Scratch My Brain – Page 32 – Jeff Albert's blog and podcast home

Mahalia Jackson Theatre re-opens

Irma Thomas, Kermit Ruffins and more shined along with the newly reopened Mahalia Jackson Theater – Keith Spera – Times-Picayune – NOLA.com:

“Preservation Hall tuba player and creative director Ben Jaffe stood at the lip of the stage and gazed out into the theater as it emptied. ‘There’s a lot of memories here,’ he said.”

It has been over three years since the great flood of 2005. In the summer of 2005 there were three nice large downtown theater venues in New Orleans: the Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts, The Saenger, and The Orpheum. From September 2005 until last weekend there were none. Now there is one.

Ben is right about the memories. The first time I played with Wardell Quezergue’s Big band was at MJTPA. I played there with a reggae band, and I played a Wagner opera (Das Rheingold) there. I’ve been on the receiving end of lots of great music there as well. It’s nice to have her back.

Big Picture by Trio M – Listened Today

One of the original ideas behind this blog was to use it as a place to bring attention to sounds, sights, and words that I found enriching. With that in mind, I am starting a category called “Listened Today.” These won’t be reviews, simply a record of something I listened to today that I felt the need to share. Somethings might show up more than once, somethings might have already been or eventually get reviewed, and somethings might be random hearings in odd situations.

Today “The Big Picture” by Trio M found its way to my CD player. I hadn’t listened to it in a while, and I quite enjoyed it.

new theme

I am test driving a new look for the site. The comment section for this post would be a great place to express any opinion you might have about the change.

I am a Mac guy, and my wife’s Vista laptop drives me nuts when I have to deal with it, so the irony that this is a Vista styled theme is not lost on me. Honestly though, I think Vista looks cool, it is just a pain in the ass to use. Now you can enjoy the look of Vista without any of the hassle, here at Scratch My Brain.

~~BTW, if you click the little pencil in the lower left, you can select from a few different looks.~~

Hung up on style

The following thoughts were initiated this post on Doug Ramsey’s Rifftides blog:Correspondence: Two Young Pianists – Rifftides

A reader had written to Doug, asking a question about a reference Doug made in the liner notes he wrote for a Houston Person CD. The reader was relating his experience at an Eldar performance.

” Brilliant though he may be, his choice of music almost boredered on semi classical.”

It struck me that the complaint was not at all about quality, but solely about style. The fact that the music “almost bordered on semi classical” bothered the reader. It is a shame that many of us, as listeners, seem to consistently miss the chance to enjoy good music because the style does not meet our expectations. Is the placement of the eighth note more important than the honesty and depth of the expression?

Open Ears gets props from DB

The new (Feb 09) Downbeat arrived in my mailbox today. It contains their annual jazz club listing. It was a pleasant surprise to read that one of the five clubs listed in New Orleans is The Blue Nile, which is home to the Open Ears Music Series that I curate.

The Blue Nile offers a wide variety of jazz, from traditional and New Orleans, to Latin and funky. The atmosphere goes from relaxed to slinky. Best bets are Tuesday nights, where the Open Ears Music series has the more experimental jazz.

It is nice that someone has noticed. We are into our second year of the series, and things are flowing nicely. Artists are wanting to play the series (we’re booked through March, with a list for beyond that), and the audience is developing as well. Lately there have been more people there that I don’t know than people that I do know. It would be nice if we could sort out a way to have the musicians leave with more money every night, but that seems to always be the case. If I judge the series by my original goal of being able to provide a place where music could happen that might not happen otherwise in New Orleans, I feel like we have been wildly successful thus far. So, if you are in NOLA on a Tuesday night, you know where to go.

shuffle discoveries – Halvorson & Sickafoose

I’ve developed a habit of putting all of the new music that I download or rip into a playlist (called “new music”…how creative). I started doing this as a way to make sure that I listened to everything. Kind of like the way I used to keep new CDs stacked next to the stereo, and would only put them into their place in the collection after they had been digested (or at least chewed a little). A handy by-product of my new music playlist system is that when I put that playlist on shuffle, the new music gets to me free of any expectations. I often have to pull out the ipod to see who is playing. It is nice when I hear something unknown, and like it. It gives me confidence that it is the music and not the name that is moving me.

