I was sitting in a bar the other day with a blues band on stage, at first I thought “hey this is pretty cool.” but after an hour, I wasn't convinced they had ever changed songs, they just took dramatic pauses every five minutes or so. Playing the blues doesn't mean you're limited to one twelve bar progression and six notes for lead, chord tones will still give a very strong blues sound if played over that twelve bar progression, however using what we know about chord substitution we can make... Read Full Story
Maurizio Miotti, a regular reader from Rome, wrote in with a great question. He says, " My saxophone teacher tells me that I can study music theory and harmony, but if I want to improvise jazz music I have to listen, memorize and play “jazz phrases”. The same situation with learn a new language: you can study grammar but when you talk with someone, you have to use idiomatic expressions because grammar is a set of theoretical roles (sometimes “a little distant” from the current language) and... Read Full Story
This weekend I caught a few, "free" shows, at the a marching band festival in Sommerville, MA. It was very cool at times, and very strange at others. Nevertheless, you cannot go wrong hearing live music. There were bands representing New Orleans, France, Portugal, and Sommervilles very own: Tufts University. It was defiantly something to admire. My ears were open and defiantly taking each sweet sonic sound for pleasure. The band from New Orleans, "The Big 7" blew me away. They were 7 brassy... Read Full Story
Availability Checker: www.musicmastersinc.djintelligence.com/availability Tim Wilsey creator of "Soulful Rhythms," is a strong pillar at the base of Music Masters Entertainment's Foundation for Jazz. Soulful Rhythms is an organization of professional musicians dedicated to performing all styles of Jazz music at your special occasion.. Jazz music runs the spectrum of styles as does the various groups from Soulful Rhythms. From traditional Jazz standards to Smooth Jazz and from Latin Jazz to... Read Full Story
If I had to pick one person who taught me the most about music and about life in general it would have to be Herb Pomeroy. Herb was a master at so many different things. His mastery of the art of Jazz improvisation was a magical thing, he may not have had the greatest chops in the world but I've never heard anyone improvise like Herb. Because he was also a master composer and arranger he developed his solos like symphonies. Every phrase was related to the phase before it and after it. He was... Read Full Story
Remember those old cassette tapes… the plastic black TDK ones with yards and yards of brown cellophane that your cat gleefully disembowels onto your bedroom floor…?? Well, guess what? I found one stashed away at the back of my DHL box last night. Naturally I had to find out if it worked. So it was a veritable “Scouring of the Shire” to dig up a cassette player. After an hour (during which I stabbed my toe, discove red to my amazement that I owned five corkscrews and lost my mobile phone and... Read Full Story
Gosh... I am excited! I have BIG PLANS... See, there is nothing like looking forward to and preparing for your first summer jazz gig in London! So how did it all happen, you ask me? Well, actually, nothing has happened yet Reader! It's simply BIG PLANS... and like all BIG PLANS - a product of too much time , too much beer, too much food and too much bravado on a Bank Holiday weekend! What is a Bank Holiday? Put simply, it is London's excuse for not celebrating every Catholic festival like... Read Full Story
While looking for Bob Berg transcriptions I found a great Italian site called Jazz Italia. There is an entire page of solo transcriptions, which includes MP3s of the original recordings . There is also a page with a ton of links to Jazz blogs. You can translate any page to English with Alta Vista's Babel Fish web page (I just added the translated feature to this blog, look below the Google ads in the left sidebar). Just type the web address into Babel Fish and the entire page will be... Read Full Story
Point of Departure was the Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Award Nominee for Best Website Concentrating on Jazz for 2006 and 2007. This site has class, which is quite rare in the online Jazz world. There are great articles, photo essays, round table discussions, and CD reviews in this online Jazz journal published by Bill Shoemaker. The design is clean and the writing is intelligent. You won't find any articles about Dave Koz or Boney James here since the emphasis is on Free Jazz and the... Read Full Story
This half-hour radio show produced by WGBH features Herb Pomeroy talking about his life and music. Herb talks about his experience playing with Bird, his days at the Stable, his feelings about big bands, the music of Duke Ellington, his teaching career, and his philosophy of life. WGBH Jazz portrait of Herb Pomeroy in his own words and music Read Full Story
