Telling a Story- Joel Frahm Master Class

Last week I was in the Czech Republic teaching at the Prague International Summer Jazz Workshop. It was an amazing experience all the way around- teachers staff, students, the city; everything was fantastic. The two other saxophone teachers just happened to be two of my favorite saxophonists on the planet. The first, Joel Frahm, is a rising tenor star on the NYC scene. The first thing that attracted me about Joel's playing was his sound, which to me is the ideal tenor sound. The recordings that I'd heard of Joel before the workshop sounded very good, though a little tame. I wasn't prepared for the monstrous saxophonist that I head in person. Joel really has it all; huge warm sound, ridiculous technique, hard swinging feel, total awareness of tradition, melodic sense, expressive ability, and modern post-bop facility. He's also warm, generous and entertaining guy. Hanging with Joel, and the other teachers, for a week had quite an effect on my teaching style and on my musical concept in general.

The other saxophonist was a Hungarian alto saxophonist from Budapest named Kristof Basco. I had run across Kristof's MySpace page about a year or two ago. After listening to the pages of literally hundreds saxophonists from all over the world I found Kristof to be one of the most interesting alto players I had ever heard, easily my favorite cat in all of Europe. Kristof studied at Berklee about 10 years after I did, spent some time in NYC and then moved back home to Budapest. He thinks like a composer when constructing his solos, building them thoughtfully and slowly. He's one of the few players to really have a complete awareness of motivic development. His tone is dark and rich, one of the few guys with what I consider to be a real alto sound.

I plan on doing interviews in the future for this blog with both of these saxophonists, so keep checking back.

Joel gave a very inspiring master class during the workshop called Telling a Story. I think it was definitely one of the most interesting master classes I have ever attended. Angus Grundy, one of the students in my combo class, recorded it and then made detailed notes on time markings and topics.

Telling a Story- Joel Frahm's Master Class
Notes to Joel Frahm's Master Class

Joel Frahm's home page
Czech Jazz Society
Paval Wlosok photography.

Three-horn chart of Equinox (C minor)

Equinox

Three-horn chart of Black Narcissus

Black Narcissus

The Minutes Go Like Hours When You SIng

Here's a very funny song about that singer who always wants to sit in on the gig. This is a classic.

The Minutes Go Like Hours When You Sing

David McGillicuddy's guitar lessons on YouTube

Here are some nice guitar lessons that my buddy David just posted on YouTube:

McGillicuddy's guitar lessons

New Matt Otto album- download for donation

My old buddy Matt Otto just posted another entire album on his blog. Otto is a sideman on this project and the band leader is Josh Welchez. It's called Lost and Found.

He's doing another "download for donation" a la Radio Head. If you like the music you are invited to donate however much you feel it's worth to you, no pressure. I always love everything Matt does. I can't wait to listen to this stuff, maybe when everything calms down a little....

Lost and Found

Document for Prague International Summer Jazz Workshop

I put together a PDF document with a lot of my articles on harmony and improvisation, as well as key material from other books. This will be the material that I'll be having my students work from during the International Prague Summer Jazz Workshop, which begins this coming weekend.

I will continue to add to this document in the future, but there's a lot of useful material here already.

Casa Valdez Jazz Workshop Document

Friends, stress, moving and travelling

That's for all the great comments and friend requests on Facebook. I haven't had much time to respond to all of you because my life has been incredibly stressful lately. If you're thinking about buying or selling a house right now- DON'T. I've spent everyday on the phone over the last few months with real estate agents, mortgage brokers, roofers, painters, city planners, contractors, and window guys. It has been getting more and more insane and as we're getting closer to closing on the house we're selling and the house we're buying. All the regulations for appraisers and lenders has just recently changed and we're the first batch of people to get screwed by them. I never want to go through this hellish torture again for the rest of my life.

If everything goes as planned, and so far nothing has, I'll be signing papers and moving next Tuesday. Thursday I leave to teach at the Prague International Summer Jazz Workshop. No pressure or anything.

I've commissioned Dan Gaynor to arrange a bunch more three horn charts for me, which I'll be posting here for all of you, most of these new charts are Lawrence Williams originals. Keep checking back because I'll be posting this material soon.

