Jazzschool Kids

Tonight I went to a rehearsal for a concert the Jazzschool Advanced High School Jazz Workshop is doing in collaboration with the Young People's Symphony Orchestra in Berkeley, CA.

I was subbing for the trombone player in the high school group. This is hard stuff!

Bringing together jazz time with orchestra time.

The orchestral conductor is conducting the group in a big room, the symphony is used to a wide sense of time, very different from what we jazz players are used to getting from the drummer, a much more intimate and immediate time feel. Almost a chamber music, really. In that we're all feeling the time, no conductor necessary. Quite challenging, but interesting, especially when the group switched back and forth from small jazz group to large orchestra.

These Jazzschool kids are incredibly talented. Really strange how much jazz young kids can play these days.

Dylan 1965

Matt Berkeley likes to play this on trio gigs as an instrumental. It's an interesting challenge to take music that's all about the lyric, and see if it still has power instrumentally. It is an interesting melody. He sings on one pitch while a counter melody moves under him, creating motion.

Of course the performance here is deep.

Ivo Papasov on Night Music

One of these days I will learn something about this amazing music.

Web 2.0

So maybe I just like the music.

Important Piece

The Shins

I guess I'm jumping on the band wagon. Why have I never heard of this group before? Suddenly tons of hype everywhere. In my quest to stay vaguely in touch with pop culture, I just listened to their 2005 Chutes Too Narrow release on Rhapsody. Really quite lovely. I am a fan.

Bagale Show

Did the Bagale show last night. It went really well. Fun to have two new members in the group - Dave Tweedy on guitar and drums, and Steve Bradley on trumpet. They each bring a lot of pop experience to a group struggling to leave the jazz at the door. Joe's supposedly almost done with his record. Maybe then we'll get some bigger shows. Hotel Utah is great. Fun, intimate space - but 3 bands playing to a full house ends up with me walking out of there at the end of the night with $10 cash.

More Miles

The ballad in the first part of this clip is gorgeous, but I'm especially taken with the version of Wayne's "Sanctuary" in the second half. The way the melody floats over the chaotic, intense rhythm section, those long pauses. They don't make 'em like they used to.

Miles Davis - Lost Quintet

These clips are lessons in another sort of simplicity and power. Strong and dramatic music developed from very minimal formal structures - basically just a drone or a bass figure and a pulse.

Rehearsed with Bagale earlier today. I'm playing bass. Various comments were made about the horn parts being too complicated - "jazzy". That's my fault. I rewrote a bunch of the horn parts Joe had come up with a while ago when I started playing trombone in the section (I've played bass and trombone at various times in the group.)

What sounded cool to me at the time with all of it's chromaticism, crunchiness, and rhythmic interplay, was dismissed today as sounding mushy and jumbled. And I agreed. Too complicated for the style (funk/soul).

So - recently studying T.O.P horns, Memphis Horns, etc. Learning the style. T.O.P is rhythmically very active and syncopated, but harmonically all very simple. Lots of roots and thirds.

Anyways, in the spirit of simplicity and power, here's this: