Foggy Blues

Naoko Ikeda is a Japanese composer (FJH Music) whose teaching pieces — Tropical Sunset, Quiet Storm, The Graded Collection — sit in a tonal-jazz idiom that has become a small institution in American and British piano teaching. Foggy Blues is a slow blues in G minor: not a strict twelve-bar form, but a contemporary character piece that uses blues-scale colours and seventh-chord harmony.

Technically the piece tests legato right-hand playing over a flowing left-hand accompaniment — the same balance test as the Bonis at Grade 3, but with seventh chords and the occasional blue note in the melody. The dynamic range is gentle; the pedal must change cleanly on each chord shift to keep the harmony from blurring; and the blue notes need a slightly delayed weight, the way a singer would lean into them.

Two pitfalls. First, students play the blue notes evenly, like ordinary semitones — they should be felt as the soulful note in the line, with a tiny lean. Second, the left-hand accompaniment becomes louder than the melody; train it alone at pp until you can deliver it without effort.

Listening: PD reference points for blues come from early jazz piano (W.C. Handy, James P. Johnson; Musopen has selected recordings). For the contemporary tonal-jazz character Ikeda inhabits, listen to Bill Evans's slower ballads (in copyright) and any clean PD blues recording — they calibrate the touch.