The art of Lawrence Williams

The last few years of Lawrence Williams' life were fraught with health problems and financial setbacks, but he never let himself get discouraged or depressed by them. Even when he lost his leg and couldn't play the drums anymore he treated it as a minor setback (if that). His reaction was to just compose more music and to start working with pastels. I've never met anyone with as much inner strength as Lawrence possessed. He was always highly grateful for everything that he experienced, even things that most people would consider tragedies. To Lawrence, these life struggles were simply opportunities to take stock of his life and to learn to grow as a person. He always had another grand musical project planned, and though these sounded like grandiose fantasies at the time, more often than naught he actually pulled them off.

I hope you appreciate the Lawrence Williams charts that I've been posting here. You won't find this music anywhere else. It's really amazing stuff.

Here is a video clip of an interview I did with Lawrence in 2002.

Here's an album of Lawrence's beautiful pastels that I posted on Flikr.

Two horn chart of Warne Marsh's Background Music

Background Music

Alphabet Soup EAST- Hip-Hop/Jazz

Alphabet Soup is a Hip-hop/jazz band that was formed in the early 90's in Oakland by some of my close friends in the Bay Area. The first Soup gigs were in a basement speakeasy called something like Captain's Corner. This place served only beer and Jagermeister and was in an awful part of town, so bad in fact that when bands played we had to hire security to escort patrons to and from their cars. There were always voluminous clouds of weed smoke hanging in the air of this nautical themed converted basement. Several other popular 'Nu-Jazz' (I hate that term) and Funk got their start at this illegal club. I played there regularly, with the quintet that I co-led with tenor saxophonist Kenny Brooks for years, until one of the patrons got shot outside the club. At that point we started looking for safer venues. It was sure fun while it lasted though.

Alphabet Soup became a major force in the Groove Jazz scene that was exploding in San Francisco in the 90's. People were calling this music Hip-Bop (Hip-Hop/Be-Bop), which eventually became Nu-Jazz (STUPID!). There were usually rappers and/or turntable-ists, funky drums grooves and modern sounding Jazz melodies and blowing. Charlie Hunter's trio was starting to become wildly popular around then. Kenny Brooks and I played in Hunter's Quintet D'Gengis, which was just four horns and Charlie. Pianist Dred Scott (who also plays drums), Charlie, Kenny Brooks and I would go out on Telegraph ave near UC Berkeley and busk on the street. We were always playing great sessions at Dred's Oakland loft with players like Joshua Redman, Eric Crystal, Click Dark, Wilber Krebs, Scott Amandola, Liberty Ellman, Dave McNabb. It was kind of a thriving little East Bay loft scene.

It was an exiting time because all of a sudden Jazz musicians discovered that if they just added some Hip-Hop grooves to their music they could actually play in popular clubs for lots of young people, what a shocker that was. Of course Miles discovered this back in the 60's, but it was a pretty big shift in the San Francisco club scene at the time. Young people are fickle about their musical tastes and soon enough the Swing dancing fad overtook many clubs. Alphabet Soup stayed together through the years, going through several different MCs, drummers and bassists. Kenny Brooks and Dred Scott kept the band working regularly through everything. When Charlie Hunter became a national act he took Kenny out on the road with him and I subbed for him for a while. Dred eventually moved to NYC and Jeff Chimenti (now with Rat Dog) took his chair while Dred was back east, though Dred would often make it back to SF for gigs.

Recently Kenny moved to NYC (he actually has cribs on both coasts) and it was only a matter of time before the Soup had their first NYC gig. Rapper CB made the trip out for the show and former West Coasters Jesse Murphy and Diego Voglino joined the band on bass and drums. Murph (who I grew up in Santa Cruz with) is one of my all-time favorite bass players. Last time I saw him play he was on Letterman playing with the Brazilian Girls. He came out wearing nothing but tight swim trunks, a bowler hat and electrical tape on his nipples!

In all the years that Soup has been together I'm sure that they have only rehearsed a handful of times, IF THAT! I wonder if they even rehearsed for this recent gig? After all, the loose weed-fueled vibe of the Soup is what made the band so special. This gig sounds great and Kenny B is absolutely KILLING it.

First set of Alphabet Soup East

Alphabet Soup's MySpace page
Kenny Brooks' home page
Dred Scott's home Page

SoundCloud

I just discovered a very cool site called SoundCloud that allows you to transfer, share and sell music. The basic free membership allows you to upload up to five tracks per month. There are no limits on file size and you get a nice looking page with all your tracks on it. SoundCloud allows you to easily share your audio files on Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, or by email.

