Something new for a change

Because of my position as an influential (?) writer about jazz, I occasionally get promotional materials and notices from jazz musicians, agents and music companies asking me to let my readers know about their latest musician, song, band, or whatever. When I first started blogging, I was very accommodating and was generally quite diligent about writing up what they let me know about. For some reason, however, at some point, I got away from doing that with any regularity.

Well, now I’m getting back to it, starting with Marcus Goldhaber.

Photo courtesy of Marcus Goldhaber and Randex Communications

Truth be told, I've had my eye on this guy for about two years now, as he was performing in New York close to when I visited there and I had a bunch of jazz clubs on my radar. I've always liked his voice and he usually has a great set of musicians behind him, sometimes some really big names. Of course, he’s also a composer and the musicality of his original tunes is as good as anybody in jazz right now. But what’s really appealing about Mr. Goldhaber’s latest offering, “A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening”, is that he mixes in five original songs with seven standards that are not performed as often as they should be. The mix is dynamic and gives Mr. Goldhaber ample opportunity to display his chops. Is just as pleasant a listening experience as male vocal jazz gets.

That said, what really puts this recording over the top for me is the backing musicians, and especially, the pianist. (Yes, I’m a pianist, so I’m biased.) Jon Davis (who co-arranged with Mr. Goldhaber) has a light touch on the piano, with a quick turn of phrase or chord voicing to relieve or boost the sentimentality, whichever and whenever needed. Mr. Davis also has a critical role in bringing cohesiveness with two different bassists and drummers. Even so, he’s always able to hint at relaxation without becoming lounge-ified. This is exemplified in the middle tracks of “No Moon At All”, where the piano takes second stage to the bass, but pushes the song right back to a bluesy stroll when he gets his solo, which is then followed by the Irving Berlin classic “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails”, taken at a mellow pace with the piano right out front. I’m in awe of Mr. Davis, but I applaud Mr. Goldhaber for picking him to work on these tracks. It all just works.

The recording comes out on October 14. If you’re looking for some good male vocal jazz that sounds original both in compositions and performance, put  “A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening” on your shopping list. It’s worth the price of admission.

Someone should bop me on the head

You know, although lately I’ve been all about serendipity and spontaneity, my decision to work on my piano playing by focusing exclusively on one book, one that caught my eye for a completely illogical reason, turned out to be, although inspired, entirely misdirected. I did start my post-bop piano project.

I did begin to read and play from the book. It wasn’t bad. Here’s the problem:

I reached chapter four and still hadn’t had to play a single exercise. One of the chapters was a complete rehashing of stuff I learned in college. And without any structure, or anything constructive to play, or any “newness”, I began to realize I was wasting my time. So, of course, I skipped to the Bill Evans chapter, and of course, that was too hard for me. So I went back to try to find something to build on to make it easier, but I couldn’t find much. So, I stopped playing from that book, worked on tunes, and pretty soon was right back where I started: unmotivated, not playing, not improving, nothing.

Here's a spring robin on our crepe myrtle. Nothing jazzy, just thought you might enjoy it.

Fortunately, I continued to plonk about most days, working kind of hard on chord progressions from “standard” jazz standards (you know, songs with LOTS of typical jazz sounds and motifs). Eventually, I took one more stab at the Post-Bop book, but again, I was wandering in the wilderness. I really just wanted some stuff to play. Mechanical stuff. Stuff I didn’t need my brain for and could just do a limited amount of brain work which would allow my fingers and muscles to work. Somehow (no particular serendipity here), I remembered my Solo Jazz Piano book, the one that’s three times the thickness of the post-bop book. 

I opened it, and the first playing exercise is on page 7, and the exercises leading up to that one, are manageable. In fact, I played through them last night in about forty minutes.

Sure nothing’s perfect yet, and I have a long (long) way to go, but at least I have direction again.

