The way things go, sometimes

It was another lost weekend for me. I got started cleaning and organizing my room and just really never got out of it. I spent a good amount of time practicing my modes of the melodic minor scales and a tune or two, and, well, that was it. We’re still dealing with a sick cat and after the late night coming back from the jazz concert in Birmingham on Friday, I wasn’t very energetic. I pulled out some Christmas lights and started planning this year’s display, messed around on Facebook some, and never worked on my piano for even a minute. I’m thinking that if I don’t finish it around Thanksgiving break, it will be Christmas before I do finish it. It rained Sunday, I drank absinthe for the first time, and there are no other excuses. The weekend just slowly passed me by.

Speaking of the concert, Poncho Sanchez and His Latin Jazz Orchestra was Friday night, and honestly, it sucked. Their music was uninspired, their set short, and they kept exhorting the crowd to dance by playing an endless series of nameless salsa tunes. They didn’t do any really big hits, they did only one encore and yeah, some of the rhythm riffs they did with some unusual instruments were mildly interesting, and the horn section was tight, but I couldn’t shake the feeling they were more or less sleepwalking through the evening. They just showed up, played a few tunes, and left. It was disappointing.

Going into the “season” of concerts in Birmingham, I was most excited about Poncho, somewhat enthused about Bill Frisell, and basically unenthusiastic for Pat Metheny. But when the concerts were all over, I liked Pat Metheny the best, Bill Frisell second, and Poncho finished dead last. Funny how that happened.

Lost weekend = boring blog entry. Sorry about that, but that’s the way things go, sometimes.

Pat Metheny Concert: A Review

Last Friday, Mrs. S. and I traveled to Birmingham AL to sit in the front row of the Alys Stephens Center and see Pat Metheny live. Careful readers of this blog will know that I’m not a big fan of jazz guitar and I’ve never been a big fan of Pat Metheny, as I just never found his music that interesting or stimulating to me. So why would I go to see him live? Well, because he is probably the single-most famous living jazz guitarist, he has won 17 Grammies, and because you never know: the live experience might just turn it around for you. Metheny was to perform alone with his “Orchestrion”:

The original orchestrions were player pianos that manufacturer’s starting adding instruments to in order to try and stop radio from eroding their market share. They added violins, guitars, anything they could get to work with a piano roll and the piano roll motor. 

Metheny’s Orchestrion is a stage covering monstrosity. It includes two full-size Yamaha grand piano disclaviers, an accordion, a bass guitar, a rhythm guitar, a marimba, a xylophone, a vibraphone, two set of glass jugs, castanets, a full drum set, congas, sleigh bells, and more. All of these devices were rigged with solenoids of one type or another, and all were controlled from a specially built guitar hooked to bank of switches and foot pedals. With the guitar and pedals, he could tell each instrument or group of instruments what rhythm to play, what tones to play, and in what sequence to play them in. 

But before he got to that…

He started off with a solo number on a regular guitar. Then he did another solo number on a different guitar. During the second song, I had something happen to me that never happened before: I was listening so intently to the music and so engrossed in the moment, I completely forgot where I was. Essentially, I lost consciousness. When I came out of it, I felt dizzy and couldn’t remember where I was. I felt as though I needed to wake up from a dream. I’ve never had a piece of music move me like that, ever. It was downright scary. Then he brought out his 42 string pikasso guitar. 

That should’ve been the song I got lost in, but I was too enthralled in just watching him play that instrument. After that, he got to work with the orchestrion.

He played for almost two and a half hours. And although I can’t say I feel any differently about Metheny’s music in specific or jazz guitar in general, I have to say, I certainly respect Mr. Metheny as a musician and musical innovator and I’ll damn sure go and see him in concert anytime he gets within 150 miles of me. It was simply an amazing concert.

Concert schedule

With the severe heat taking both a psychological and physical toll, not to mention preventing any work being done outside (sanding the piano lid) or inside with open windows (finishing the piano), I took a pass altogether on working on the piano this past weekend. I also started to realize, that if I don’t start playing the piano on a regular basis, when I’m finished with the piano, I’ll be relegating to spending all my time regaining my chops instead of making fine music on my restored antique instrument. So I started working on Hanon and my stride playing, as well as my 2-5-1 chord progressions around the circle of fifths and generally doing some “grunt” work in the musicality area. It served me well, I think.

So, here’s a non-piano related entry I wrote earlier in the week and didn’t post:

After Mrs. S and I made a trip down to Birmingham AL for a Joshua Bell concert a few months back, and it turned out to be not so hard to drive down and back in one night as we thought, we decided to try and attend more concerts in our state’s largest city. Fortunately, in addition to having another concert with Mr. Bell next January, there are also a number of big name jazz stars making their way to The Magic City, and we decided to see the majority of them.

With the likes of Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, and Poncho Sanchez headed our way, we decided to beef up our music collection. Since the only Metheny I have is the collaboration with Brad Mehldau, and I don’t much care for it, we are picking up “Bright Size Life” to beef up the jazz guitar area of our collection. (We already have two Frisell works, including the classic “Have a Little Faith”.) For the prolific Poncho Sanchez, who we had not a single CD of, the choice was not as clear, but we decided to go with “Psychedelic Blues” and “Latin Soul”. I decided also to get Ted Nash’s “Portrait in Seven Shades”, since we heard four of them at the Jazz at Lincoln Center concert in March, and Nikki Yanofsky’s “Nikki”, because I’ve heard three or four tracks from that recording and they are all sensational. (Cracks me up when reviewers on Amazon are like, “She’s going to be really great someday when she gets older.” Those people are obviously not listening closely enough and are making a judgment due to bias and not age impartiality. Neither here nor there…)

I seldom need excuses for buying music, but if I get excuses, like the ones above, I’m sure to get some music.

Lots to listen to when I work on my piano this weekend. (But like I said, I didn’t work on my piano this weekend.)