Gary Thomas – flute solo on Alone Together

Yesterday I finished transcribing Gary Thomas’ flute solo on the jazz standard, “Alone Together” (from the album “Jazz for a Lazy Day” with Wallace Roney). A couple of weeks ago, I heard this album playing in the background at ‘The Slice of Life’ and the flute solo on ‘Alone Together’ got my attention. I asked to see the album, but there were no liner notes on the flutist. When I got home, I searched about the album and found out who it was – Gary Thomas. Then I downloaded the track off of iTunes here.

I like Gary’s playing very much – it’s rhythmically and idea rich. The ‘Alone Together’ flute solo is only a chorus long (the band drops a couple of bars in the form behind him too – so it’s even shorter!), but Gary packs a lot of hip material into it as he double times his way through. I started transcribing the solo on 10/20 but because of the way I work and other things going on, could only do a few bars at a time. Now that the transcription is done, I can see I have material from which to draw continued inspiration for many years to come. Thank you Gary!