, up-tempo standard), sound good and are fun to play and relatively easy without sounding lame (difficulty is not an issue normally, but I only have a month). Can anyone help me out here?

sight reading music