The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Evginy just won the 2019 (Herbie) Hancock Institute of Jazz International Guitar Competition.
    This performance is from the semifinal round.


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  3. #2

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    I enjoyed that young man's performance. It also shows me that I need to keep working on my hybrid picking if I wanted to incorporate chords into my solos the way that he does.

    Nice band, too - love the acoustic piano (over organs, my personal taste).

  4. #3

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    I saw this on the NPR website this morning. The video they have linked also has the other semi finalists, all impressive in their own right. BUT, this guy stood head and shoulders over the others in so many ways. I'm very torn about the concept of musical "contests", but it's very heartening to see such a collection of young folk coming up. The NPR article had glowing comments about Evginy's rendition of Wayne Shorter's 502 Blues from the final performance at the Kennedy Center, but I can't seem to find that on the internet. Anybody seen/heard that?

  5. #4

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    I was at the Kennedy Center finalists' performances. It was pretty well attended, which was nice. Downside of that was that a rat came sashaying up the aisle as we were waiting for the show to start, but I only saw the one. All three finalists were absolutely terrific, and Pobozhiy was hands-down the audience's favorite. It must have been very hard for the judges to select the order of awards.

  6. #5

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    Is it my imagination, or does he look like Pete Buttigieg's younger brother?Sorry to take this off topic.

  7. #6

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    What guitar model/brand is he playing? It looks familiar.

  8. #7

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    The guitar looks like a Keisel/Carvin.

    I was thinking about the challenges the players his age have in terms of developing an authentic sounding approach to jazz. I was born in 1959 which was coincidentally a pivotal year and jazz: Kind of Blue, Giant Steps, Take Five, The Shape of Jazz to Come, Mingus Ah Hum.

    When I was growing up, you could still frequently see and hear jazz players on TV like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. Jazz was still on the radio, in commercials and soundtracks for movies and TV, musicians of that caliber were still touring, etc. It was still embedded in the culture. Someone like one of these young folks growing up now does so in the absence of jazz in popular culture. Maybe I am wrong in imagining that this is a hindrance to developing an authentic jazz voice and that one really can make up for that by just studying it, but I think there is some sort of benefit to having that sound floating around in the air when you're not consciously paying attention to it.

    In the mid-1980s I was working in a group home with emotionally disturbed adolescents (I know, that's a redundant phrase). There was a news item one evening about Paul McCartney getting arrested at an airport in Tokyo, if I remember correctly, for marijuana possession. One of the kids at the group home turned to me and asked "Paul McCartney was a Beatle?" She knew who everybody was in Duran Duran, knew Sade, Flock of Seagulls, etc. Musically speaking, I'm thinking I got the better end of the deal growing up with the Beatles instead of MTV.

    Maybe I'm just old. Get the hell off my lawn!

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cunamara

    I was thinking about the challenges the players his age have in terms of developing an authentic sounding approach to jazz. I was born in 1959 which was coincidentally a pivotal year and jazz: Kind of Blue, Giant Steps, Take Five, The Shape of Jazz to Come, Mingus Ah Hum.

    When I was growing up, you could still frequently see and hear jazz players on TV like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. Jazz was still on the radio, in commercials and soundtracks for movies and TV, musicians of that caliber were still touring, etc. It was still embedded in the culture. Someone like one of these young folks growing up now does so in the absence of jazz in popular culture. Maybe I am wrong in imagining that this is a hindrance to developing an authentic jazz voice and that one really can make up for that by just studying it, but I think there is some sort of benefit to having that sound floating around in the air when you're not consciously paying attention to it.
    I don't really hear today's players as having a hindrance to developing a jazz voice. As for the good old days, there is a Horace Silver interview someplace where he talks about learning things from the radio since there was no jazz at all where he grew up in Connecticut. And Horace always sounded like he was born swinging the blues!

    The other side of today's culture is that you can watch, with a click, any jazz master playing. This wasn't true back in the day! People would have to sneak into clubs and whatnot.

  10. #9

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    The 15-min sets from the semi-finalists are all on the Hancock utube page:

    Guitar semi-finalists.

    Some great playing!

  11. #10

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    I enjoyed Evginy’s playing. He’s 30 years old BTW (I thought he was younger).

  12. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cunamara
    I was born in 1959 which was coincidentally a pivotal year in jazz.....
    Agreed how pivotal that year was. A lot of my favorite stuff was recorded in '59 anyway.
    Last edited by MattR; 12-16-2019 at 02:05 AM.

  13. #12

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    [Resurrected thread]

    Was looking for something new to listen to this morning, so I pulled up these semi-finalist vids from the Dec 2019 competition again. [Although the sound quality/mixing is a bit off on some of them] There are great examples of different players' styles, on different types of guitars, using (mostly) the same gear. Fun!