The leaves are turning orange, the sun is setting earlier, it’s finally warm in the bay area, and kids are back in school… Autumn!!! The time of year that is the most inspiring to me, and always seems to be filled with new possibilities.
On that note, I have just been asked to join my alma mater CSU East Bay as instructor for Jazz Trombone! I will be performing with the jazz ensemble at the end of November as part of my new residency there, which will feature a few of my compositions as well.
What else? Jazz Mafia is currently working on finishing our Emperor Norton Suite full length album, which will be completed soon. We will also be performing at Yoshi’s SF in November for 3 dates with 2 shows each night.
I am also beginning work on a new composition for the violin duet Double Take which will be premiered in December. Other than that, just busy playing gigs and staying healthy!
OKAY, I can’t believe a month went by without a post on here! SORRY! ^-^ Well what did you expect? I’ve been playing my a$$ off, working a ton, and just got back from spending a week in the desert at Black Rock City!!
Yes, I just went to Burning Man for the first time and had an incredible experience,, words cannot adequately describe the intense feelings that engulfed my heart while I was out there. I took the journey by myself without much of a plan of finding anyone, and luckily found all of my friends at camp Crossroads! The musicians included a bunch of Jazz Mafians, and we did our thang like we DO! It was amazing, we played a show every night in front of TONS of people who absolutely loved our music! I am still in a daze from the whole experience, the amount of love and energy that 60,000 people put into creating the city out of dust is just mind-blowing. It’s true what they say, you HAVE to go to experience it for yourself! And I do believe that everyone has truly unique and life changing moments that will forever bless your heart. … and make you addicted to going back again!!!
So what’s going on now in the meantime??!! Well I’ve got some fun shows coming up including a guest appearance with Oona at the Independent this Friday! And I have a couple of arranging projects involving strings that I will be working on in the next few weeks, stay tuned for more details.
Hey there! I’m going to try to be better about updating you on my happenings, there sure have been a lot lately!!
Played a really great show last night with Realistic Orchestra at Yoshi’s SF; in the set we got to play my original composition “Reactance” as well as a brand new arrangement I did (this past weekend, whew!), which was commissioned by dear friend Bill Evans as a tribute to Gil Scott-Heron & the British jazz group Loose Tubes.
Also recently played a great show at Bottom of the Hill with Lord Loves a Working Man! We had an amazing audience that came for their record release party, and I was super happy to get to play with them.
Earier that same day I had driven up to Grass Valley to perform with Brass Mafia at the CA Worldfest! We played two different fun sets on two different stages there, and then led a parade of people & kids of all ages throughout the festival grounds. It was a really great day filled with lots of positive energy from the staff as well as the festival attendees. The band loved it!
Let’s see… tomorrow I’m playing on the rooftop of Oakland Kaiser with Dynamic, which should be super fun. I’m also finishing some horn arrangements for a recording session with Renee Asteria, then more private & public gigs this coming month.. Also Jazz Mafia Symphony in LA!! I will do my best to keep my calendar up to date with stuff you can check out!
Well I just got back from an exciting and jam-packed week in New York City with Jazz Mafia Symphony! We got to perform on Summerstage with the legendary Roy Ayers along with 30 young musicians from the Harlem School of the Arts! Here’s a video of us performing one of the songs I arranged for the group:
I didn’t really want to advertise this fact, but I actually arranged this tune in an insanely short amount of time: I basically started on the plane to NY, and after I arrived at my accommodations, stayed up all night to finish in time for our first rehearsal! (It’s a long story, but basically we ended up in a position to arrange most of Roy’s music for our group on very short notice.) I also did an arrangement of Roy’s soundtrack theme to “Coffy” which is one of my all time favorite movies, so that was also super special!!
The week was filled with rehearsals, clinics with the HSA kids, club performances from Shotgun Wedding Quintet & Jazz Mafia String Quartet, and a bunch of schlepping on mass transit! We somehow also managed to fit in some hang-time! I had my little camera with me, and luckily remembered to whip it out and capture some special moments, which I compiled them into a little video!
AND! we played a huge AMAZING show at Stern Grove days before flying over there!!! We premiered our new Emperor Norton Suite to a very friendly and energetic SF crowd. We lucked out with amazing weather, and a packed audience! We also were joined by special guests Martin Luther, Chali 2na, and Lyrics Born; AND we also brought up 60~ music students from SF schools to perform with us on a song. It was so inspiring to work with them the days leading up to the concert (trombone section was ROCKIN!!!) Here’s a video from the show!
I can’t believe it’s almost been a year since we started discussing what we wanted to do for the new symphony piece. We’ve spent countless hours in meetings, brainstorming sessions (musical and spoken), inspiring days filled with new musical ideas and sounds, solitary hours in front of computers, rehearsals at various locations, and now recording in an Oakland church! Adam made a cool video highlighting the recording process to date, check it out! Even though we still have to record woodwinds, french horn, and vocals, it sounds amazing!