Two recent eMusic scores that struck me in shuffle mode ambushes are Mary Havorson Trio Dragon’s Head, and Todd Sickafoose Tiny Resistors.

I was doing the new music shuffle at the grocery store the other day, and each time a track from one of these albums would come on, I would have to look and see who was making the strikingly good music. I got the Halvorson, because I have been wanting to check her out on her own musical terms, having heard her and about her with Braxton, Taylor Ho Bynum, etc. I got the Sickafoose, because it kept showing up on people’s year end lists, and my interest was piqued. Both are worth purchasing.

Minnesota, suits, and steam refresh

A couple of weekends ago, I went to Minneapolis with Luther Kent and Trick Bag. We played at Dakota. It is a nice club, and they treated us very well. Even though the day time high temperatures were single digit numbers when we were there, it was a nice trip.

Somewhat related to that, I have a bad habit of not really unpacking after a trip. I tend to just leave the suitcase out until I have worn everything that didn’t get worn on the trip.

As my professional life has morphed over the last few years, I have been doing fewer tuxedo-wearing-jobbing gigs. I don’t even own a tux any more. I wear a black suit when I have to don the uniform that marks the caste of the private function musician.

These factors all collided mightily last night when I started to get ready for my tuxedo-wearing-make-enough-to-pay-my-publicist New Year’s Eve gig. As I began to get dressed, I realized that my black suit was still in the folding part of my suitcase from the trip to Minnesota 10 days ago. It looked like it had been wadded up for 10 days.

My wife recently bought one of those fancy front-loading high efficiency washer and dryer combos. The washer has a steam refresh cycle. It says not to use it on wool garments, but I took the gamble on my suit. 15 minutes in there and it looked like it just came back from the cleaners. I love technology.

Happy New Year!

gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”: how to be creative

gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”: how to be creative:

“THE SEX & CASH THEORY: ‘The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.'”

The art/commerce intersection was bouncing about in my brain last night, so this hit home today. Click the link above and read the whole thing.

(Via @sivers.)

If you can’t laugh at yourself…

Thoughts on expectations, and a new blog

I’ll start with the shout out. Mike Reed appears to be blogging. Mike is a musician and music presenter in Chicago. I’ve mentioned him here before, an again, in full disclosure, must say that he is a friend of mine, we have played music together, and the Open Ears Music Series is greatly influenced and inspired by the Emerging Improvisers series that Mike started and runs with Josh Berman. Mike calls the blog “Thinking Out Loud,” although it shows up as “Free Time” in my rss reader. You can read it at his website, www.mikereedmusic.com.

My next thoughts were triggered by a review of Mike Reed’s Loose Assembly – The Speed of Change. My intention here isn’t necessarily to disagree with Stef’s review (although I think I liked the CD more than he did), but to point out some common thinking that is revealed by the reviewer’s choice of words.

“Soulstirrer” starts out well, but then falls back in mainstream rhythm and melody. The same can be said about some of the other tracks, such as “Garvey’s Ghost”, a Max Roach composition, which is relatively bland here, and “Tezetaye Antchi Lidj”, a Mulatu Astatqe composition, that sounds too joyful (and not raw enough) for the dark, bluesy and sensitive atmosphere on the rest of the album.

What I found thought provoking here was the idea that “fall[ing] back on mainstream rhythm and melody” could be used as a derogatory description, and the idea that it is possible for music to be “too joyful.” I get that some people like what they like, and want to hear that all of the time. I also get that a unified vibe for an album can be a good thing, but if I can get my noisy-free-jazz jones in the same place that I can hear beautiful rhythm and melody, AND get my joyful vibe on, then that is the place I want to be, as both a listener and performer.

The January 2009 issue of All About Jazz New York has a great piece on p.11 by Kevin Dorn called “How to completely miss the point of music.” Step 1 is “Take stylistic labels very seriously” and part of that instruction is: “Before you play, decide in which style you are going to perform.” Ultimately, we may all be better off if we can learn to listen and create in a manner that is free from the expectations of style, and open to all of the music that has already been made, or is still awaiting discovery.