Drummer Billy Martin of Medeski, Martin and Wood and up and coming organist Wil Blades come together for a new duo project. After two highly successful shows in San Francisco and New Orleans, Martin and Blades are taking the show on the road. The duo's music is at once danceable and highly improvisational.
With a steady base as one-third of the renowned experimental jazz trio Medeski, Martin, & Wood, drummer Billy Martin has become one of the most forward-thinking, innovative, and influential percussionists in the music world. His ultra-sensitive, hyper-melodic drumming -- which explores the ideas of jazz, hip-hop, electronica, African music, and other genres -- has an organic feel to it, filled with soft, natural edges and fluid energies. When not performing with Medeski Martin & Wood, Martin continues to collaborate with other musicians in improvisational projects, many of which are documented on his own Amulet Records imprint, which he founded in 1995.
Blades, a native Chicagoan, has become the San Francisco Bay Area's first call organist and is rapidly gaining momentum throughout the world. For several years, he has been named in the Downbeat critics poll under Rising Star for organ. Wil has kept the traditional sounds of Jimmy Smith, Larry Young, and Groove Holmes alive, while creating a more personal, modern sound. Wil has performed and recorded with John Lee Hooker, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Melvin Sparks, Idris Muhammad, Joe Louis Walker, Don Braden, Donald Harrison, Karl Denson, Will Bernard, Charlie Hunter, Stanton Moore, Anders Osborne Scott Amendola and many others.
Billy Martin and Wil Blades Duo with:
Chris Zanardi & The High Beamz Featuring:
James Whiton- Standup Bass/Vocals (EMT/Tom Waits)
Jordan Feinstein- Keys/Vocals (Ritual/LaGente)
Jefferson Bergey- Vocals
Mo Sardella- Drums/Vocals (Sol Rising)
Chris Zanardi- Guitar (Five Eyed Hand)
Boom Boom Room, Friday, May 31st, San Francisco, CA @8:00pm
By 2001, I'd already been playing the Drummstick, (my analog-MIDI drum controller), for 7 seven years, and in August of that same year, I finally got the chance to debut the first ever Drummstick album with a CD release show at the State Theater in Falls Church, Va. Joining me were my regular bandmates, (Celia DuBose, Neil Mezebish and Jack Wright), and some special guests, Siobhan Canty, Neeta Ragoowansi, Eric Dahlman, Carlos Martins, and the Indian percussionist Sandip Burman. Burman nearly stole the show with his incredible tabla playing, and rightly so, as he was also on tour with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones promoting their "Outbound" album with Andy Narell, Paul Hanson and Paul McCandless.
The next day, we took Burman to Wolftrap, Va. to rejoin the tour with Fleck and the Flecktones. It was there that I first met Roy "Futureman" Wooten, off stage after a great sound check. Wooten and I spoke at length about the Drumitar, (his $10,000 customized/cannibalized SynthAxe guitar synth, turned into a drum controller); my Drummstick; triplet hand patterns to play; using MIDI; it was both an insightful and illuminating experience. By then, I'd also gone through the trials, tribulations and joy of trying to obtain patents, and faced the reality of the costs, headaches and heartbreaks, associated with making and marketing the Drummstick. Curious, I asked Wooten why he never tried to manufacture his own version of the Drumitar, or something akin to it; he certainly had the money; the notoriety and the platform to promote it.
Wooten looked at me, smiled and said, "You already know why... Do you really want to spend the time and money on attorneys and running a business, or do you want to do what we do best? Play music with these cool instruments... Let someone else do it..." As it turned out, that someone else was David Haney and his custom Zendrum shop in Atlanta. Haney had created a fabulous, MIDI percussion controller: the Zendrum. Affordable, durable, responsive and light; it could even be used with a wireless box. Its approach however, was more horizontal, and worn like a guitar. Wooten also owned and used them live; but he actually played it vertically, or used it horizontally on a stand.
