A different approach to jazz violin improvisation

Every year, Dario Napoli organizes a gypsy jazz camp in Italy by the middle of June known as UTTS (Under The Tuscan Sun) where

@Eva Slongo

was teaching jazz violin for several years. 2026, at the 11th edition, we were only 4 violin players, this time with Roland Tillmanns, Phoebe Forsey, an English Lady and myself. This year the violin teacher was Christiaan van Hemert.

I understood from 4 days of morning lessons that his approach to jazz violin improvisation involves:

Simplification of the chord changes (2-5-1 becomes 5-1, dominant chain, Christopher...)

Constant awareness of these changes, “seeing” chord symbols in his mind's eyes rather than hearing them. Singing is not his preference.

Chord symbols trigger automatized arpeggios and scales with or without permutations and approach tones (playing “dirty”).

Hardly any licks at all

Only the meta level (the big picture how to navigate the changes) remains conscious

His practice strategy focusses on a tool he calls "Creative rerun" to develop vocabulary consisting in connecting automatized scales and arpeggios following the changes

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A different approach to jazz violin improvisation