At long last, George Garzone has recently performed and led various masterclasses in London. Its great to hear the American masters of line, and in particular guys like Garzone and Liebman who challenge our tolerance of dissonance. Of course we have our own harmonic Merlins (check out Jean Toussaint’s harmonic concept, Julian Siegel, Phil Robson, Russell Van Den Berg and others), but such severe and thorough manipulation of tonality seems to be less fashionable these days…
George has a thorough concept (Triadic Chromatic Approach), but also offers great advice about improvising. As with Lee Konitz, despite a serious reputation as a teacher, there is little published or available the internet, George claiming to have learnt much as he went along. In my own research I have only stumbled across accounts of lessons, the most lucid of which I have condensed and posted on this site – click here.
Simon Purcell 