E30: Review of Nikki Iles & Friends, Jazz Pieces For Piano
A must-listen review (with music audio clips) of 3 books of jazz piano sheet music from Nikki Iles & Friends published by ABRSM covering from initial grade up to grade 8 and beyond. A detailed look at highlights and 'weak' pieces with audio clips from each book starts at 36:30
A brief bulletpoint summary of my review:
3 books:
Book 1- Intermediate (Grades 4-6)
Book 2- Intermediate to Advanced (Grades 6-8)
Easy to Intermediate (Grades initial-3)
Writing/ arranging in a jazz style for students at levels below grade 8 is a challenging & specialised skill. Nikki Iles is especially good at this for students at the intermediate-advanced level (grades 5-8)
IMO Nikki is not quite so stunning (including her friends!) at the easier end, which is where people like Christopher Norton shine. Because of the challenge & specialised skill of arranging jazz for beginners, Nikki’s friends’ contributions work much better in the advanced book
In Books 1 & 2 (grades 4-8)- fantastic idea to have curated pieces from other jazz composers- Nikki always very good at pastiches (which is great for pedagogical pieces), but this means sometimes it’s difficult to hear her ‘voice’ and identity as a composer/arranger- so it's nice to hear pieces from performers such as Zoe Rahman where you can really hear her unique voice. The idea to curate proper jazz composers is a good way to avoid just having a load of pedagogical pay-cheque jazz/blues cliches which is all too common in the higher ABRSM grades when including jazz list C pieces
Almost all the pieces are a bit too short for my taste!! But maybe useful as brief enjoyable diversions for ‘serious’ students rather than performance pieces
Some of the marketing for these books say they’re a great source for alternative 4th choice grade pieces for the performance exams- if so it would have been so useful to actually say what grades these pieces would be categorised as (apart from the ones actually in the alternative lists)
Not fan of CD format in books 1 & 2- can be a lot of hassle to find a CD player after years of not using CDs! Nice idea to have downloadable mp3s for the Easy to Intermediate book, but in reality can be unnecessarily tricky & frustrating to download from the ABRSM website. A lot of articulations, dynamics, rhythms & other markings very different in the recorded versions to what's on the page
A huge amount of misprints- I'll list the ones I've spotted below the main part of this review. ABRSM are very bad at updating misprints on their website
Not a fan of the editing- especially in Book 2. Again, I'll list some of these below
Some strange rhythmic notations that I would notate differently
Lots of bad enharmonic spellings- presumably to make music easier to read, but has opposite effect with wrongly spelled harmonies
Inconsistent use of courtesy accidentals that make it harder to read
Unclear on differences between accents & tenutos- I don’t hear a difference in recordings. And actually tenutos are frequently played slightly ahead of the beat which is the opposite of what I would normally do with them
Easy to Intermediate (22 pieces): feels very ‘pedagogical ABRSM’- ie often a bit uninspired & stodgy.
A lot of emphasis on ‘world music’- ie African, Scottish, Caribbean, Yiddish folk song. Is this to hit some kind of GCSE tickbox? Feels like we're being hit over the head with ‘educational’ material
So much of this book is just clearly not jazz, so not what the book is promising
Would much rather these were all Nikki's compositions or arrangements
Book 1- Intermediate (16 pieces): some criticisms but on the whole difficult to really dislike the book, top recommendation, useful for all teachers and anybody interested in jazz at this level
Book 2- Intermediate to Advanced (13 pieces- 10 of which are in my list of highlights!): very strong collection, a winner! I would absolutely buy this & recommend- but a hu...
Heart of the Piano Podcast
Passionate, irreverent and often opinionated discussions on all things piano related as well as interviews, news, tips and reviews.
Where can you listen?