Neil "Mez" Mezebish, the saxophonist of my Drummstick band, actually surprised me one day and showed me a lovely maple Zendrum ZX he just bought; he then let me program it and try it out. I immediately flipped the Zendrum to a vertical position, and tried to work with it. One thing I was never able to do, was play the Zendrum in the normal, horizontal position; too many years on the Drummstick made that a bit too awkward for me. The straps weren't in the best place to play it vertically, but I resolved to move them if I ever had one. After 20 minutes or so, I'd programmed the Zendrum to a playable level; it was so incredibly responsive and amazing; I immediately loved it.
By 2007, the Drummstick had long since realized its analog to MIDI potential, and so I finally made the switch. The Zendrum proved it was better in virtually every way except one; it was designed to be played and worn horizontally, like a guitar. My Drummsticks were played vertically, much like the 10-stringed bass guitar, the Chapman Stick.
Nevertheless; Haney built me a custom, black Zendrum ZX, modeled after Jimi Hendrix's black Fender Stratocaster. Undaunted, I removed and replaced the straplocks to different places on the Zendrum, so that I could play it vertically. I'd seen Wooten do the same thing with one of his Zendrums earlier, so I knew it could be done. Voila, worked like a charm and I have to say that I honestly haven't played any of the Drummsticks much since.
The "Jimi Hendrix" Zendrum ZX and the new Zendrum EXP
Still, as much as I loved the Zendrum, I loved the ergonomics of the
Drummstick more; it was more natural for me to play that way; African
talking drummers played that way, and so did singer Bobby McFerrin when
he drummed on his torso during a duet with Wayne Shorter.
Seeing Bobby
McFerrin, and all those African drummers and Chapman Stick players like Alphonso
Johnson and later Tony Levin, gave me the idea for the original
Drummstick back in 1994. For years, I'd secretly hoped Haney would make a
Zendrum with a vertical approach in mind, like a Drummstick. Enter the
new Zendrum EXP.
John Emrich is a big proponent of the Zendrum, and is considered one of the world's best when it comes to playing and recording electronic percussion. As it turned out, he was also interested in the idea of a slightly different, vertically shaped Zendrum. Not long ago, he and Haney recently teamed up to create the Zendrum EXP.
As soon as I saw it, I knew my prayers were answered, and Wooten's words would turn out to be prophetic. The EXP will arrive in July; after that, I'll have a more detailed look at this great new instrument. Meantime, here is Emrich and a first look at the Zendrum EXP...
Describing this latest release, Trilok Gurtu's website provides the best insight, stating, "Two short snippets recorded live by Trilok Gurtu and Don Cherry, bookend the
album “Spellbound”: a 33-second improvisation in a duo with Cherry on
trumpet and Trilok Gurtu, who can be heard on the drum set especially
converted and modified for his needs, forms the start of the new CD by
the Indian percussionist, while a brief “Thank you, thank you very much”
from Cherry for the applause of the audience closes the album.
Even though the other pieces on “Spellbound” contain no other
recordings with this jazz legend, who died in Malaga in Spain in 1995,
every single sound on the CD is an expression of Trilok Gurtu's great
admiration for the man and musician Don Cherry. After all, it was the
American trumpeter who, in the first half of the 1970s, encouraged the
young percussionist, freshly arrived in Europe, i.e. Italy, from his
homeland of India, to pursue his vision of an intuitive music which is
open to the world and embraces the world, and to realise this vision.
And even more. With every track on “Spellbound” Trilok Gurtu has
turned to the instrument that Cherry himself played: the trumpet. This
brass instrument is practically a symbol for Gurtu's own musical vision.
In its different versions, the trumpet has found a place in countless
cultural circles around the world and has become an essential element of
many different styles. The trumpet plays an important role in
classical, symphonic music, just as in pop, world and, of course, jazz
music.
“Spellbound” is by no means a typical album for the percussionist
who was born in 1951 in Bombay (today Mumbai) in India. For several
reasons. At first glance we are surprised that, after such a long time,
Trilok Gurtu has turned again to improvised music even though all his
life the concept of “jazz” has always been far too restrictive. But,
just like his one-time mentor and friend Don Cherry, with whom Gurtu
started playing just a few years after the first encounter in Italy, he
is not concerned with style boundaries. For Gurtu jazz is an attitude
which makes it possible for him in the first place to overcome the
boundaries between styles and genres; and to elaborate the quintessence -
also in emotional terms - of his music: jazz as a universal language
which, despite all of its different dialects, is spoken and understood
all over the world.
