In her solo on her version of Dizzy Gillespie’s minor blues ‘Birk’s Works’ from the album ‘Love’s Holiday’, Dena DeRose sings along with her right hand improvised line. While a number of well known jazz pianists, including Erroll Garner, Billy Taylor, Oscar Peterson and Keith Jarrett, can be heard singing distantly ‘off mic’ (and sometimes off key) along with their improvised piano solos, their lower-register vocalizations often sound unrelated to the arc of the melodic line that comes through the piano, except that they match the melodic rhythm of their improvised melodic phrases, or at least stop and start along with their piano phrases. Jarrett, who has occasionally played wind instruments on his albums, often seems to be vocalizing the breathing that would be involved in playing his piano line on a saxophone. In his solo on All The Things You Are from Standards Vol. 1, he begins by singing an octave below his piano line, but soon departs into a series of long, low-pitched grunts that sounds like what a one might hear if a saxophonist took their saxophone away in mid-phrase but continued their stream of air.
What makes DeRose’s piano-vocal improvising unusual in the jazz piano world is that she sings along ‘on mic’ with spot-on intonation and inflections that enhance the expressiveness of her improvised line, much like George Benson’s vocal doubling of his guitar solos on hits like 20/20.
Doubling an improvised vocal line on the piano is not DeRose’s only approach to improvising. In her version of It Could Happen To You from Live At Jazz Standard Volume One, she begins with a rubato, solo piano instrumental statement of the melody. After a vocal melody statement in tempo with her trio, she improvises a chorus of single-line melody free of chord voicings with voice and piano in unison. In her in second chorus of solo, she introduces left hand chordal comping while continuing to sing in unison with her right hand. It is worth noting that her approach to left hand comping is largely dialogic or conversational, i.e. in the breaks of her melodic phrases, rather than what I call ‘paralinear’ comping (simultaneous with melodic phrases). In the third chorus, she focuses on improvising instrumentally. In this chorus, rather than switching to a more ‘instrumental’ improvising approach – displays of piano technique like octaves, ‘locked hands’ and perpetual motion, breathless phrases ala Oscar Peterson – she continues to display the same melodic economy and imagination as in her vocal choruses.
The way DeRose builds in her solos on ‘It Could Happen’ and ‘Birk’s Works’ from a single note melodic line to a conversation between left hand chords and right hand melody is in the tradition of great piano solos like Mary Lou Williams’s solo on her blues Koolbonga. Her solo on ‘Birk’s Works’ is full of skillful motivic development of the kind that can be heard in Sonny Rollins solos such as Saint Thomas and his solo on the Rolling Stones’ Waiting On A Friend that I discuss in an earlier post. In the first chorus she introduces a four note descending motive at m. 9 which she develops by transposition and rhythmic displacement in m. 10. In m. 11 she plays the motive in its original form, but now over a G7 chord rather than a C minor chord. At the beginning of her second chorus, on the third beat of m. 14, DeRose introduces a piece of bop melodic language that has been used by Louis Armstrong, Clark Terry, Miles Davis and Gabrielle Stravelli, as I discuss in my blog post on Stravelli’s solo on ‘Karma Medley’. She follows this with a development of the motive that changes the shape of the phrase on beat 3 of m. 15. In the third chorus, she develops a three-note motive from the end of the ‘Birk’s Works’ head in m. 31-32, and returns to the four-note motive from the first chorus. I need to also thank Gabrielle for introducing me to DeRose’s work through her interview with Dena on her YouTube show The Early Set.
DeRose follows the head out of ‘Birk’s Works’ with an improvised cadenza that is similar to the cadenza that Wayne Shorter and Danilo Perez improvise on the version of Footprints from the album Footprints Live!. (The cadenza concludes with Shorter and Perez playing a musical game that could be called ‘Harmonize This Note’, with Perez improvising gorgeous progressions under Shorter’s repeated held notes.) In DeRose’s cadenza, she plays a ‘solitaire’ version of this game, with her voice and the upper fingers of her right hand providing the held notes and her left hand and other right hand fingers harmonizing. Near the end of the cadenza, she returns to the three-note motive from the end of the ‘Birk’s Works’ head that she uses in her third chorus, and develops it into a six-note motive that John Coltrane uses early in Acknowledgement, the opening section of his album-length piece A Love Supreme. She then transposes it through the circle of fifths a way that recalls Coltrane’s development later in Acknowledgement of the four-note motive that matches the syllables ‘A Love Supreme’.
A few semesters ago, I suggested to my student Rachel Ambaye, a jazz vocal major at UVM who studied jazz piano with me, a project of transcribing some of DeRose’s solo and learning to sing and play it. The result was a performance of ‘Birk’s Works’ at the UVM Jazz Vocal Showcase (organized by my wife and UVM jazz voice teacher Amber deLaurentis) in which Rachel improvised a solo using DeRose’s approach. What follows is Rachel’s comments on this process, followed by a transcription of DeRose’s first three choruses of solo that we did together.