And for those of you who’ve checked out my amazon reviews and lists and noticed the post-bop book on my recommended piano books list, that still holds true. It’s a great book. It’s just not for me at this stage, you know, right now.

Today’s project: Complete the piano project, by putting it all back together and putting my booze on top of it. Got to recover the dining room, even if we’re not going to use it.

Oh, and I’m going to open a jazz bar, so start sending me money. (No, really. Lots and lots of money. For my jazz bar. Seriously.)

New York Jazz Club Reviews - Part 4

Birdland –  On our last  day in New York, Friday December 9, it seemed that our chances of catching the late show at Village Vanguard to see and hear Bill Frisell was not going to work out. It was far away from where we were, and the guy taking our reservation couldn’t spell Sedensky to save his life. Since Birdland was close to where I was going to be and the thought was that Mrs. S would get out of her concert early enough to make time to get to the jazz venue, that’s what we reserved. Dinner was far more of a challenge. With the concert and musical to break up the evening, we didn’t really want to do a heavy dinner late, so we were leaning toward a light dinner early. Unfortunately, 3:30 on Friday afternoon is not the best time to be making reservations for 5:00 on that Friday evening. Faced with no choice and a long walk to the theater, I convinced Mrs. S to just walk down the street and see what we could find. We found a decent sushi place and ate sushi then headed to the concert/musical. Mine was a lot farther away and I had to navigate Times Square, and, stupid, I went looking for where Birdland was before I realized, I needed to get to the theater. I made it with enough time to go to the restroom and find my seat just as the lights were going down. It was great seeing Brooke Shields in The Addams Family musical, even with the drunk lady in the front row ruining the show. (Amazing that a house filled with families of small children was besieged and disturbed by a 50-year old drunk woman. Mercifully, they kicked her out at intermission.) After the musical ended, I headed straight out, made my way the two blocks over and one block down, and arrived at Birdland to find, they didn’t have my reservation. Fortunately, there were plenty of tables and I was quite early, plus it wasn’t that crowded, so I got a prime rail-side table overlooking the front row tables, right behind the piano. Mrs. S showed up after I was halfway through my first beer, and we ordered up beer and wine and sliders: 

That's Brooklyn Lager, the best beer I had in NYC, and don't those sliders look scrumptious!

We then settled in to hear the Frank Wess Quintet play one set. I’d never heard of this guy, but they played mostly originals and everything was good. I would say, however, that the show was too expensive ($20 to see Frank Wess, which would have been $40 if we didn't get half price for having a Broadway show ticket stub - Bill Frisell, by comparison, was just $25 at the Village Vanguard) and they only played one short (hour and ten minutes) set. 

The Frank Wess Quintet lights up Birdland.

‘Course old Frank turned 90 years old that week, so, we didn’t complain. At least he didn’t die on stage. Unlike the Blue Note, Birdland I would do again, as long as the performer was somebody I wanted to see.

New York Jazz Club Reviews - Part 1

Our recent trip to New York (December 6-10) was specifically for Mrs. S to (yet again) see violinist Joshua Bell in concert. While she would attend the concert three of the four nights we were to spend there, I was only to attend one concert, being left to my own devices to visit jazz clubs, hang out in bars, or otherwise kill two hours each night while Mrs. S enjoyed the concert. After discussing and planning, however, and considering that one of the highlights of any New York trip will certainly involve food, we decided to move things around a bit, cut short her attendance at one of the concerts, and keep our activities centralized so that we could enjoy the bulk of the activities together. This resulted in us being able to visit three jazz clubs (two of which we also dined at) together, and me being able to see Brooke Shields perform from the second row of a cozy theater (hubba-hubba). To sort of replicate the feel of that week, I will be posting reviews of the clubs over the next four days, in the order and two weeks after the fact of each visit. It should be good. Anyway, here’s Mrs. S and me in front of Macy’s. 

We hope you like this photo, because if you’re getting a photo Christmas card from us, this is the shot. (If you’re getting a plain card from us, this is what you’re missing.)