With “Spellbound” Gurtu once again underlines the fact that jazz
still forms the basis for his musical oeuvre. With his band he takes a
surprising leap into the history of swing music in the USA and also
plays pieces by style-forming trumpeters who have long been a part of
the jazz canon: Dizzy Gillespie's Afro-Cuban classic “Manteca”, or a
tribute to the extraordinary fusion sound of Miles Davis from the 1970s,
“Jack Johnson/Black Saint”, as well as his “All Blues” from the
masterpiece “Kind Of Blue” and, of course, Don Cherry's “Universal
Mother” which, with its genre-crossing flow in the version by Gurtu, is
almost like a further motto for “Spellbound”. With the music on his new
album the percussionist succeeds in something that nowadays is unusual
and indeed rare: building a bridge between the continents and cultures.
With “old” Europe as the geographical basis which, with its
multi-layered cultural and musical history, has become Gurtu's second
home.
This becomes clear in the line-up of trumpeters he invited to
collaborate in the recording of “Spellbound”. The Norwegian Nils Petter
Molvær, for example, who, like no other European trumpeter, can
translate the seething funk-rock mixture of a Miles Davis from the early
1970s into the expression of an improvising musician from Europe. Or
the Italian Paolo Fresu, who always manages to transform the melodious,
hot-blooded temperament of his homeland into a cool sound design. Or the
German multi-talent Matthias Schriefl, whose youthful impetuosity
stretches even Gurtu's music beyond the boundaries of tonality. And then
there is Ibrahim Maalouf, a native of Lebanon living in France, who
plays the melisma of Arabic musical culture on his unusual quarter tone
trumpet, as well as Hasan Gözetlik from Turkey, who transfers the
emotionality-increasing microtonality of the folklore of his homeland to
a current, contemporary music.
A veritable symbol of Trilok Gurtu's vision of a world music
“without borders” is a number that in this acoustic context is a genuine
surprise. With his version of Miles Davis' “All Blues”, Gurtu mixes the
cultures in passing: In a 5/4 time unusual for this jazz classic, Gurtu
and his band generate a link to the rhythmic consciousness of his
homeland India. With his scintillatingly phrased solo, the young US
trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire takes the succinct riff theme back to its
origins in the USA and, with a bow to the great musical history of
Europe, the classical trumpet virtuoso Matthias Höfs from Hamburg brings
this Miles Davis classic to an end. Trilok Gurtu's equilateral
triangle, with the equally musical and cultural corner points of India
America and Europe, is perfect..."
This Friday night, The Orange Peels return to Cafe Du Nord for 2 shows, (10:00 pm is sold out), to celebrate the release of their latest album, "Sun Moon". Led by the Sunnyvale pop-smith Allen Clapp, and his partner-in-crime, bassist Jill Pries, this new album also features longtime member John Moremen on guitar, and drummer Gabriel Coen, "Sun Moon" is the band's first collaborative effort. Clapp and his cohorts have kept true to their wonderful sound on this new material, plus they've also added a few songs only heard at their live performances, like the rollicking "Aether Tide", a crowd favorite. The Peels website provides a bit of insight into the making of Sun Moon, stating that, "Sometimes plans can be overrated. Sure they can help focus a group toward a common goal, but overdo it and you can end up with an album that sounds and feels more like a corporate quarterly report than art…"
"When The Orange Peels embarked on recording sessions for their fifth album, Sun Moon (Minty Fresh/Mystery Lawn Music), the band really didn’t have a direction in mind. Afterall, they’d already conquered the indiepop, powerpop and West-Coast rock genres with their critically acclaimed back-catalog, and they didn’t want to fall into the old trap of trying to repeat past successes.