Comments on Dena DeRose solo by Rachel Ambaye
I began learning this transcription a little over a year ago and have found it continues to inform my approach to improvisation, composition, and my piano-voice relationship to this day. Studying only 12 bars has given me enough information to inspire over a year’s worth of practice, exploration, and experimentation.
I was initially incredibly hesitant to perform this piece. I had been in the habit of viewing piano as simply a tool to aid with voice and composition, rather than something I would ever be showcasing as a part of my musicianship itself. So not only to perform on piano, but to improvise a simultaneous vocal and piano line was pushing me far outside of my comfort zone. I’d frequently heard other jazz pianists playing and squeaking out their notes, seemingly unintentionally, but I did not think I had enough control over my fingers and my voice to do it myself. In experimenting with this relationship though, I found it came much more naturally than anticipated, eventually leading me towards performing with this technique incorporated. I can remember admitting to Tom after taking a solo in my piano lesson that I didn’t know whether my voice knew the pitch before I struck the note on the piano, or if it was instantly adjusting once I had heard it. Looking back though, I’m not sure that mattered, and I’m still unsure if it does. Somehow, in the time since beginning this approach to my piano-voice relationship, my fingers and my voice have started to work together, as if they’ve finally agreed that it’s better for everyone if they join the same team. In doing so, they have also begun to act as teachers to one another.
Singing while playing drives my piano lines to become more melodic both when improvising and playing written melodies. I need to breathe when I sing, so I allow my fingers to breathe as well. Playing while singing drives me towards new sounds harmonically. There have been countless instances in which my fingers have led me to a place my voice would not have, and the solo or composition develops an entirely new direction. Then, through repetition, this becomes something my voice learns and will lead me towards when performing vocally away from the piano. Over time, approaching my piano-voice relationship in this manner has allowed me to become calmer at the piano. Maybe it is because I feel more in control over my voice or that I approach the instrument with less hesitation, but adding that extra sonic layer puts me more at ease when playing piano, a complete shift from what I was experiencing at this performance less than a year ago.
What’s more, learning Dena DeRose’s solo has got me thinking about comping during piano solos. Through hearing the sparseness and variety of her voicings—starting without comping, then a couple of choruses of 2-3-note voicings, then eventually 4-note voicings to start the fourth chorus, I’ve noticed that, similarly to the right hand, there is so much freedom and creativity in what the left hand can do, something I have just barely begun experimenting within the year since I’ve learned this.
Through performing, practicing, and composing with piano and voice aligned, I’ve realized that more than anything I am improving and expanding my ear, and by doing so am building trust in myself as a musician, in the fact that I know what sounds I am creating, and that I know and can create multiple ways to fix any ‘mistake’ I could end up making in performance. For example, last week I played a solo show in which I performed all original music. Some of these compositions include joint piano and vocal melody lines both with lyrics and without. In one lyric-less section, my fingers took me in a direction that my voice was not anticipating and I was forced to continue by improvising. I am certain that less than a year ago, before I began practicing piano in this way, I would not have been able to keep my composure in that scenario. I would have had trouble moving forward from that ‘mistake’ in time, but last week I didn’t even think twice before taking the melody in a new direction with both of my instruments. I adjusted my voice to match my fingers before the non-music section of my brain could even process what was going on. I was able to stay in the moment and maintain an assurance that I knew what I was doing, that both my fingers and my voice were working together to emit messages from my ears into the world. Staying rooted in this fact has been an integral part of my recent growth as both a performing musician and a composer.
Additionally, in the many months since I’ve learned this solo, I’ve been experimenting with the variety of sounds I can create using voice and piano. Rather than using the piano as just an accompanying instrument to my voice, I’ve been writing lines for voice and piano in unison and harmony, composing for piano with voice as an accompanying instrument, improvising with both voice and piano in unison and harmony, and then there’s the whole bass section of the piano which I am sure can provide me with endless combinations of what to create next once I focus on uncovering it. Experimenting with the different roles I can play with two instruments, has allowed me to dive into the seemingly endless opportunities for sound that I can create as a solo performer, which is now allowing me to dream bigger, and imagine even grander as I am composing and arranging for small group ensembles.
I think back to this performance with fond memories. While it is certainly not a performance I would highlight as one of my best, or willingly offer the video of it to those who ask me about it, I think of this experience fondly because it has driven me towards unlocking a new approach to my piano and voice relationship, one that has allowed me to start a journey towards, and make strides in becoming more comfortable at the piano.
This blog post ©2025 Tom Cleary and Rachel Ambaye