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McCoy Tyner - One Upon a Time

Improvisation of some type is nearly always part of a jazz performance. Even if musicians are reading notes on a page, they can improvise through the way they attack or color a note, or the rhythmic impulse they bring to the music. In early jazz musicians often improvised by creating variations on a given melody. As the tradition developed, it became more common to use a chord progression as the basis for entirely new melodies. In more recent jazz traditions, even chords are abandoned and musicians will simply improvise on a scale, a motive, or even just a tonal center. No matter how they improvise, however, most musicians have a set of phrases, called licks, that lie easily under their fingers and can be used and reused in a variety of contexts. Charlie Parker, for example, had many signature licks that make his style instantly recognizable. In other words, jazz musicians do often play musical lines they have played before, but where they place these lines, and how they pla them, is part of the art of improvisation.

Nearly all jazz has some connection, even if subtle, with the African American blues tradition, in performance technique, common forms used, and overall musical feel. In fact, there are those who would claim that when the music loses its connection to the blues, it ceases to be jazz. This is the claim often used to prove that Kenny G. is not a jazz musician, even though he plays an instrument associated with jazz, the soprano saxophone, and improvises. His references to blues traditions, when they exist at all, are so stylized that they lack any strong connections to the genuine article.

The last three decades have seen the extension of many of jazz history’s streams, as well as the promotion of jazz as an art worthy of academic discourse. As it always has, the art of jazz continues to evolve and reflect changing political and economic climates, as well as absorbing other music that emerges in the now digital


McCoy Tyner - One Upon a Time
  • Recorded: April 27 & 28, 1999
  • Released: January 25, 2000
  • Styles: Post-Bop, Piano Jazz

"McCoy Tyner was a legendary jazz pianist known for his time in the pioneering John Coltrane Quartet. Tyner played piano with Coltrane on his seminal albums. The innovative pianist left Coltrane in 1965 and would release his own critically acclaimed albums which garnered him a Grammy nomination."

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