Michael“0 Comments”
Jessica Jones | 9:11 pm | July 7, 2009
Stevie got it right, twice:
YouTube - Stevie Wonder’s Talkbox Tribute to Michael Jackson
YouTube - Michael Jackson The Memorial Concert - Stevie Wonder - Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer
Our Gig at Puppets Jazz in Brooklyn“0 Comments”
Jessica Jones | 8:49 am | June 9, 2009
We are playing once or twice a month at Puppets, a cool small jazz venue in Park Slope, Brooklyn and it’s been gratifying and revealing to be playing regularly in the same spot. Maybe it’s today’s version of a week at the Vanguard…but due to inflation, each night is suspended between two to four week intervals.
We are playing with the core group of myself on piano, Tony Jones on tenor, Candace Jones on vocals and are sometimes joined by wonderful drummers and bassists (Ken Filiano, Keith Witty, Levi Jones, on bass; James Windsor-Wells, Lou Grassi, Diego Voglino on drums) and other guests. A month or so ago guitarist Andy Fite joined us from Sweden! That was big fun. So we have been building our repertoire with Candace, and stretching the familiar songs a little outre which feels like what we’ve been trying to do with them all along. Often, Candace and I play a duet set, which is challenging for me. I spend most of my musical time thinking like a single-line saxophonist so its quite healthy for me to stretch my ears to more horizontal thinking. If you see what I mean. And Candace is dreamy to play with, her sense of pitch has spoiled me for other singers. Tony, of course, has his Own Thing and you have to hear it.
We are going to be integrating more of the original quartet pathways into the gig - maybe a set of vocals and a set of quartet (yay, I get to play saxophone again!) with guests. In July we will be bringing back our good friend and collaborator Mark Taylor on french horn and mellophone. I am very fond of the sound of the horn section of Mark, Tony and me. Three horns in the same range, slinking around, blending and then appearing on top of the fray…its like tenor clef sleight of hand.
I feel like this gig is a dream I had, and the kind I used to read about, where a band can develop themselves and people can witness it. And I can’t tell you what a blessing it is that I am having this experience with my family.
Maybe see you there: Puppets Jazz Bar
Guilty pleasures: TV“0 Comments”
Jessica Jones | 5:42 pm | April 19, 2009
It’s spring in NYC, and trees are blooming and the lovely seasonal aromas are wafting by as I ride my bike - the rosemary bread from the bakery, the fresh mown lawn at the cemetery - and the mix of animal hay and the smell of those weird pink popcorn candy bricks I remember chomping into as a kid hang in the air over by the Universoul Circus in Prospect Park. And the other bikers whiz by, and I try to stay ahead of the runners and the walkers, on that one hill…
So instead of continuing my surround-smell picture for you, I’m going to talk about my favorite TV shows, the ones I most commonly watch:
Seventh Heaven
The Waltons
Little House on the Prarie
I think those are because I like the innocence, and the family, and the dad who hangs around the house a lot….I really like those shows. Sorry!
Curb Appeal
Extreme Makeover, Home Edition (but it’s a little over the top for me usually)
Dwell
Mission Organization
I enjoy seeing clean organized houses, and I particularly like seeing a space and then visualizing how it’s going to be, and then seeing that happen. It gives me hope, not just about my own entropy-magnet home, but that I can visualize things in a way that they aren’t yet, but that could come true, in the Real world.
Comedies (my alltime favorite category):
Reno 911
Arrested Development (they do still show a rerun now and then)
30 Rock
Adventures of New Christine
What’s on at home, so I watch it:
Law & Order (all the time! They need to make a Law & Order channel already. There are so many of them. Our favorite is CI)
Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olberman on MSNBC. Since the campaign.
King of Queens (but have seen every episode over 4 times)
Other stuff: The Closer, and for ‘comfort TV’, an episode of Matlock or PBS Mystery now and then.
You’ll be glad to know we have been eschewing the Idiot Box for a few hours each night to make room for Bud Powell and others to take the sonic stage since we got a real record player. Yes, records.
Here’s Bud for you to look at, if you don’t have a record to stare at:
Confidence vs doubt?“0 Comments”
Jessica Jones | 7:56 pm | March 29, 2009
I’m not even sure of the title of the post…
But anyway it seems that people respond to confidence, it makes them feel comfortable. They feel more secure when someone else is willing to take the reins (and reigns!). I can understand that. And confidence on stage is pretty charismatic. However, there is a real beauty to doubt. Like, just plain “I don’t know the right answer. The first choice could work, but I can see how the second choice might also work. Who am I to say?” That can be a richer, more intriguing experience, even for an audience. That’s been my experience.
