Russ Schmidt

In A Fall Foliage Funk

This slow funk groove uses similar chord changes to Autumn Leaves. Russ Schmidt uses the optional vibes, guitar, French horn, flute, and clarinet in interesting ways to color the usual big band sound. The chart features an alto saxophone solo and a quasi stop-time solo for either piano or guitar. A contrapuntal shout chorus takes us home. MediumAdvance Music is proud to present our new Groovin' Easy Series. We've taken 10 tunes from two popular Advance Music publications (Reading Key Jazz Rhythms and The Ramon Ricker Improvisation Series) and asked our writers to give us creative and musically challenging charts that are also playable by young bands.To the normal big band instrumentation of 5 saxes, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones and rhythm section we've added optional parts for flute, clarinet, French horn, guitar and auxiliary percussion. In addition, each chart is written to sound full with a reduced instrumentation of only 3 saxes, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone and rhythm section.The brass ranges are reasonable with the lead trumpet never going above a written C and the rhythm section parts are carefully notated and thought out.There is plenty of room for improvising, but just in case we've provided written solos.