We are so busy with our lives; we often forget what’s important. We forget the need to get quiet and just get present with the moment; Or the need to reflect and celebrate and live in the moment; Or the need to just dance in the moment.
Help me to help you find this thoughtful place, at least once a week.
Join me on this journey!
Here is the promo video for the George Kahn Kickstarter campaign.
It features George on piano, with Alex Acuña on drums, Pat Kelley on guitar and David Hughes on bass. We are performing "I Feel Pretty" by Leonard Bernstein as it will be featured on the new album. Jonathan Brock and his team do a great job filming the session. I think you get a real sense of the joy and excitement we had recording that day. Watch it here, and then pledge at
Lyle
Mays was my contemporary, and it was so sad to hear about his death
last week at the age of 66 from "a recurring illness". Lyle was an
integral part of The Pat Metheny Group for about 30 years, creating the
textures and colors that carried Pat's soaring guitar. His abilities
went far beyond jazz, and in many ways he was an under-appreciated
artist.
Here
is a live performance of their song, "September Fifteenth", dedicated
to Bill Evans. The song was recorded on their duo album, "As Falls
Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls," released in 1981. This live
performance is from 2000. About 5 minutes into this tune Lyle plays a
solo that is more Debussey and Ravel than Bill Evans; this is where his
heart lies.
Mays,
who cherished the technical and analytical aspects of his craft as well
as the improvisational part, also was a self-taught computer programmer
and architect who once designed a house for a relative.
During
a recent tour, Metheny said, he could tell that Mays had “had enough of
hotels, buses and so forth.” The lifestyle of constant touring is
challenging and takes a toll on musicians, Metheny said.
Mays
remained with the Pat Metheny Group until 2010—when he not only left
the group, but also began paying increasingly less attention to the
music business in general. “It’s not that I have a real desire
to leave the music industry—I kind of feel like the music industry has
left me. Or left all of us,” he said in a 2016 interview. “People don’t
want to pay for music anymore.”
In these stressful times, it is worthwhile to take a few moments and
remember the beauty that great artistry can create. Even if you just
have time to listen to the first 5-6 minutes of this, it may bring you
some joy. This is my favorite Violin Sonata of all, written by Cesar
Franck in 1886 as a wedding gift to a friend. Performed by Pinchas
Zuckerman with MARC NEIKRUG on piano. The piece is notable for the
difficulty of its piano part, when compared with most of the chamber
repertoire. Its technical problems include frequent extreme extended
figures—the composer himself having possessed huge hands—and virtuoso
runs and leaps, particularly in the second movement (though some
passages can be facilitated by employing a spare hand to cover some
notes).
Ben Hong, Cello - Tribute to Kobe Bryant - Hallelujah
These are the words of Kobe Bryant:
"You
have to dance beautifully in the box that you are comfortable dancing
in. My box was to be extremely ambitious within the sport of
basketball. Your box is different than mine. Everyone has their own.
It's your job to try to perfect it and make it as beautiful a canvas as
you can make it. And if you have done that, then you have lived a
successful life."
Ben
Hong from the Los Angeles Philharmonic was given the honor of playing a
solo cello piece behind last night's tribute to the life of Kobe Bryant
at Staples Center.
Please enjoy Ben Hong's improvisation on the Leonard Cohen song, "Hallelujah" and this 6 minute tribute video.
They were four kids that grew up in rural Ontario Canada, listening to
late night radio from Nashville, TN and Cleveland, OH. At some point
they met up with Levon Helm from Marvell, Arkansas. By 1960 they were
touring with Ronnie Hawkins' Rockabilly Band. In 1964, they separated
from Hawkins, after which they toured and released a few singles as
Levon and the Hawks and the Canadian Squires. By now they were a
road-tested, kick-ass rock and roll band. The next year, Bob Dylan hired
them for his U.S. tour in 1965, introducing rock'n'roll to a folk music
audience that booed them every night. They were all in their early 20s.
In
1966 when the tour ended, Rick Danko found this big Pink house in
Woodstock New York, and the 5 Band members moved in, and started
creating what may be the most unique American Music ever made. It was
not Rock, or Folk. Robbie Robertson's vision was to create an album of
story telling, evocative of the past, but living in the present, miles
away from the drug-fueled psychedelia of the late '60s.
Their
first two albums, released in 1968 and 1969, still stand as some of the
best music to come out of the '60s. The Band continued to play
stadiums and festivals until 1976, when they left in a triumphant final
"Last Waltz" in 1976, filmed by Martin Scorsese. Here is a clip from
that concert, please enjoy The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.
Continuing our deep dive into guitar-piano jazz ensembles, here is a
beautiful version of the Thelonius Monk composition Round Midnight
recorded by Wes Montgomery.
Here is the amazing life story of John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (March
6, 1923 – June 15, 1968). A self-taught musician, Wes never learned to
read music. He picked up a guitar at age 20 after hearing Charlie
Christian. He never planned to be a musician, always holding a day job
while he played gigs at night. Five years later at age 25 he was tapped
to tour with Lionel Hampton. This lasted two years, but Wes had a wife
and kids and hated flying, so he spent the next 10 years playing gigs
around his home town of Indianapolis.
Wes
and his brothers moved to California in 1957, and his career began to
take off. He recorded his first album as a leader in 1960, and went on
to record 22 albums(!) before he died of a heart attack in 1968.
This video is from the European tour that Wes did in 1965. Here he is with
Wes Montgomery, guitar Harold Mabern, piano Arthur Harper, bass Jimmy Lovelace, drums
Christmas and New Year's Eve bring on the feeling for me of, "Is this
all there is?" The blues follows close behind, and no one embodied the
blues better than B.B. King. He was born September 16,
1925, on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. In his
youth, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play
in as many as four towns a night. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, TN,
to pursue his music career.
His
economy of style, his every-note-counts phrasing, has been a model for
thousands of players, from Eric Clapton and George Harrison to Jeff
Beck.
King
performed tirelessly throughout his musical career, appearing on
average at more than 200 concerts per year into his 70s. He often joked
that he kept touring because of his need to keep up the child support
payments (It is reported that he fathered 15 children with several
different women. After his death, three more have come forward, claiming
King as their father as well.) He was still touring in 2014, but the
tour was cut short due to health problems and he died in May, 2015.
This recording from 1989 when B. B. was 64 years old shows him still in his prime.