However, as a teacher, middle school students REALLY don’t respond well to doubt! I mean, in terms of structure of the class and what to expect. So the mother in me has learned to create structure and an architecture to start with, but hopefully - both in playing and teaching - it is a flexible structure that allows all kinds of variations based on the creativity of the people utilizing it. Seeing a lot of possibilities simultaneously is a skill that people are needing right now, in This Economy and all. The creativity that allows for pivoting from anywhere to get anywhere else. It’s like the training was all in a straight line and now everyone is lost except the artists or creative people, who can turn on a dime, change direction, think of new ways to try things.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Doubt might be creativity.
OK, here’s me“0 Comments”
Jessica Jones | 6:35 pm | March 26, 2009
In response to Lois’ comment, here’s a better one with me at the BHS concert:
So here is proof I was there. (with Lavell, Dayna, and Steven)
Berkeley High concert“4 Comments”
Jessica Jones | 11:31 am | March 25, 2009
These photos are all by Daniel S. Levine, and thanks to him it looks very historical and “great day in Berkeley”-ish.
This is Peter Apfelbaum, Elena Pinderhughes, Lavell Jones, Dayna Stephens, me, Steven Bernstein, Mariel Austin, Will Bernard, Sarah Cline and a drummer you can’t see performing a piece of Peter’s at a huge BHS jazz alumni fundraiser to honor their current esteemed leader, Mr. Hamilton. It was cool to see some of my high school buddies, although most of them who were at the event actually live in Brooklyn like me. Sweeter still was to see all my former students blossomed up into lovely flowers. From the Feather River Jazz Camp which I started and directed, these guys (who were 12 years old or younger when I met them!):
Ambrose Akinmusire, David Ewell, Jonathan Finlayson.
Here’s more:
That’s Cale Brandley, tenor saxophonist and general seeker. Here’s another, all-star historical multi-generational one:
That’s a near-Ellingtonian type tpt section: Sean Erick, Ambrose Akinmusire, Steven Bernstein, and Jonathan Finlayson. I won’t say which is Cootie Williams etc.
I don’t know the trombone player’s name - let me know if you know - he’s at BHS now I think; and that’s Lavell Jones on bari sax.
OK, a couple more. It’s like showing slides of my children to a captive audience!
That’s Ambrose again, with Selina Traylor on bass. They have been friends a long time, including at Feather River. Ah, memories…
That’s Hitomi Oba. The picture’s too small to see much, but you better watch out for her, another great tenor player in the BHS lineage.
Here’s one of my first serious saxophone students ever, and I have to say, the last time I saw him on this stage (which was King Middle School in Berkeley) he was in eighth grade, singing a solo soprano version of Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday”, and winning a prestigious middle school award. I’ve admired him since that day, since I can’t imagine a more challenging audience than 500 of your peers in eighth grade (yech!), whom he had in the palm of his hand:
So that’s Dave Ellis on tenor (& listening), with Michael Aaberg on piano.
Anyway, it was a sweet day, and it sold out which is good for the coffers of the BHS jazz band. I was glad it wasn’t at Berkeley High, cause the smell of the music room there still makes my palms sweat. It was a wonderfully fertile time of my life, and, as many of us probably feel, it’s certainly nice to have that behind me and now real life in the present.
New Year, New Era, Here We Go!“0 Comments”
Jessica Jones | 1:43 pm | January 26, 2009
Happy new year! I have never blogged before, but I figure I am constantly blogging in my head, so the transition could be smooth.
Looking forward to operating under the auspices of hope again. In trying to explain about music in the 1960’s to my students a few years ago, I realized that they really couldn’t understand the mood of the times because they hadn’t experienced that kind of unity of purpose and lack of cynicism. Especially in NY - or maybe it’s an east coast thing - where values sometimes seem to be those of the Dead End Kids: “I ain’t no rat!” and “Sucker!” as opposed to “it takes a village to raise a child” and “we’re all in this together”. I definitely feel a difference in the air, and a feeling that things are possible. It doesn’t necessarily mean that good things WILL happen, but just that they CAN happen is like having a huge boulder moved out of the path.
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