About the Author: Olegario Diaz
Composer/pianist, Olegario Diaz was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in composition in 1978. Later, in 1986 he earned a Master's degree in Jazz Studies from the Manhattan School of Music in New York.
Olegario Diaz has performed as a pianist in the East And West Coast with artists such as Tito Puente, Willie Bobbo, Celia Cruz, Mario Bauza Big Band, Paquito de Rivera, Victor Paz and Daniel Ponce.
For his SteepleChase debut album, he recorded with renowned musicians in the New York jazz scene: Rich Perry (tenor Sax), Ron McClure (Bass) and Billy Hart (Drums).
For his second and third SteepleChase albums, he reunited with artists like Randy Brecker, Lewis Nash, Ron McClure, Rich Perry, Alex Sipiangi, Seamus Blake, Scott Colley and Jeff Tain Watts.
This book is a summary of exercises and jazz improvisation lines designed to improve contemporary jazz style techniques.
The book is divided in scale, arpeggios, chromatic exercises and jazz lines phrases from John Coltrane and Michael Brecker.
These exercises should be transposed to all twelve (12) tones, so we can achieve perfect coordination. Major, minor and dominant chords, extended to their highest level, scale wise, arpeggios and chromatic passages. There are none signature centers, so all these exercises will be worked accidentally.
This project is an extension of my last three methods of improvisation
*Improvise Now
*220 Chromatic Exercises + 1165 Jazz lines phrases
*Herbie Hancock lines voicings and rhythms from transcriptions.
"John Coltrane was among the most important, and most controversial, figures in jazz. It seems amazing that his period of greatest activity was so short, not only because he recorded prolifically, but also because, taking advantage of his fame, the record companies that recorded him as a sideman in the 1950s frequently reissued those recordings under his name and there has been a wealth of Posthumously released material as well."
"Mike Brecker was, by the 1980s, the most influential saxophonist since John Coltrane; any aspiring saxophonist was forced to take account of his tone, technique, energy and his harmonic methodology."
