Category: Music

Word has come to me from New Orleans’ favorite not completely sane full time music fan and part time promoter, that there will be a major bass player improv throwdown on Saturday, September 8, with John Hebert and James Singleton. James is well known to most New Orleans music fans, but the younger amongst us might not remember John.

He is originally from Baton Rouge, and went to Loyola for a couple of years before heading off to NY. He was the bassist on both of my undergraduate recitals at Loyola, but don’t hold that against him. His recent work includes playing bass in the last versions of Andrew Hill’s band. He is way bad, and definitely worth hearing on his own. Paired with James in a cool listening venue, this could be one of those shows that go down in the city’s lore. (How many of you actually heard Wilbert de Joode and Helen Gillet, versus heard about how great the set was?)

The details are quoted directly from Andy:

it is this coming saturday, one set only!!! 8pm, sat sept 8th at mckeowns books, 4737 tchoupitoulas…. no cover, donations encouraged,…. ‘Superstring Theory Episode 2’… improvised sounds for two contrabasses by James Singleton and John Hebert…. those are the details!!

The not recently updated John Hebert website is here.

Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society: Brave New World

Darcy has another great entry in his rhythmic authority series, which (as I have stated before) shows how deeply he gets it. Go there, read, and watch the video.

I don’t mean to encourage stereotypes here, but let’s look at rhythmic stereotypes for a minute. If some thing is totally not grooving, we say it sounds white. The culture that has produced the aesthetic that informs most classical orchestras is know for its lack of rhythmic authority. Is it any surprise that orchestras tend to be rhythmically loose. Latin and African descended cultures tend to be much more rhythmic, at least in stereotype, so it is no surprise that the Venezuelan kids can rock out. I played a concert under Carlos Miguel Prieto, and he seemed to pull the rhythmic reigns tighter than most, and the group grooved (relatively speaking). Maybe it is a latin thing. Prieto seemed to be having fun too, which brings on my next point.

The other thing about that video that got me was the amount of fun that was visible on their faces. These musicians are having a blast! We forget that in too many genres. Serious jazz artists can take themselves and their music way too seriously. I remember sitting in the Louisiana Philharmonic trombone section next to my college teacher. He was grumbling about something, and I said, “Dick, you don’t make enough money not to be having fun.” He didn’t laugh…or quit grumbling. Of course it is easy for me to have fun on that gig, I only do it once or twice a year, and maybe grumbling is how he has fun, but audiences react to smiling faces.

I love the Tomorrow Music Orchestra sticker that reads “Experimenting with the idea that music is really fun!” We should all do that more often.

I’ve just added a new web album to my regular website. It’s about 45 minutes of music performed by Tim Sullivan, Brian Coogan, Matthew Golombisky, Quin Kirchner and myself. One of the pieces is a regular theme/solos/theme style piece, and the other three are improvisations. I have two different sizes of mp3s and Apple Lossless files, so you can find the right balance of fidelity and bandwidth. They are all free to share under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License.

Click here to get to the free free music.

I don’t want to turn this blog into an online musician obituary, but I also hate to fail to acknowledge the lives of great musicians that pass away.

I had been meaning to write about Paul Rutherford, but hadn’t quite found the right words. Therefore I direct you to Jeb Bishop’s concise and personal thoughts on Paul: the spit valve » Paul Rutherford 1940-2007