A jazz musician needs to know, by heart, as many standards as possible (hundreds). It doesn’t matter where you live in the world, most jazzers don’t rehearse and don’t decide on a set list in advance.
If you don’t know some of the tunes being called, then it doesn’t matter how great you play, you won’t get called back. You won’t believe how many times I’ve met musicians that consider themselves jazz musicians that can barely play ten songs without the realbook.
Photograph by Josep Tomás.
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