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Jeff Plays Summertime Stroll by Composer David Karp with Improvisations

1,426 views · Published 10 June 2011 · 3:24 · Indexed 1 October 2026

Channel: jeffostroff · 2011 · Music

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Jeff Ostroff plays Summertime Stroll at the spring piano recital June 6, 2010. What a great jazzy rag time piece of artwork this song is, written by David Karp in 1994, and edited by his friend David Engle, plus I added some cool improvisations to it myself.  At the time of this video, I play at an adult level 3 based on my current studies in the Alfred piano course books.  This song is listed as "Late Intermediate" level on the cover, or approximate Level 6, so I am playing a song that's 3 levels above my pay grade!  I was a bit nervous as this was only my second recital in front of 75 people, there's 4 or 5 flubs that are not too distracting, but I got through it by maintaining the timing and a good poker face.  I play this song even better at home, so with a bit more practice I plan to re-shoot better version soon. I always tailor composers' songs to suit my needs, so I made some changes to this song I hope you like them! Here's the improvs I made to this song in the video:

1) Karp says "Not Too Fast" for his tempo instructions on this song.  The song is meant to be played slow, but I could fall asleep at the intended speed.  I prefer a more cheerful perky rag time, so I sped it up a bit.

2) In the 3rd measure of the song, I broke up Karp's 4 slow moving 1/4 notes by adding 2 very rapid series of 1/32 notes to springboard you into the 4th measure.

3) I really liked measures 17-20, so I play this entire bar twice, as opposed to once as Karp shows.

4) Measure #19 right after that triplet, I drag that measure on by actually adding another 4 beats in there to let it bounce a bit.

5) In measure #52, Karp shows a series of 5 chords drop down the scale, and I converted each of those chords to an awesome rapid sounding triplet on each one, it adds a great touch to this section.  Then right after that in 53rd measure, instead of that 1/2 note block cord, I rolled it, making a nice rapid broken chord.

6) Lastly, my favorite edit to this song, on the very last 2 measures, all the single notes that Karp has there for the right hand, I replaced them with octaves, and right before that very last triple of the song, I added another triple formed out of my octaves.  You'll also see in the next to last measure, the last 1/16th note there right before the triplet that Karp shows there, I made a tremolo out of that 1/16th note, one of my favorite additions to this song I think it really adds to his ending. 

7)  Lastly, I did not end the song like Karp shows, with 2 staccato chords.  Instead I made a fermata out of each chord, and really dragged the last chord of the song, left it down a few seconds, and slammed down on the lower C single note with my left #1 finger to draw the song to a rapid close.

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