They also give you a widget, which I just added to this blog, that allows other people to send you music files. All in all pretty damn cool. It would be perfect for anyone in music production who moves a lot of big files and doesn't want the hassle of an dealing with an FTP program.

My Casa Valdez SoundCloud playlist

SoundCloud: The Tour from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

Die Chris Potter, die! All the Things solo transcription PDF

A few months ago I posted a clip of Chris Potter playing an insane solo version of All the Things. Saxophonist Ben Doherty has gone and tackled the unbelievable feat of transcribing the entire solo! No kidding, this thing is 19 pages of pure ridiculousness.

Ben, have a little too much free time on your hands buddy?!

All kidding aside, this solo is an amazing example of Potter's mastery of the instrument, and also an example of Ben's extreme tenacity (it took him many months to finish).

If you find this transcription helpful please click this link and donate something to repay Ben for the months that he spent on this solo. Thanks,

Audio of Chris Potter playing All the Things You Are

Potter's All the Things You Are PDF

Transcription's Pool: Free Solo Transcriptions!

Pere Soto turned me on to a nice site that offers free downloads of solo transciptions. There are 94 saxophone transcriptions, 147 guitar transcriptions, and a handful of transcriptions for other instruments.

Transcription's Pool

Charlie Mariano's obituary- written by his daughters

Charlie Mariano

Born Carmine Ugo Mariano on November 12, 1923 in Boston MA died June 16, 2009 in Cologne Germany at the Mildred Scheel Hospiz. Charlie’s music career spans from 1940 when at the age of 17 his sister Colina gave him his first saxophone to 2009 when at the age of 85 he was still performing and recording music. Charlie served three years in the Army Air Corps during World War II where he met his first wife Glenna Gregory. Following his service in the military he became a student at Schillinger House (now Berklee College of Music) graduating in 1951. He became a well known alto saxophonist during his time with the Stan Kenton Orchestra and Shelly Manne through his West Coast era. In 1958 with wife and four daughters in tow Charlie returned to Boston to teach at Berklee where he immersed himself in the Boston jazz scene. Along with Herb Pomeroy and Ray Santisi he founded the Jazz Workshop which became a popular jazz club featuring many jazz greats. During this period he met and married Toshiko Akiyoshi and formed the Toshiko Mariano Quartet. Afterwards he also performed with Charles Mingus and appeared on the Black Saint and The Sinner Lady and Mingus Mingus Mingus albums. At this time his fifth daughter was born. From 1965 to 1971 he raised two of his daughters as a single father while teaching at Berklee. During that time he moved to Newburyport and formed a rock fusion band called Osmosis with local pianist Charlie Bechler. Prior to moving to Europe his sixth daughter was born with his partner Charlotte Bulathsinghala. While in Europe he played and recorded in many diverse musical genres including jazz rock fusion, South Indian music and contemporary European jazz. Charlie is considered one of the pioneers of world music.

He is remembered by his family as being a fun and loving dad who enjoyed eating lobster, ice cream and playing cards and scrabble by the beach. He also was a very deep and spiritual man who taught his children important life lessons.

He leaves behind his wife Dorothee Zippel Mariano, sister Connie Rosato, and daughters Sherry Mariano and her partner Joe Giarrrusso, Cynthia Mariano and her husband Bruce Blanchard, Melanie and her husband Albert Lamar, Celeste Mariano-Perrigo and her husband Peter and their brother Paris Mariano and his wife Lisa. Daughter Monday Michiru Sipiaguine and her husband Alex, and daughter Zana Mariano. Grandchildren Hillary Griffin, Gemma, Gwendolyn, Lila Fay and Albert Carmine Lamar and Nikita Sipiaguine; Great grandchildren Emily and Rachel Griffin. Nieces Lois Stevens and husband Gary, Pattie Mclay and husband Ken and many cousins and other relatives in Italy and the USA.

Charlie was predeceased by his parents Giovanni and Maria (DiGironimo) Mariano from Fallo, Abruzzo Italy and his oldest sister Colina (Mariano) Pauletti.

Charlie was cremated in Cologne Germany and his ashes were shipped to the family where they will be buried in the family plot in Boston. A memorial service is being planned by the family to celebrate his life but the date has not been set so please stay tuned…

In lieu of flowers the family suggests donations be made to the Charlie Mariano Scholarship fund at Berklee College of Music.