Overview: Endorsed by Bob Mintzer, Jamey Aebersold, Kenny Werner and more, The Real Intros and Endings Book is a collection of must-know intros and endings for classic jazz songs and often-played standards.

Transcribed from the original recordings of Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball, Dexter Gordon, etc., they have been heard by all jazz musicians but are rarely played simply because they have never been in print before!

Help your band have a more polished and interesting performance with these musical gems!

Verdict: I mean, and if you didn’t already know, Tony Corman is a Massachusetts-born jazz guitarist, arranger, and composer, graduate of Berklee College of Music, and a Bay Area resident since ’84. Furthermore, he co-leads FivePlay Jazz Quintet with his wife, pianist Laura Klein, and is the Lone Arranger for the 17-piece Morchestra Jazz Orchestra.

So, the big question that affected Tony was What does it sound like when a dream dies? For Berkeley’s Tony Corman, the demise of his career as a jazz saxophonist has led to a glorious rebirth as a guitarist and composer.

A mainstay on the Bay Area scene after moving here from Boston in the mid-’80s, Corman was on the cusp of a career breakthrough with the 2002 release of a critically acclaimed album Three Tenors No Opera: Deconstruction Ahead with fellow saxophonists Tidball and Jim Norton. At virtually the same time, he was rapidly losing the ability to play the horn due to focal dystonia, a little-understood condition that robs a person’s ability to execute a skilled task.

I’d always loved the guitar, he says, and it was much easier finding a place to practice than with the sax.

Over the course of a decade, he’s attained impressive fluency on the instrument, but what’s most interesting is the continuity in his musical personality. Indeed, if you listen to him play now, his music is as memorably melodic as his work from his days as a saxophonist.

As for this brand new prose at hand, well, one glaring omission in most fake books and lead sheets are the recorded intros and endings that are part of the famous recordings of well-known tunes. The Real Intros and Endings Book is a long-overdue collection of over 100 accurate transcriptions of the intros and endings for classic jazz songs and standards.

These are things that every jazz player has heard but that are not played, simply because they have never been available in print before. You’ll find the recorded intros to Clifford Brown’s Joy Spring, Miles’ Bye Bye Blackbird and Cannonball’s Autumn Leaves, among many others. By incorporating them into your performances, your band will automatically sound more professional and unique - a big plus!

The book is largely transcribed from the recordings of mainstream artists like Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Bud Powell, Wes Montgomery and Dexter Gordon, but also includes more modern artists like Mike Stern, Alan Holdsworth and Dayna Stevens. Most transcriptions are of the rhythm section on the recording, but some include horn parts as well in order to help recreate the original sound.

There is also a section devoted exclusively to Charlie Parker, whose compositions include some wonderful composed intros and endings that are essential parts of his songs and too frequently omitted from lead sheets. A More Inspiration section of intros and endings is included simply because they are (1) musically lovely and (2) attached to frequently-played songs and therefore useful.

In closing, Exploring Jazz Arranging - Revised Edition is a glorious 109 pages, spiral-bound, including nine cool, original portraits of famous jazz musicians by artist Lissa Herschleb and together with Tony Corman’s insights, what you get here is something that should be passed down through the generations of jazz lovers, my friends. Of that I speak the truth.

About the Author - I graduated Berklee College of Music in 1977 with a degree in saxophone performance, and had an active career playing sax and flute from then until 2002. Highlights include years of playing lead alto with the Full Faith and Credit big band, culminating in the recording of the FF&C III album. With my wife, pianist Laura Klein and my ace buddy, saxophonist Dave Tidball, I was part of the jazz sextet Triceratops. I was the evil kingpin behind Three Tenors No Opera, too.

I’d probably still be playing horn today, but in 2002 I developed a movement disorder called focal dystonia, which affected my jaw and compelled me to stop playing winds. At that point I switched to guitar, studying jazz with Duncan James and Steve Erquiaga, and classical with Ron Galen and Pat O’Brien.

Since then, I’ve co-led the FivePlay jazz quintet with my wife, pianist Laura Klein, releasing four CDs of original, melodic modern jazz. I have the great pleasure of playing Saravá, a Brazilian jazz quartet led by sax player and keyboardist Dave Salvator. [Tony Corman]

I also lead, and am the Lone Arranger for the Morchestra jazz orchestra.

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