So, the summer is over another busy year has begun. I've recorded couple of songs on an album of a friend of mine from school, the album is in the mixing stages and will be available soon. We're also jamming every Tuesdays with people from American School of Music in a little bar. We open the night as the house band with a couple of standards, and this really incredible singer called Bryant Mills joins us to heat things up a little bit. After that a jam session begins. As it's an open stage we witnessed some very broad range of styles being played the last 2 months.
The school has started with all it's splendor, I'm absolutely in love with the practical way ear training and musical awareness is being taught and emphasized in the American tradition of musical education. As always, the best thing about the school is the opportunity to get together and play with people from different backgrounds, and who have different perspectives.
Also there is a small paid gig coming in November in another city. Apparently we'll be headed to Grenoble to play a couple of nights. I'm really looking forward to this.

It's been an incredibly busy year for me. I worked 18 hours a week at my job and finished the first year at The American School Of Modern Music. Other than that I was practicing or rehearsing almost everyday (although looking back I realize that most of my practice time was ruined because of a serious lack of concentration as a result of exhaustion). We did some gigs around Paris with friends from school and even got paid on some of them. The good thing about the gigs was the variety of music being played. One day we would play Stevie Wonder and more pop oriented songs with a singer, while the next we were trying our best on Mingus tunes and we played a lot of standards. As I am a basically self taught sax player, I had to return to the basics and correct my bad habits like too much reed biting and intonation (I still work on this, it is the single most energy consuming thing to do and most people just underestimate it).

Sometimes I feel that I'm rushing a little thinking that I'm always behind of "schedule" and that really stresses me. This feeling comes and goes every now and then, right now I'm in one of those periods. Patience, patience, patience. And baby steps.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore,
is not an act but a habit."
Aristotle

"Probably one of the most terrible feelings a human being can experience is regret. Especially the sort of regret that is not so much for what we did that was wrong, but rather for what we could have done (but didn't) that was right. The good thing about this feeling of regret is that, if we experience it often enough and deeply enough, we eventually see the importance of turning around our attitude and changing our life so that there would never be a reason for us to feel that way again in the future. If that happens, then regret has been useful to us. It has taught; we have learned. Regret consumes itself."

Mick Goodrick

"A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."
W.Benjamin

After 3 long, tiring, confusing years I think I finally overcame the effect Kurt Rosenwinkel's music had on me. I feel... strange. I'm digging Dave Holland more these days, partly because he's from Guildhall and mostly because he has exceptional skills in finding the best musical partners -especially tenors- to collaborate. His big band and quintet stuff is what inspires me most these days.

I bought Nicolas Slonimsk's Thesaurus Of Scales And Melodic Patterns. It is considered to be a legendary source of analytical material for composers/improvisers but the first we went through it with a friend we found it was lacking logical clarity in definitions and examples. Nevertheless, it is a book full of -still- fresh ideas and a lot of inspiration.

By the way, we have concerts on the 3rd, the 4th, thr 5th and the 8th of April. We will be playing some big band stuff along with some African repertoire. Nothing new to the followers of Orchestre des Métallos, but a good treat indeed.

Paul Duda is exhibiting in Istanbul either the 15th or the 16th of April and the pictures we took together will be there. As some of you will remember, I started this blog when we were taking those pictures! It will be a great pleasure to be there and see Mr. Duda again.

Finally, Mr. Rosenwinkel will be here in Paris again for a concert with a quartet with Mr. Parks on the 21st of April. A wonderful opportunity for fruitful conversation about Mr.Parks' wonderful album, Rosenwinkel's teaching position in Berlin and Mark Turner's current condition (he had a serious hand injury which stopped him from playing for 6 months).

Aaron Sparks...

Mr. Aaron Parks' "İnvisible Cinema" was one of 2008's most eagerly awaited albums. This young cat had already amazed and inspired loads of people with his work as a sideman, and his first album doesn't disappoint. Here are two clips of Nemesis (a number in 7/4 which became famous even before the album came out), the first one is with the band who recorded the album, and the second one from another gig with Kurt Rosenwinkel. I'm buying a new set of strings first thing tomorrow and I'm going to transcribe his solo from the version on his myspace this week.

At the office...