Edition: Jazz Big Band Arrangement

Description: Medium Difficult

Publisher: Jazz at Lincoln Center

Jazz for Kids is a perfect representation of another timeless adage: "jazz is life." There is seriousness in the fun, and there is joy in the seriousness. Music is at its most powerful when it makes one feel connected with the past, and Jazz for Kids breathes new life into songs we think we’ve known forever. It shows how jazz can elevate even the most minuscule events in life. Jazz for Kids takes simple folk songs and nursery rhymes and turns them into something that you never saw coming.

I love that my first reaction to Itsy Bitsy Spider was not a technical analysis of the alternating intervals shared by the bass clarinet and flute, but rather, a very real image of a kid—think Eddie Murphy in Delirious—taunting his buddy at the ice cream truck. That struggle to make it up the water spout? It’s real. In fact, when first published in 1910, the words "blooming" and "bloody" took the place of "itsy" and "bitsy."

from the liner notes by Joe Alterman

Full Score
2 Flutes
Tenor Saxophone
Clarinet
Bass Clarinet
Trombone
Piano
Bass
Drums