Here’s a lovely chord melody arrangement of the festive standard. Great for those awkward moments when you’re surrounded by friends and family members and are expected to play a nice piece of music. This arrangement is taken from Kenny Burrell’s album Have Yourself A Soulful Little Christmas. He plays it accompanied by a rhythm section, but the piece works really well when played solo.
I’ve written it out below, exactly as played by Burrell. The version I play in the video sticks quite closely to this but deviates a little bit here and there, particularly in the rhythm. As I say in the video, feel free to make the piece your own, taking the written arrangement as a starting point. A printable PDF can be found here. There’s certainly some quite demanding things going on here technically, even for experienced jazz players. With that in mind, I’ve also written out a slightly simpler arrangement. The essence of it is still there, I’ve just got rid of some of those big stretches and difficult passages. Find that version here.
