This is a good book for someone with basic Jazz theory knowledge. You still need have some foundation of Music Theory. It's a good book to be taken with supplemental teaching! Great recording eventhough does not follow the book(mostly his own voice leading).
Thanks for creating effort and teaching for those of us that involve with music and love of it!

The content of the book and CD is fantastic, see the other reviews for more info. Unfortunately, the binding of the book is useless, especially when you try to set it on your pianos' music stand and have it stay open. The first time I used it, pages started coming loose like they were never attached. I guess I'll keep it instead of sending it back, because I like the material, but I'll have to fix it to use it (huge waste of practice time). Really should have been spiral bound - buyer beware.

One of the selling points for this book was that it had an accompanying CD. It was my idea that there would be transcriptions that corresponded note for note to the tunes that were played on the CD. That turned out to be incorrect.

Also: Something that a person always wants to know is patterns for jazz. It would have been one thing if the melody line of the tune was written in one place (and didn't correspond to what was played on the CD) but the patterns that were used to spice up the tracks were written elsewhere. As it happened, even the patterns were written nowhere. Can it really be that the study of jazz patterns is so separate from solo piano that it needn't be covered in one place?

I can't recommend which book has patterns and solo ideas at the same time, but I do know that this book is NOT the place to start looking.

I must admit that I'm only on chapter four, but so far this book exactly what the doctor ordered for me. You should be at least an intermediate reader if you want to benifit from the book as it's big strength, IMHO, is that it gives you nice etudes that are examples of the concepts it's trying to show you, then let's you try your own creation. However, I'm sort of barely at this level of reading but have no problem with the etudes so far, and it's actually good reading practice for me at the same time. So hopefully that's encouraging to the intermediate readers out there. Another thing to note is that the books main focus seems to be contrupuntal playing with both hands playing their own parts/melodies. Hence, most of the left hand work (after the first couple chapters), is on variations of walking bass starting with half note ballady lines, then quarter note swing, and then it goes into a bunch of other styles like latin, waltz, etc., and then even improving in the right hand over walking bass. I'm sure I'm leaving a lot out as I'm only on chapter four, but I feel this book really does deserve an early high rating from me as I'm already satisfied with what I've been able to learn from the first few chapters.

Probably not really a beginners or advanced level players book...probably intermediate to advanced intermediate, or advanced players that are inexperienced with counterpoint and/or solo playing. Hope my review helps