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A Musician Who Performs With a Scalpel
2008-05-24 00:00:00
In a fascinating article from the NY Times comes this new research: For Claudius Conrad, a 30-year-old surgeon who has played the piano seriously since he was 5, music and medicine are entwined -- from the academic realm down to the level of the fine-fingered dexterity required at the piano bench and the operating table. "If I don't play for a couple of days," said Dr. Conrad, a third-year surgical resident at Harvard Medical School who also holds doctorates in stem cell biology and music philosophy, "I cannot feel things as well in surgery. My hands are not as tender with the tissue. They are not as sensitive to the feedback that the tissue gives you." Like many surgeons, Dr. Conrad says he works better when he listens to music. And he cites studies, including some of his own, showing that music is helpful to patients as well -- bringing relaxation and reducing blood pressure, heart rate, stress hormones, pain and the need for pain medication. Music Soothes the Savage Beast, ...
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Poetry to the People!
2008-05-03 00:00:00
In 2005, The University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts and Sciences created a free online data base of over 1500 live digital recordings of poets reading their own work: Rock, pop, jazz...poetry? Thanks to PennSound, Ezra Pound, Adrienne Rich and William Carlos Williams can now fill their own play list on your iPod. A project of Penn's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW), PennSound has been giving the world free access to the largest collection of poetry sound files on the Internet since January 2005. The project is about preservation as well as distribution, as poetry sound recordings are often at risk of deteriorating if they are not converted or copied. One of the founders, Charles Bernstein explains, "The beauty of PennSound is that in the course of preserving these recordings, we are also making available a treasure trove of wonderful poetry performances that we believe will attract a whole new generation to poetry as a performance art." Check it out, downl...
More About: People , Poetry , The People

Suzanne Vega's blog at the New York Times
2008-04-18 00:00:00
The New York Times has hired Suzanne Vega to blog about the creative process of the singer/songwriter, and so far so good. Her latest entry is all about how she writes music: When I was a teenager, I used to have a neat sort of formula for writing songs. It worked over and over, and I got about 60 songs out of it. Now it doesn't work so well, and I am forced to write in all different ways. But what worked for so long was this: I would start to write a song sometime late Saturday afternoon. Then, after dinner, when everyone in my family was doing other Saturday-night things, I would go into my room by myself and fool around with the guitar for several hours, usually managing to hammer out some kind of idea. In those days the chords came first, and they depended on what I was singing about. Then the melody, and lastly the lyrics. It goes on from there, and they've been nice enough to post a demo of her song, "Bound," from the latest album. Check it out!
More About: Blog , New York Times

Nina Simone: Protest Anthology
2008-04-17 00:00:00
A collection of songs and never-before-seen video interviews of Nina Simone just came out over at iTunes. The tunes are classic Simone - riveting, passionate, and righteous! Check out the video clips, too. Her protest music is just as cogent and important now as it was then (even if the country has evolved away from policeman with dogs chasing after black southerners). Here's an example:
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Weekly MP3 (4/7/08): Vinson Valega Quartet - "Day by Day"
2008-04-09 00:00:00
Here's a recording {14mb} of my quartet from last month at The 55 Bar, featuring Chris Bacas on soprano, Dimitri Moderbacher on tenor, Joe Fitzgerald on bass, and myself (Vinson Valega) on drums. The song is "Day by Day," composed by Sammy Cahn, Axel Stordahl, and Paul Weston. At the end of the drum solo, we just skip playing the melody (or head) and go directly into Ornette Coleman's "Kathelin Gray," something I like to do from time to time with my group. It also rhymes, which I like: "Day by Day" into "Kathelin Gray." Get it? Finally, I'll be bringing my quartet into The 55 Bar again in two days, this coming Wednesday, April 9th, from 7-9pm. In addition to the old stalwarts, Chris Bacas and Gary Wang, we're including a special guest and fabulous musician, Sheryl Bailey, on guitar, to spice things up with some harmony and special grooves like only Sheryl can bring. Come check out the new group! Note: The 55 Bar is located at 55 Christopher Street, just east of 7th Avenue, ...
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Smooth Jazz: Gentle Into That Good Night?
2008-04-06 00:00:00
A-ha! Have we finally arrived at the end of the era of smooth jazz, that horribly-named type of music that consistently conflated "real" jazz with "fake" jazz? Born in focus groups conducted in windowless conference rooms, named by a radio station consultant, derided by critics, smooth jazz vanished from Washington's FM radio dial as the month began. It was 14 years old. This tidbit is hard to believe, though: It was a listener who uttered the phrase that a consultant used to sum up this fusion of instrumental music styles. At a focus group held in Chicago by Broadcast Architecture, the firm that first sold radio stations on the new format in the early 1990s, a woman who was asked to describe the songs being tested blurted out "smooth jazz." It seems next to impossible to trace the origin of the marketed name for this Kenny-G-kind of music to one woman in one focus group. But the Washington Post says it's true...hmmm... The problem was never really with the type of music in t...
More About: Jazz , Night , Good , Good Night , Smooth jazz

