Piano | Bob Thompson | Intermediate/Advanced | Period 2 | Week 3 (July 21-26, 2024)
We will learn blues chord voicings. left hand bass patterns, and study blues rhythm. We will study basic blues forms, including the 8, 12, 16 and 24 bar blues. We’ll also learn minor blues, and blues scale variations that can be applied to creating blues melodies.
Keyboards will NOT be provided for this class. Participants will need to bring their own keyboard and are encouraged to bring headphones.
About the Instructor
“Pianist Bob Thompson has enjoyed a long and active career as a performer, composer, arranger, and teacher. For decades he has played in West Virginia, and at festivals and venues around the country, including the Blue Note in New York, Blues Alley in Washington D.C. and the Newport Jazz Festival in Saratoga, NY. He has also taken his music to Europe, Africa, and South America. In December 2022 he was featured at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts playing solo piano as part of “A Jazz Piano Christmas”, which was broadcast on NPR. Bob Thompson was also a guest on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, on National Public Radio.
Since 1991 Bob Thompson has been pianist, and regularly featured artist on West Virginia’s NPR syndicated radio show, Mountain Stage. For the past thirty years he has also been co-producer and host of Joy to the World, a Holiday jazz show featuring Bob’s band, and each year, a special guest vocalist. The show is broadcast on public radio stations nationwide, and heard internationally on the Voice of America.
Bob was born in Jamaica, New York. He moved to West Virginia to study instrumental music at West Virginia State University, with trumpet as his major instrument. While in college he began playing jazz piano. After winning awards at the Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival, and subsequent State Department tours abroad, he decided to pursue a career in jazz.
His recordings on Capitol’s Intima label, and Ichiban International, received high recognition on the national jazz charts, with some reaching the top-ten. Musicians who have recorded with Bob Thompson include: John Blake, Kevin Eubanks, Omar Hakim, Larry Coryell, Gerald Veasley, Chris Dave, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Dwayne Dolphin, and Rodney Holmes.
Bob Thompson “Live” on Mountain Stage, and Smile, with the Bob Thompson Unit, are on his own label, Colortones.com. The latest recording by the Bob Thompson Band, “Look Beyond the Rain”, is on Blue Canoe Records.
In October 2015, Bob Thompson was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.
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