Jazz on a Summer's Day: 9 pieces for jazz piano (Nikki Iles Jazz series)

Tremendous value for money. You get 9 pieces to work on plus a great CD showing you how they should be played! I love this series of manuscripts and really hope more are brought out into the future.

Bought set of 4 as recently got into jazz piano pieces. Not got to grips with them yet. A few obscure pieces some familiar.

Great pieces of music, really enjoyed them. The CD helped a lot with learning them as I'm an intermediate player who hasn't played in a long time. Would really recommend this. I've bought just two of this series of 4 books, but am keen to order the other two.

Interesting book, well written. Student needs to be a confident reader to manage the technique; I would say Grade 7 standard.

The first one is a winner (Sunny Side of Street). Ta.

Great fun to play and will introduce it to students in due course.

Perfect even for people who's first instrument might not be piano.

This book contains absolutely fantastic piano pieces and a CD too. I would say the difficulty is Grade 5/6 and upwards. The arrangments are superb and very rewarding to play; with practice you could be sounding like a pro with these arrangments!There is one very well known standard 'On the Sunny Side of the Street' but to me, the others are not so well known. They are; Theme from 'Summer of '42', 'The Touch of your Lips'and 'The Last Rose of Summer'. Four of the pieces are Nikki Iles' own compositions and there is one duet 'the Shaker Song' where you can play along with the other part on the CD.The music is arranged in such a way that it falls easily under your hands and also there are no stretches of a 10th in the left hand and as a female I find 10th's too much of a stretch. She uses jazz licks here and there so it makes it sound a bit improvised and sometimes there is written improvisation for a verse which are at the same level as the over all piece and sound accessable, so a refreshing change to most jazz pianist transcriptions.My favourite jazz pianists are Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson and in the jazz style pieces you can hear these influneces. The Bill evans influence in the rich harmonies and cluster chords and intraspective feel but these pieces are much easier to play than Bill Evans transcriptions and likewise with the Oscar Peterson, there isn't the difficulty (almost needing three hands and also large hands because of the left hand leaps) but there is the feel and the rhymn of his music. There is real scope to put your own stlye to the music with these pieces. Nikki Iles own compositions are lovely to play and lsiten to and one has fairly modern harmonies.I think this book would be good for those who are tired of playing the same old jazz standards and for those who listen to jazz and want to sound like an accomplished pianist who can improvise a bit. I look forward to her next piano book!