What came next was exciting, unexpected and frustrating as the band navigated a new sound it was inventing with each new session. Gathering on Sunday afternoons without a clear idea of what would happen, the band came up with something new every time, and recorded the fresh tracks hours later.
Peels’ bassist and founding member Jill Pries was partly to blame for the shake-up in the band’s process. The band’s main songwriter, Allen Clapp, was busy producing albums for other likeminded bands (Jim Ruiz Set, The Corner Laughers, Alison Faith Levy) and running his new boutique record label, Mystery Lawn Music. Pries wanted to get the Orange Peels back on track, so she started organizing sessions even when Clapp didn’t have anything written for the band to record.
“I wasn’t too happy about that at first, because that wasn’t the way we typically did things,” Clapp confesses. “I guess I had a certain idea of what a songwriter should do, and I felt like I needed to be bringing the song stuff.”
"But it opened up the process to a group dynamic that breathed new life into the band. With the collaboration of lead guitarist John Moremen (Flotation Device, Half Japanese, Roy Loney) who’s recorded and toured with the band on both drums and guitar—and new drummer Gabriel Coan (who comes to the Peels from ambient and electronic bands including Carta and Continental), the band just started making this new kind of music.
It would then be up to Clapp to figure out how to embellish the raw tracks with lyrics and vocals. This was not always an easy path. Some songs had four sets of discarded lyrics, and some ended up with none at all. “I had to figure out who this person was who would be singing a song that sounded like this . . . and then get into that person’s head and write something from their perspective,” Clapp says.
So it is on its fifth album that the band finds itself navigating the confluence of post rock, indiepop, space rock, nouveau psychedelia, and prog rock, with melody as its only compass. That’s probably what some critic will say anyway. The Orange Peels couldn’t really tell you for sure though. They never really wrote a business plan for the album. It all just happened. Welcome to Sun Moon…."
A very nice welcome indeed.
The Orange Peels Record Release Show with Ocean Blue
Friday, May 17th @ Cafe Du Nord, San Francisco
Showtimes @ 7:30 and (10:00 Sold Out)
With the mercurial defending champion, grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura off in Europe, (and managing to defeat the current world champion, Vishwanathan Anand), grandmaster Gata Kamsky won his 4th US Chess Championship title in a 3 game playoff against Alejandro Ramirez of Costa Rica. The previous 9 rounds saw Kamsy lead the field, only to be slowed by successive draws, and allowing Ramirez to catch him. Tied going into am playoff, the first two games were hotly contested draws, however the third game proved to be decisive. The rules of the championship state that if the players are tied 1-1 going into a third game, they must play what is called, an "Armageddon match", where players bid for time and color.
Hosted by the Saint Louis Chess Club, the US Chess Championship was moderated on the web by 3 of the best in US chess, Jennifer Shahade, grandmasters Yasser Seirawan and Maurice Ashley. Chess viewing is a far cry from the the old PBS days of Fischer vs. Spassky, and commentators Shelby Lyman and Jimmy Sherwin. Most major chess events are seen, and analyzed in real-time on the web, by former champions, as well as the combatants.
The chess master Mike Klein also described the game on the internet, writing "In sealed envelopes, Ramirez wrote the time 19:45, while Kamsky’s envelope read 20 minutes even. Ramirez thus got 19:45 to Kamsky’s 45 minutes, while Ramirez had black and draw odds.
The two reprised the opening from their first rapid game. Kamsky, needing to win, decided to keep all the minor pieces on the board this time. He slowly increased his square domination while Ramirez listlessly shuffled pieces round the last two ranks. Eventually Kamsky pushed forward, and Ramirez, getting low on time, decided to take his chances in an opposite-colored bishop endgame.
With Ramirez playing only on increment, he could not defend once Kamsky got his third passed pawn. Ramirez resigned after Kamsky denuded black’s best defenders. After the game, Kamsky told Ramirez that 37…e5 was the critical mistake, without which black should hold. Ramirez agreed, explaining that he did not see 39…g4 in his calculations.“I was starting to get really nervous,” Kamsky said. “It wasn’t clear until the last move.”
