Reviewer: Charles Oldenkamp. Étude is the French word for Study and has been used by many composers including Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Debussy. Few composers have written Jazz Études though, the meaning of this terminology being immediately clear to pianists: works in the jazz idiom requiring technical mastery but ultimately rewarding to play as well as technique-enhancing.

1. The White Étude The first work in this series burns with many colours, but it is probably the home key of C which suggested the White colour of the title. The introduction in octaves which is based on a blues scale with a flattened third and seventh and a sharpened 4th is mirrored in the recapitulation which, unusually for this style of music, is presented in retrograde. The interval of a perfect 4th is important in this composition, with frequent rapid arpeggio flourishes based on 4ths scampering up and down the keyboard, demanding a technical virtuosity often associated with the title Étude.

2. The Blue Étude The Blue colour is demonstrated in this work not only through the more moderate tempo and colourful harmonies, but also by placing a stress or tenuto on the Blue notes of the melody; in this movement, flattened thirds, sixths, and sevenths. The extended tertian harmony serves as a backdrop for FeBland to paint the Blue mood with style and chromaticism. At the same time, this Étude is also not without a little humour in the middle section.

3. The Orange Étude Finishing the set, the Orange Étude is a blazing 6/8 race. The movement contains wide-ranging moods in a short space of time. The opening is thought-provoking and yet after only a few more measures, we have intensely dramatic and exciting music characterized by the extreme registers that the soloist is asked to handle. Later on in the movement there is a rumbling section where the hands play a tremolando, leading first to a 6-note then a 7-note chord-cluster, all of which has its own harmonic logic.

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