By Nicole H. E. Lee Thanks to Norah Jones, Jamie Cullum, Michael Buble and many other young jazz and jazz-influenced artists, interest in jazz music has been making a strong comeback. And with singer/piano players like Norah and Jamie, it’s not hard to see why jazz piano-playing has taken on with many piano enthusiasts as well. However, because many of us started off learning the piano by playing classical music which deeply grounds us in music-reading and interpretation of the works of the masters, i.e. Bach, Chopin, Mozart, etc., the jazz style and its element of improvisation become, to many, extremely difficult to learn, or a skill which “you either have it, or you don’t.” It really doesn’t have to be that way. Learning how to play jazz – no matter how brilliant a pianist you are – is going to be difficult in the beginning because you are learning
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