2010 glances

Looking back I'm thinking about some nice things that happened to me in 2010, soon enough to be a walk down memory lane, figure I'd share this, by no means conclusive, list...

The year kicked off with a concentrated run of the play John Cassavetes' Husbands in January at the Public Theatre part of the Under the Radar Festival, focusing on creative theatre. 11 consecutive shows at this fine establishment = a great time, and offered the only consistent gig I had all year, performance wise. Director Doris Mirescu is a fantastic leader with an artistic vision and possesses a most generous personality. This was the second run of Husbands, based on the 1970 movie by the same name. She gave me very free hands in creating the original music for it, all performed live on electric guitar by myself, and I thoroughly enjoyed performing it nightly. The range of music that we arrived at was driven by mood, a love theme, and a wide range of guitar-sonic delivery. I felt as if the cast was my band, thanks guys!

Compositionally another fruitful endevaour this year has been writing in tandem with fellow guitarist Aaron Dugan. We have performed as a duo in the past and share similar sensibilities as well as birthdays. We call our duo Hot & Cold. When time has permitted we have very quickly come up with rather joyous and creepy, spontaneous and unpredictable compositions bordering on suite-like proportions.
Soon.....we'll share it with you live.

I took a lesson for the first time in many moons, with Brahim Frigbane - a multi-instrumentalist from Morrocco I met recently. It was an inspiring meeting that left me with lots of fun work to do, basic rhythm-feel stuff that he really has a grip on, profoundly groovy! Later in the year I was happy to perform with him and horn player Ras Moshe in a spontaneous trio setting.

I read about five books by Charles Willeford.

The Hot Trio got to play old-time depression era music a few times, I'm happy with how the band sounds, letting Ellington's, Django's and other music from that time become serious fun. Lou Grassi on drums and Dan Shuman on bass, and myself on the Les Paul. Although we usually play in restaurants, there's a dreamy element to the music that I am going for, the familiar nostalgia of these great tunes that smell like they came from a different era gives us a free ride in that regard. I jokingly call it shoegaze jazz.

Exposed Blues Duo (Fay Victor and I) continued working on our blues music, performing a few times in town as well as in Chicago. We released "Bare" (Greene Aveune Music), our debut album in August and had a great cd-release gig at Barbes in September in front of an amazing audience. Our record recieved some praise in the press and ended up on best of 2010 lists in a few places. I really like the vibe on it - bare indeed.

In October I joined my great friend Sebastian Schunke to reunite with his quintet on a west coast tour for a week. I was excited to see my old friend and we spent a terrific week in Portland, Oregon as well as in the Bay Area. The fresh air of that coast, the spirit of the music, and the enjoyable hang all brought some good stuff out of us, and we played some good music at Jimmy Mak's in Portland and Yoshi's in Oakland, and the German Counculate in San Francisco with Peter Barshay bass, Paul van Wageningen drums, and Dan Freeman on sax. Some favorite moments include Sebastian's piano intros that truly pull you into his world close, as well as some rather explosive groove playing.

In November I played a concert at Roulette in New York City, debuting an octet-cast of local favorites. I assembled a group of characters that I thought would be a coherent and complementary bunch to take on this exploratory music. Dave Ambrosio on bass, George Schuller on drums, Daniel Kelly on keys, Jeremy Danneman and Avram Fefer on reeds, Michel Gentile on flutes and Charlie Burnham on violin. The writing process was a lot of fun work for me, and when it came time to rehearse the music came to life easily, and as expected became something way beyond that got incarnated and embodied by these players. Very fun gig!

At the end of the year I went back to Sweden for some familytime and relaxing, and a short but fun gig with AORTA in Malmo. Best of friends, all so familiar vibe, yet the group is slowly evolving every year.