The Fantastic Mrs. 10 – Tim Berne’s Snakeoil
Compass Confusion – Junk Magic
Junk Magic – Compass Confusion – discovered via Night After Night
New Year’s Resolution – 2021
I have a friend who assembles a number of great year end lists. Things like top live performances, hip hop albums, jazz albums, albums of composed music, etc…it is quite impressive. I have trouble remembering what performances I saw in a given year, much less what my favorite 10 of them were. So my resolution for 2021 is to use this space to keep track of every live performance or new recording that I hear.
Given how much I have written here in the past few years, it is unlikely that many (any?) of these things will get full reviews, and I am pretty sure I will not assemble them into top 10 lists at this time next year, but I will hopefully at least have a record of the new sounds and live performances I encountered. Wish me luck.
Unanimous Sources – Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2020 in Boston Globe
Jon Garelick of the Boston Globe included “Unanimous Sources” in his Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2020″ list. He heard it on WWOZ. Read the article here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/12/24/arts/jon-garelicks-top-10-jazz-albums-2020/
Book
Over the summer, Matt Wright and I got together to improvise some music on our trombones. Matt then made a video to go with the sounds. The video and title grew out of our conversations on perspective, and social and consumer responsibility. This was premiered on a Versipel New Music program, and you can see it here now.
My track with U2
In 2017, I got a call from Jonathan Freilich to record some horn parts he wrote. It turned out to be a session with producer Hal Willner (RIP) and U2. Unfortunately, Sir Elton’s part was not recorded at the same session…
The record is finally out.
Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group
Bang A Gong (Get It On) · U2 · Elton John
Bang A Gong (Get It On)
℗ An Island Records recording; ℗ 2020 Universal Music Operations Limited
Released on: 2020-09-04
Producer: Hal Willner
Studio Personnel, Mix Engineer, Recording Engineer: Marc Urselli
Associated Performer, Piano, Vocals: Elton John
Associated Performer, Vocals: Bono
Associated Performer, Guitar, Recording Arranger: The Edge
Associated Performer, Bass Guitar: Adam Clayton
Associated Performer, Drums: Larry Mullen, Jr.
Associated Performer, Trombone: Trombone Shorty
Associated Performer, Baritone Saxophone: Ray Moore III
Associated Performer, Tenor Saxophone: Brad Walker
Associated Performer, Trombone: Jeff Albert
Associated Performer, Trumpet: Ashlin Parker
Associated Performer, Trombone: Charles Halloran
Studio Personnel, Mastering Engineer: Howie Weinberg
Composer Lyricist: Marc Bolan
Podcast – Ohmme
Ohmme is one of my favorite bands, and Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham are the guests on this episode. We talk about their new record, the music business, making videos, and I fanboy a little.
Errata: I misspoke in the episode and said Fox hall is in Kansas City. It is not. It is in Chicago. I knew that. My mouth is just faster than my brain.
Modeling fall classes on campus
From Inside Higher Ed
“The model examines a hypothetical large university of 20,000 students and 2,500 instructors who interact daily for 100 days. The mean class size in the simulation is 24 students, with 90 percent of classes having 50 students or fewer.
Each day in the model, there is a 25 percent chance that one individual on campus not in quarantine, who has not already been infected, can become spontaneously infected by nonuniversity contact, a rate researchers said was rather low compared to other estimates.
In the absence of any intervention at all, the model suggests that all susceptible community members would acquire COVID-19 by the end of the semester, with peak infection rates between 20 and 40 days into the semester, even if the semester begins with no infections.
A standard intervention, consisting of quarantine, contact tracing, universal mask wearing, daily testing of 3 percent of the university population and large classes (30 or more students) moved online, suggests a slightly rosier picture, with infections kept below 66 people in 95 percent of simulations.”
It is possible to do this in a smart way with responsible amounts of risk. #maskup
Of course if the students are not willing to follow guidelines…
Jeff is on The Jazz Session
In a turning of the tables, I am the guest on this week’s episode of The Jazz Session. Jason Crane is the host and he has the longest running jazz interview podcast. He is loads of fun to talk to and we hit plenty of non-jazz topics. Hear it here: https://www.thejazzsession.com/2020/06/17/the-jazz-session-526-jeff-albert/ or in any usual podplaces. I would like to note however that we recorded the interview on May 14 or 15, about 10 days before the murder of George Floyd.