Kurt Rosenwinkel's magnum opus published

[Jimmy blue note]

Amazing work of art and music.
Kurt Rosenwinkel's book of 150 compositions
I just got the book and it's an amazing record of a great composer/player with notes on the pieces, stories and pieces never released.

earliest pieces to orchestral scores. I'm looking through it now and it's unlocking layers of the pieces that make it easier to understand and play his music.
Exciting.

[Jimmy blue note]

[Liarspoker]

Wow, I'd love to hear his orchestral scores and it's interesting to see that Kurt writes in 8 staves. Must check it out!!

Steve Vai mentioned that he has recorded 44 hours of orchestral music in various forms ( with rock band, with just a guitarist etc ). Really can't wait to hear that.

[Mick-7]

Has anyone checked out this new book by Kurt? (released September 10, 2024). The Kindle copy is only $10 but I dislike that format:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGQ8DVL9

[Jimmy blue note]

Kurt's creative arc and musical evolution is a composition in its own right. Anybody who has considered themselves a player knows that there is not threshold at which you can say "I'm a soloist/composer/musician" but rather, it's a steady spiral of accumulating sensibilities, assumptions and ways of seeing things.
This book is a complete commitment to presenting the works of a life of complete commitment and musical evolution. It's more than the ostensible catalogue of a notated output over decades, but too, a guideline for anyone wishing to gain insight into how a life shapes changing compositions that shape a more articulate soloing style that informs "the next step".
It's got some narrative of things that changed in his life from release to release, so we can better appreciate these milestones in marking the changes of sound.
Kurt is one of those musicians who didn't make his identity through finding his voice through a collage of licks over a set of standards, but rather he created the vehicles by which a new way of composing, on paper and in real time, could be achieved. So this is a chronicling of that step in the conceptual/exploratory/literal/real time performance/recording and critical appreciation cycle. I kind of see this as an essential step in an informed appreciation of a remarkable artist's recorded output. It's the way by which a listener can get deeper inside the mind of an intriguing and beautiful body of music that until now, we could only appreciate through sound.

One of the things that marks modern jazz musicians at the highest level is the integral inclusion of original compositions. They do this for a variety of reasons, but in every case, it's a way to bring the ephemeral language of creativity into the realized solid vehicles through which they can grow and evolve further.
We don't often get the chance to see this one step in the process. The Kurt book does just this, for the curious, the informed, the player and the composer wishing to find a way into how one artist does, and essentially broadens the way we perceive music on the micro and the macro.

I have lots of books on my shelf, but this one is one that will never accumulate dust, and somehow there's always some question I have regarding the way I play music and I've found this to be an answer from one source that continues to raise questions.
Not for everyone, but a resource and a treasure trove for anyone who sees Kurt as a mysterious source of inspiration (and envy) and has wondered "What was he thinking?"

It won't make you into Kurt, but it's shown me a depth to his process that is hard to merely imagine.