I think of Autumn Leaves as the “ground zero” jazz standard, in that it’s a great place to start when attempting to learn about jazz theory and music theory in general. The chord progression, and portions of it, can be found in countless other songs and not just in the jazz genre. In this video I perform my own rendition of this classic song with a bossa nova vibe. To give you an example of how ubiquitous this system of chords is (the “cycle of 4ths” we can call it), I included the melody to Carlos Santana’s “Europa” (written by Gato Barbieri) which uses the exact same chord sequence. I love teaching this one to students in many forms, sometimes just the chords, just the melody, or a solo arrangement similar to this one. Check out my YouTube channel and subscribe!