Review

Richie Cannata & Sean J. Kennedy
Improvising and Soloing in the Pocket :

, United States
Publisher: Carl Fischer
Date of Publication: 2013
URL: http://www.carlfischer.com

Includes digital video disc containing MP3 and WMV files

Primary Genre: Jazz Material - etude

Sean Kennedy is a Philadelphia-based drummer who has transcribed most of the included tunes by Richie Cannata, best known for his saxophone-playing with Billy Joel’s band, then opening Cove City Sound Studios, and Spyro Gyra guitarist Julio Fernandez, who co-wrote four of the nine included tunes but oddly receives no cover-credit. Together they have created a book/play-along that explores the sounds of their rock-fusion tunes in tracks that include space for improvisation.
 
This book calls for the full range of the trombone, with some tunes lying more in the tenor range, others more in the bass-trigger range. Most of the tunes are rock/funk, with funky turns on bossa, samba, montuno, ballad, and shuffle. Seven of the nine tunes include 16th notes; one ballad also includes 32nd notes. On the whole, the book reads easily as a melodic part for electric bass, though playable by other instruments. The book lies flat on the music stand, and there are no page-turn concerns. Calligraphy is clean and neat, though staves are not visually organized in relation to the phrases so often crossing them. The chord symbols are clear but quite small.
 
The book includes a Theory Worksheet for each tune, basically an outline of applicable scales and sometimes chords. The accompanying DVD functions only as a storage medium for the nine MP3-formatted play-along audio tracks, not playable in CD players, as well as video interviews with Cannata, Kennedy, and Fernandez in WMV format, not playable on DVD players. These three- to four-minute videos focus more on the reminiscences of Cannata and Fernandez as to how a given tune was composed or titled, with Kennedy as moderator; there are no in-depth solo suggestions or instrumental demonstrations in the videos.
 
There are no audio demos of the melodies, other than faint bleed-over of the sax heard under the final track, so this is not a book from which to emulate a provided melodic style. For that you would need to seek out the full commercial recordings of these tunes; however, no discography of source-recordings is included beyond some casual mention at times within the videos. The audio play-along tracks are outstanding and will serve as a most enjoyable backup for anyone mastering these melodies or simply wanting to solo over their chord progressions.

-Antonio J. García
Virginia Commonwealth University