Joshua Redman at The Village Vangaurd
2008-03-23 23:36:00
If you can stop by The Village Vanguard here in New York tonight, run, don't walk, to see the Joshua Redman Trio, featuring Joshua on tenor sax, Reuben Rogers on bass, and the fantastic Brian Blade on drums. This chordless trio is rocking and free from those pesky guitarists and pianists. Read the review from this week's NY Times...

Cachao Lopez, Master Bassist: R.I.P.
2008-03-23 19:13:00
At 89 years old, Cachao led an amazing life, stretching from the 1930's into the 21st century: Cuban-born jazz musician Israel "Cachao" Lopez , credited with inventing the mambo, has died in Miami at the age of 89. The bassist and composer left Cuba for the US in the early 1960s and continued to perform until his final months. The mambo emerged from his improvisational work with his late brother, multi-instrumentalist Orestes Lopez, in the late 1930s. Lopez, a classically-trained bassist who began performing with Havana's symphony orchestra as a teenager, was a prolific composer of songs and pieces of music based on the Cuban music style of son. He and his brother basically invented the "Mambo": In a 2004 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, he said the origins of mambo "happened in 1937." "My brother and I were trying to add something new to our music and came up with a section that we called danzon mambo," he said. "It made an impact and stirred up people. At that tim...
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The new world sounds influencing jazz
2008-03-23 05:51:00
Nate Chinen's got a nicely written story on the direction that jazz is taking these days: Over the last decade or so there has been a proliferation of international artists dealing seriously with jazz without tuning out their native cultures...Lionel Loueke, a guitarist from the West African country of Benin, was a spellbinding presence at Joe’s Pub a couple of months ago as he started into the title track of "Karibu," his exceptional major-label debut. Consider Mr. Loueke's band mates, who performed with him: the bassist Massimo Biolcati grew up in Sweden and Italy, and the drummer Ferenc Nemeth is from Hungary. A short list of others would include the Cuban drummers Dafnis Prieto and Francisco Mela, the Puerto Rican saxophonists David Sánchez and Miguel Zenón, and the Israeli clarinetist and saxophonist Anat Cohen. What's striking about these musicians is the elasticity of their approaches. They have shown that jazz can assume a range of dialects without losing its essence...
More About: Sounds , World , Jazz , New World

This is your brain on jazz.
2008-03-19 00:00:00
In a remarkable study conducted at Johns Hopkins University, two professors - Charles Limb and Alan Braun - discovered which part of the brain is used when jazz musicians are improvising: Curious about his own "brain on jazz," Limb and...
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The great bassist, Dennis Irwin, has passed...
2008-03-11 00:00:00
It is truly a sad day in the world of jazz as one of our most beloved musicians died yesterday. Dennis Irwin , who played with everyone since beginning his career in the '70's, starting with Betty Carter in 1976 and...
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Weekly MP3 (2/23/08): Vinson Valega Quartet - "Kathelin Gray"
2008-02-27 00:00:00
This version of Ornette Coleman's "Kathelin Gray " was recorded last September, 2007, at The Garage here in The Village, NYC. It features Anton Denner on alto sax, Chris Bacas on tenor sax, Gary Wang on bass, & Vinson Valega on...
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Bill Cosby on jazz drumming
2008-02-27 00:00:00
Back in the '70's, Dick Cavett was a talk show host who always had very interesting people on his show. This particular clip is of Bill Cosby hilariously talking about his early career as a jazz drummer and what it...
More About: Jazz , Drumming

Herbie Hancock wins Album of the Year
2008-02-12 00:00:00
In a coup for jazz, Herbie Hancock 's tribute CD to Joni Mitchell, "River: The Joni Letters," won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year . In wonderful interview back when the album was nominated, Herbie remarked: "It's pretty strange on...
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Freakonomics Forum on the Future of Music
2008-01-25 00:00:00
The fellas who write the Freakonomics blog over at The NY Times are always insightful and interesting to read. They recently sponsored an online forum where they invited various individuals in the music industry to comment on the "Future of...
More About: Music , Forum , The Future

