Month: December 2005

Jeff Albert » My new download store & new duet recording

Jeff Albert » My new download store & new duet recording

My music is now available as legal downloads from Pepper Enterprises mp3 Store. The store sells high quality 256k mp3s, that never have any DRM, so you can burn them or listen to them on whatever player you like. We appreciate the fact that you are willing to pay for music to support its creation. We won’t treat you like a criminal if you buy stuff from us. We trust you to do the right thing, which includes turning your friends on to music that you like, so hopefully they will buy it too.

Having access to my own download store will also allow me to make much more music available to the public, like the new recordings that have just been released called Duets Vol. 1 by Jeff Albert & Ed Barrett. Read more about the new recording here.
Jeff Albert & ed Barrett Duets Vol. 1 Cover

Music quotes via rifftides

Rifftides: Doug Ramsey on jazz and other matters

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful—Plato

Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole state, and ought to be prohibited . . . when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state always change with them—Aristotle

Recent listening

Some things that have been in my ears a lot lately:

Magic triangle cover
Dave Douglas – Magic Triangle
A pianoless quartet with Chris Potter. Nice music coming from the heritage of Ornette. I picked this up from DD’s very cool download store.

FME- Cuts cover
Free Music Ensemble – Cuts
Ken Vandermark, Nate McBride, and Paal Nilssen-Love. All of the fire and funk and noise that you expect from a Vandermark project.

turre spirits cover
Steve Turre – The Spirits Up Above
The music of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Turre played in Rahsaan’s band, and this disc really captures the spirit of that music. James Carter is slammin’.

legal downloads rise, fueled by broadband

CD sales fall as downloads rise, fueled by broadband

There are more than 230 online sites where consumers can buy music legally, up from 50 a year ago, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Soon, you will be able to go to any artist’s website and download their music, or order a CD that will be made on demand and shipped to you. Little or no inventory cost will allow artists to make the rcordings that they want to make, without regard for packaging and distribution costs that may or may not be recouped.

My DRM-free mp3 store will be up in a few weeks.

Brian O’Neill 1955-2005

We have lost a wonderful man and a fabulous musician. Brian O’Neill passed away Thursday night. Brian was becoming well known as the bass trombonist in Bonerama, but those of us in New Orleans, and Buffalo, and up and down the Mississippi have known for a long time, that Brian was the best. He played wonderful trombone, and piano, and sang. He was also one of the best writers and arrangers around.

There is a nice photo tribute to Brian on the Bonerama website.

Click here to listen a solo he recorded with Bonerama. To paraphrase on of the kids on the OTJF, “the best bass trombone solo I’ve ever heard.”

Dave Douglas on improvisation

Cool thoughts from Dave Douglas.

Greenleaf Music

“If you know what you want why not just write it?”

Because improvisation makes great music. It’s an element of music with explosive potential. Sparks fly when musicians are forced to make choices. The energy of surprise is one of the things I love most in music: The sense that anything could happen. There’s also a power in hearing the individual make a choice that I find captivating. Hearing the voice of an individual musician is one of the hallmarks of jazz, and I believe it’s a strength that can travel.

Boing Boing: DNA mutation accounts for white skin

This doesn’t really have much to do with music or art, except that people make music and art, and it is about people.

Boing Boing: DNA mutation accounts for white skin

Race has been a shaping factor in our country. We often define race in terms of skin color. Now science is confirming what wise folks have known all along: people are people, and the color of our skin is a minor meaningless genetic difference. Now we have managed to put a social weight on skin color that has caused lots of problems…but scientifically, people are just people.