Tags: Coltrane, Elvin, Free Downloads, Inspiration, Performing | No Comments »
December 11th, 2009
45 years ago this past Wednesday John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones walked into Rudy Van Gelder's studio and made musical history. Who knows if Coltrane knew then the enormity of what they were about to do, but it was obviously a deeply felt and most sincere work of art. That sincerity was incredibly well received and A Love Supreme's influence was felt throughout the jazz world and beyond.
In fact, it was felt all the way up here in Iceland! ASA Trio, the collective organ trio of which I'm a third, decided to perform the suite on it's most recent concert at Cafe Cultura (as part of the Múlinn concert series), and it went quite well. You can download our version absolutely free here. I was personally very hesitant to take on the piece, but Andrés Thor, the guitarist, convinced me.
You see, playing "A Love Supreme" is not like playing a standard Continue reading »
Tags: Caffeine, Coffee, Espresso, Starbucks | No Comments »
December 2nd, 2009
Let me preface this, my first post in the "Espresso" category, by saying that I'm really not an expert on espresso. Although, some in my family might like to convince you otherwise, I'm just a guy who spent an unusual amount of time obsessing over how to extract the best espresso from his Saeco Espresso Classico machine. That's all.
It's interesting how often the subject of caffeine content comes up in conversation. When I tell people that I typically drink two (sometimes three) espressos in a day, their reaction is usually something like "Oh, I couldn't handle all that caffeine." Whereas, if I said I drank 2-3 cups of coffee a day that would seem normal to most coffee drinkers. Continue reading »
Tags: iceland, jazz, non-jazz, nyc | No Comments »
November 27th, 2009
From time to time, I operate in the non-jazz word (or as I like to call it, "the darkside" ;-). While I was in NY this was very rare for me. I did some touring with guitarist Tim Reynolds' trio, TR3 which, although he sang and they were pretty much rock tunes, was still kind of related to jazz in that there were long, open vamps where I had a lot of room for expression. I also played in singer/songwriter Howard Fishman's band for a while and play on his CD, 'Do What I Want' which is more sonically related to jazz with more brushes, although less exploratory than TR3. Then there was Pyeng Threadgill's r&b-infused, groovy folk music, and Amy Kohn's pop-cabaret-classical-jazz-not-quite-sure-what-you'd-call-it. Although some of these projects were ongoing, while in NY I played jazz 99% of the time.
However, in Iceland it's a whole other story. Continue reading »
Tags: Blogging | 4 Comments »
November 17th, 2009
Truth be told, my previous site was sort of set up like a blog, in the sense that I could write things from time to time. I called it the "News" section. However, there was no space for interaction. No web-2.0-ness at all. I had become bored with it and only updated it out of guilt.
I'm expecting that I'll be much, much more current with this version. It's still really a work in progress. Things aren't totally working properly, as it's only the 2nd Wordpress theme I've made… and I just had to launch it on the day my computer went into the shop (brilliant!), so I'm writing this from the wifey's Powerbook. Continue reading »