R.I.P. Oscar Peterson
2007-12-31 00:00:00
Following Frank Morgan into the unknown, we lost Oscar Peterson a week ago to kidney failure at age 82. Certainly one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, his enormous spirit and generosity was unique among the jazz greats....
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R.I.P. Frank Morgan
2007-12-25 00:00:00
One of the most underrated alto saxophonist of jazz died this week - Frank Morgan . He was known for his light touch, soft tone, sweet personality, and his prison internment. One of his most endearing CDs from the '90's was...
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Radiohead "Pay-What-You-Want" model revisited
2007-12-19 00:00:00
In case you missed it, Radiohead 's new CD, "In Rainbows," was released to the public as a download from their website - for free, if you didn't want to pay anything. Or, you could pay what you wanted. It was...
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CD Release Party!!
2007-12-13 00:00:00
Come out to listen to The Nicki Denner Group, featuring the fantastic Julian Llanos on vocals - TONIGHT, December 12th!! They'll be playing music from their new CD, "El Medico de Coqui," at Smoke Jazz Club on 105th and Broadway....
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Weekly MP3 (12/4/07): Vinson Valega Quartet - "Long & Wrong"
2007-12-06 00:00:00
I know it's been a while since I posted an MP3 of a performance, and I'll do my best to catch up...Here's a version of "Long & Wrong ," performed at a recent performance at The 55 Bar here in New...
More About: Vinson , Weekly , Quartet

New self-tuning guitar
2007-12-04 00:00:00
Sick and tired of all those dang guitarists tuning up before each song? Well, Gibson has now healed your pain: Robotics technology developed by German company Tronical Gmbh in partnership with Gibson Guitar Corp. enables Gibson's newest Les Paul model...
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1. Find Drum. 2. Grab Stick. 3. Bang! Boom!
2007-11-25 00:00:00
All you drum-heads out there know about the industry of instructional videos detailing the latest rhythms on the drumset. From keeping good jazz time to heavy metal drumming to Latin clave, there's a video to show you how to become...
More About: Find , Bang , Drum , Boom , Stick

Banking CDs - in the key of music, that is...
2007-11-19 00:00:00
Last year my trio played a gig at the local HSBC bank here in New York, and the event was a huge success. The sound in the bank was fantastic, and the customers totally dug the music. We wanted to...
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Striking writers in Hollywood and Times Square
2007-11-12 00:00:00
Is it a coincidence that the writers in Hollywood and on Broadway are striking at the same time? Or is it just a further example of greedy business trying pay little or nothing for the intellectual property that brings it...
More About: Writers , Times Square , Times , Square

Roy Haynes transcription
2007-11-02 00:00:00
One of my favorite drummers of all time is Roy Haynes, and the method by which we jazz musicians learn this music is by copying the masters (like Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones, Max Roach, etc.) who came before us. For...
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Weekly MP3 (10/26/07): Vinson Valega Quartet - "This is What Democracy Sou
2007-10-26 00:00:00
Earlier this week, we played at The Garage in The Village and recorded this version of "This is What Democracy Sounds Like." Inspired by sounds I heard while marching in a protest back in 2004 against the Iraq war, we...
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Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?
2007-10-16 00:00:00
In a fascinating article back in April in the NY Times, author Duncan Watts (Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age) details research into how certain songs or other items in pop culture catch on and become hits: As...
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Weekly MP3 (10/6/07): Vinson Valega Quartet - "Talk Time"
2007-10-06 00:00:00
Recorded in the wee hours of September 26th here in New York City at The Garage, "Talk Time " is a Chris Bacas funky original that has no harmony. But, man, does this one have a vibe! We've been playing it...
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The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise
2007-09-29 00:00:00
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the "Little Rock Nine," when nine African-American students were initially prevented by Governor Orval Faubus from entering a racially segregated high school in Arkansas (he used the National Guard to prevent them from...
More About: Louis Armstrong , Louis , Made , Noise , Armstrong

Alzheimer's gettin' you down? Get some Gershwin!
2007-09-22 00:00:00
Here's a wonderful article from the NY Times detailing the incredible power of music to unlock old memories and speech: George Gershwin 's melodies, many of them with lyrics by his brother Ira, have kept fingers snapping, feet tapping and hearts...
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