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Charlie Banacos

Charlie was a pianist (performances with Roy Haynes, Teddy Kotick, Charlie Mariano, Harvie S., and Jerry Bergonzi), composer (World Premier of "Pelaghia" - Carnegie Recital Hall, 1984), author ("Tonal Paralypsis", etc.), and educator (since 1959) in both jazz and classical idioms. His students have performed or recorded with Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Maynard Ferguson, Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, David Liebman, Wayne Shorter, and Joe Henderson, among others.

The correspondence courses of Charlie Banacos continue to be taught via online lessons with Garry Dial and Barbara Banacos. These courses began their fruition in the late 1950's and 60's and continued to be taught and developed until Charlie's passing in December of 2009. They are preserved as Charlie was teaching them and are kept in his handwriting.

Charlie is the originator of the now classic exercises on such tunes as Autumn Leaves, Giant Steps, Anthropology (I Got Rhythm changes), Moment's Notice, Countdown, major and minor blues, etc. using chord tones, tensions, passing tones, approaches, tonal paralypsis, bitonal pendulums (double mambos), hemiola substratum elisions, modal sequences, 23rd chords, intervallics, pivots, facets, agogics, number permutation systems, voicings in clusters, fourths, fifths, reverse tensions, interconnecting scales, pentatonics, tetratonics, hexatonics, chord-on-chord, upper structure triads, pandiatonics, superimpositions, harps, overlaps, etc. and 9-Basic Rhythm Systems and Sprays for sight-reading, etc.

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Tedd Baker
saxophone, tenor

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