Ramirez said the experience of playing worse positions was “torture”, then he was reminded that he still pockets $20,000. “I’ve never won that much in chess, ever,” he said.
After the tense playoff, Kamsky seemed more relieved than elated. He flew in from a tournament in Switzerland just days before the championship, and he has less than one week until he competes against the world’s best in Greece. “I just want to get some sleep..."
Kamsky, Gata (2741) vs. Ramirez, Alejandro (2551)
2013 US Championship Playoff, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
"Bass and bassoon are not your usual musical duo partners. But when Paul
Hanson and Ariane Cap met and talked about how they have both been
using their instruments beyond their traditional roles, they felt an
immediate kinship on so many levels. They agreed that what matters most
is the music and not the 'tool'. They could relate how one could just
fall in love with a sound. They understood the challenge and joy of
hearing something inside and bending the instrument beyond its intended
techniques to create new sounds.
They both went digging into their piles of favorite compositions and
came together to jam and experiment. As soon as music started speaking
it became apparent that they had a unique sound! Their shared
appreciation for diverse styles immediately took them around the world,
to the past and into the present. Above all what made it click was their
huge appreciation for melody, and - equally above all - their huge
appreciation for groove. In record time they put together a set of music
that is fiery and fresh, interesting and unexpected, always staying
musical, groovy and melodious. This Friday, from 12:30 to 1:30 PM at the
Cadillac Hotel, Hanson and Cap will take their instruments beyond
traditional roles and will dish up something totally interesting, fresh
and unexpected..."
As a bassoonist over the last 20 years, Paul has been one of a select few setting new standards for what is possible on this most classical of woodwind instruments.
As one reviewer puts it, “But he simply transcends technique to a point where the listener no longer has in mind that it’s a BASSOON that he’s playing.” From his roots as an award-winning classical bassoonist and jazz saxophonist-Paul has enjoyed a truly diverse musical career.
As an improvising bassoonist, Paul has recorded and/or performed with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Wayne Shorter, Peter Erskine, Cirque Du Soleil, David Binney, Dennis Chambers, Zenith Patrol, Billy Childs, Billy Higgins, Ray Charles, Charlie Hunter, Patrice Rushen, Alex Acuna, Abraham Laboriel, Medeski Martin & Wood, Bob Weir’s RATDOG, T. Lavitz from Dixie Dregs, Jeff Coffin, Jeff Sipe, Jonas Hellborg, Afro/Cuban pianist Omar Sosa, Bob Moses, Kai Eckhardt. Paul has lent his bassoon playing to The Klezmorim, St. Josephs Ballet, soloist with Napa Symphony, jazz bassoon soloist with Oakland East Bay Symphony, DAVKA.
As a saxophonist, Paul has recorded and/or performed with Eddie Money (tenor sax soloist on the 1985 hit song “Take Me Home Tonight”), Boz Scaggs, The Temptations, Tower of Power, Steve Smith, Tom Coster, Randy Jackson (pre-American Idol), What It Is, Omar Sosa, dobroist Rob Ickes, Bobby Blue Bland and others.
Ariane Cap is an Austrian multi instrumentalist, composer, music educator, bassist (upright, electric, fretless, mini bass), pianist, vocalist and flutist. She has turned out compositions for Karney Music and Sound, Somatone and Wolftrack audio, regularly teaches at the Berkeley Jazz School, The Wyoming Rock Camp Experience (10 years in residence), the Berkeley Jazz Workshop and her own Music School, Step Up Music.
Performing credits include the Celtic Rock Band Tempest, The Kid-punk rock band The Sippy Cups, the African Band The Palmwine Boys, the Guitar Virtuoso Muriel Anderson, the Austrian funk band The Mozart Band and Cirque du Soleil as well as many local Jazz, Wold and Rock/Funk artists.
Ariane also performs a bass solo program using loopers and effects and has recently teamed up with Bassoonist Paul Hanson to create the eclectic duo OoN. She is currently working on several recording projects featuring her own music as well as writing books on her teaching methods.
An album, video project as well as Kickstarter Campaign are in the works...."
