The Things We Did Last Summer: E-Z Play Today

Warmly nostalgic, like flipping through old photographs. The melody floats over gentle harmonic support, evoking late summer evenings and the bittersweet tug of memories beginning to fade.

Intermediate pianists exploring jazz standards for the first time, or students who read treble clef fluently but haven't yet tackled dense chromatic reharmonization. This arrangement works equally well for independent practice and light jazz ensemble contexts where a comping musician is needed.

• Lean into the rubato; jazz standards live in the spaces between the beat. Don't lock rigidly to a metronome until the form feels organic.
• Voice the left hand sparsely at first. The urge to fill every moment with accompaniment figures will muddy the nostalgic character this tune deserves.
• Let the melody sit slightly ahead of the beat in the A section to capture that wistful quality the lyric suggests.

Pair this with vocal jazz standards or solo singer repertoire for recitals and informal performance events. It also serves as a bridge piece for classical pianists discovering the jazz tradition, requiring minimal historical context before sightreading.

• Reading lead sheet symbols and jazz chord notation
• Translating simplified voicings into left-hand comping patterns
• Controlling tempo flexibility within a jazz context
• Balancing melody prominence with harmonic accompaniment