Color Me Jazz, Book 2: Piano Book

Evans writes jazz that swings. These 13 pieces give intermediate pianists a chance to absorb real harmonic movement, authentic comping figures, and genuine jazz phrasing without getting buried in complexity. Your students will sound like they're playing actual jazz, not simplified approximations of it.

These pieces breathe with the looseness and harmonic sophistication of real jazz, yet the technical demands stay within reach for growing pianists. Playing through this book feels like stepping into an actual jazz tradition rather than doing a music theory exercise.

Intermediate pianists ready to engage with genuine jazz language, not simplified versions. These pieces suit students who've handled classical or contemporary repertoire at this level and want to explore swing, jazz harmony, and comping within a structured, guided context.

• Listen to jazz piano recordings before you teach these pieces. Your students need to hear how a real jazz pianist voices chords and approaches the melody, not just read the notes.
• Work the comping patterns separately from the melody. Lock in the left hand accompaniment until it feels natural, then layer in the right-hand lines.
• Honor the rhythmic articulation Evans writes. The difference between a note that swings and one that sits metronomically matters tremendously in jazz; the notation shows you what he intends.
• Record yourself playing alongside the printed music, then have students play with their own recording. This builds independence and teaches them to listen ahead.

Slot individual pieces into recitals or student showcases to diversify your concert programming with accessible jazz content. You could also assign one piece per week across a semester as a parallel track to classical study, giving students rhythmic and harmonic experiences that deepen their overall musicianship.

• Jazz chord voicing and upper-structure harmony
• Swing rhythms and triplet feel interpretation
• Left-hand comping patterns and accompaniment textures
• Jazz phrasing and articulation choices
• Reading jazz notation and lead-sheet conventions
• Improvisation foundations through written melody and changes