Discover why jazz musicians are the unsung geniuses of the music world—improvising Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” with effortless cool.
Don’t underestimate jazz musicians. I went to a contemporary and jazz-based music college, so I’ve known for a while just how mind-blowingly talented the good ones are. They have such an incredible understanding of music that they can literally create it on the fly in the middle of a performance. So, turning Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” into a contemporary jazz piece? That’s as easy as uh-1, uh-2, uh-1, 2, 3, 4…
In the video below, watch as talented jazz musicians Ulysses Owens Jr. and Generation Y remake Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” on the fly:
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[…] Enter Ulysses Owens Jr., a Juilliard professor and one of the great jazz drummers in the game right now. Owens recently did something jaw-dropping: he was asked to improvise over The Offspring’s 1998 pop–punk tune “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” And it’s a song he’d never heard before! After one quick listen (minus the drum track), he was ready to dive in, and the results were downright fantastic. He brought new life into the song, so much so that Brandon Pertzborn, the original drummer of The Offspring, might even be tempted to borrow a groove or two. (Watch Owens’s entire ensemble improvise Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box.“) […]