Hey All,
Hope you're all doing well.
On my end, quite busy with everything.
My new assignment is playing accompaniment for a Schumann piece on Dec 18th with my son on cello. These are getting harder and harder and I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep it up. Seeing that he's making great progress 10 times faster than me. I'm really digging this classical stuff actually. It uses a lot of keyboard and very interesting root movements. Like it.
I kind of finished the first pass of an arrangement to touch of your lips. I was watching this clip with Bill & McPartland. I bought that long ago not knowing that all this stuff was available for free on NPR's site. This is totally mind blowing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y9g0EQcZXIAnyway, after I played my simple arrangement, DF showed me a couple of tricks. If "Dave don't mind", I wonder if I could share this little bit i recorded of him. That's Dave playing this fairly obscure tune on the spot. It's just crazy.
Anyways, I'm doing some walking bass lines on Here's that rainy day, which is turning out to be interesting and tricky. And a beautiful melody.
I'm working a little bit on speed too, right now with All the things you are.
I'm still working on my sight reading, which is going great also.
And I've started playing one of the greatest solos I've ever heard (I know I always say that!). Fats on the changes to out of nowhere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdh5YkkfmGUFats is absolutely unbelievable on this track. It's hard to believe this is improvised, how good this is. Anyway, I started playing the first 1/2 chorus in my usual way, and the tempo is reasonable. But for an extra kick, I'm moving this one to random keys.
What else? A fair amount of playing. The usual regular jam sessions. Great swing last night. Awesome drummer, really neat.
Also did a fundraiser last week. This week, we're doing a thanksgiving special in a cool restaurant that features a lot of jazz. I'm looking at a few more trio / quartet jobs in the very near area, and another one at the IMF (same I did last year), the week before the son's recital. I get all this from folks that randomly call me. People I played with, or heard that I played with friends. Network type of stuff. It's all good. All this music is a real good break from the constant non-sense at work.
Chrismas party? Yeah I'm down.
>>Singing: Sonny Clark and Wes Montgomery. I always laugh when I sing the Wes original Mr Walker as Tommy Flanagan sounds like Knotty.
You saying Tommy copied my licks ? Show me ! That sounds interesting