Music contains all kinds of elegant symmetries and patterns but, if these are used too mechanically, they can become bland or clichéd. This video looks at the famous ‘circle of 5ths’ progression in the song, 'Autumn Leaves' ('Les Feuilles Mortes'), originally composed by Joseph Kosma in 1945, and enduringly popular with singers and Jazz improvisers ever since. The second half of the video shows how it is possible to improvise a solo, using the basic structure of the original song as a template, in order to create music of wonderful spontaneity. The extract is a transcription from an improvised solo by the legendary Jazz pianist, Michel Petrucciani, during which he seems to take wing, over the predictable steps of the original song, with a dazzling display of surprising harmonic shifts and syncopated rhythmic displacements. Michel Petrucciani died in 1999 at the age of 36. He was buried in le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, beside the tomb of Frédéric Chopin.

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