I asked Daniel Sunshine to compose a contrafact based on a masterpiece by John Coltrane and I'll ask you about the piece after you hear the performance. On the screen you can see the lead sheet of Daniel's composition. [MUSIC] Okay, so Daniel, tell us about your composition. What was your thought process in composing the fine contrafact? >> So first I wanted to think about, when you hear a lot of these minor blues, like Mr. PC or Equinox, like those train minor blues. It starts with like a motive, and then in some cases he does the exact same thing over the four chord. But in this case I wanted to try doing more of like and AAB type approach, like what we were talking about before. Where you have the motive in the first bar and then in the fifth bar it's slightly changed rhythmically to accentuate different parts of the beat over this bass line. Now the bass line is written like a seven eighth notes for the bar. So, it goes over the bar line. And that repeats kind of like a ostinato, resetting every four bars. So, in the first four bars the melody hits a lot of those bass line points like beat four and, and then the second bar beat two and beat four right on the beat, the melody's hitting with the bass. But in the second four bars I wrote the melody to play more around those beats instead of on them. And then for the last four bars I try something completely different. Once again, hitting on and off the beats. So it's on the beats in the first four bars, playing around the beats in the second four bars. And then the last four bars on and off the beats mixing it up with the motive. >> Excellent, excellent. So now what we can try, before we talked about different modes and the use of correctivistic triads associated with these modes. Now, I would like to ask Luke to demonstrate the use of these modes based on Daniel's composition. All right, so guys, it's all yours. [MUSIC] Excellent guys, excellent guys, great job. So Luke tell us about your approach to improvisation. >> Okay, so for a minor blues like this, especially in the style of Cold Train, that's kind of what the sound I had in mind He really exemplifies the use of the natural six on some of these minor chords so that suggests like a dorian sound. So I really was trying to play clearly the dorian mode, also some of the upper structure triads. Another one that sounds really good on a minor chord like C-minor would be flat seven, so like a B-flat minor. A B-flat major. Arpeggio, rather. And then over these dominant sections that connect the two modal sounds, I was trying to use more of an altered sound. Which, then again, is more upper structure triads and arpeggios. But yeah, I was really trying to key in to the Dorian, and the flat seven major upper structure triads. That was extremely well demonstrated the way you kind of used your fine technical abilities between instrument and with each chorus, create more tension. Kind of going up after the 13, it's characteristic beauty mark of the Dorian mode. And also to alleviate the tension that you guys generated, you used that beautiful flat seven upper structured triad, going down. Which kind of reminded me of the second chorus of Miles Davis and kind of so on, so what. When he uses precisely the same idea with the upper structured triads. For eight bars you use that exactly. So, very finite. You can hear that it's very idiomatic to do these like fast runs on the saxophone and basically capitalize on the use of different notes and spell them exactly as they appear. [MUSIC] Or. [MUSIC] As arpeggiation and really accentuating these characteristic notes in your solo. And another thing that puts particularly effective is the mixture of your blues elements in your playing, especially in the final four bars of your Solo. You know, the chords themselves already have these like blownouts. So, in addition to a clear model statement, you also able to integrate the roots of those, which are, you know, fortunately, in a blues scale.