![]() ![]() “Giant Steps” has been played countless times by countless people, but no version I’d ever encountered came close to the breakneck virtuosity and thrill of that original. ![]() The great pianist Tommy Flanagan takes his solo haltingly on the original recording, racing to keep pace, the music careering out ahead of him. The song is a whirling dervish: 26 chord changes in 16 rapid-fire bars, a steady spiral of major-third modulations that can make even the most adept players scramble. To understand what happens next, you must appreciate that “Giant Steps” isn’t merely Coltrane’s masterpiece it’s among the more difficult jazz standards to perform. Then they launch into John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” In the video of this show, shot at a Los Angeles venue in January 2020, you can barely see his face - it’s covered by a mop of child-in-a-Dutch-master’s-painting hair - but the keyboard player gives him the sort of smile you throw at a friend across the room at a party, a private-joke smile. He taps his sticks against the high-hat, a sprinter shaking it out before crouching down to wait for the sound of the starter pistol. And the first song we’re going to cover, she wrote when she was kind of like, minus two months before Jesus Christ? And it’s called ‘Giant Steps.’” Then, her blond hair catching the light and turning an electric purple, she speaks, in a thick French accent: “Thank you for coming to the Billie Eilish cover band.” More chuckles. Paak.) Just before they settle in - he’s on drums, she’s on keyboards - she hits a button that unleashes that air-horn sound effect: be-be-be-brahhhhh. (The outfits were given to them by a mentor, the rapper, singer and producer Anderson. ![]() What they are wearing is ridiculous, like puffy ski suits from the 1980s: jumpsuit emojis come to life, the kind of fashion that seems pulled from the internet’s id. ![]()
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