Over a year ago I wrote a post about my top 10 favorite albums, mostly with a metric of personal fondness more than any sort of aesthetic consideration. As I look ahead to 2010, I see a very busy technologist (researching instruments for Zenph Sound Innovations) and bandleader (with The Beast and Orquesta GarDel) and new-husband (hi, Lauren!). I want to make sure I am never too far from my deep passion for the arts, that need to appreciate and explore music, soaking it all up and seeing what sticks in the end. There are a few artists in particular whose work and whose real-life struggles and philosophies have struck a chord with me, yet I’ve not yet had the time to get to know their music. So in the spirit of end-of-year listmaking, here are my top five artists to get to know better in 2010.
5. King Tubby
Who knew that a sound engineer from Jamaica would have such a significant influence on electronic and hip hop musics? Mixing (and re-mixing) as an art form, I love the delay-drenched sound of dub music, and it’s high time I take an in depth survey of one of the great pioneers.
4. John Hollenbeck
He is being called a modern jazz master. With a prodigious output ranging from big band to chamber music to experimental improvisation, I identify with a lot of Hollenbeck’s contrapuntal/ostinato/polyrhythmic concepts and look forward to studying them.
3. Darius Milhaud
I love this guy, there is something fun about a French composer ahead of his own time falling in love with jazz and the music of Brazil. What’s his take on it? Let’s listen to La creation du monde and find out!
2. Astor Piazolla
I suspect one could spend a lifetime studying the music of this tango innovator. He tried to write “proper” classical music, was ashamed of his jazzy tangos until Nadia Boulanger chided him for not being true to himself. The rest was history, I suppose. Such a fantastic combination of heart-string romanticism with improvisation with exacting composition, and I can still appreciate that it is based on music of the people, music for dancing.
1. Charles Ives
I’ve been told on occasion that my career path and my music remind people of Charles Ives. How is it that an insurance salesman could conjure such poignant images of American life in such quirky compositions? Again, a man ahead of his time. I cried a bit when I heard “The Things Our Fathers Loved” from 114 Songs as well as “The Unanswered Question.” I also look forward to reading a collection of his essays and other writings.
RUNNERS UP
Wayne Shorter, Fela Kuti, Bob Dylan, Me’Shell NdegéOcello, Nas
I have been absent from this blog for quite some time and I”ll chalk it up to last month being one of the busiest and most significant of my life thus far: Lauren and I were married on October 3rd and The Beast released it’s debut album on October 16th.
Today I have very special news: Zenph Studios, the music technology company for which I do instrument research and development and event production, is announcing that it has secured $10.7M in VC funding from Intersouth Partners in Durham and Capitol Broadcasting in Raleigh. Secondly, Kip Frey, one of Intersouth’s VC partners, is coming aboard as our new CEO. Thirdly, we are relocating to a research and office space in the American Tobacco Historic District in Durham (a move which thrills me). Fourth, we are changing our name to “Zenph Sound Innovations, Inc.” And lastly, our board of directors will include some Intersouth partners, as well as a former CEO from Red Hat and an IP copyright lawyer from Google.
This day has been years in the making. Everyone at Zenph is excited for this opportunity to take our company to the next level, developing a technology that will truly revolutionize the music industry. I will continue to work on gestural acquisition and mapping and physical modeling for musical instruments beyond the piano.
Here are some links to press releases on this topic:
I am thrilled to announce the release of The Beast’s self-produced debut album, Silence Fiction, on October 16th, 2009 with a killer release party at Duke Coffeehouse in Durham that same day. Here is a link to the press release about the album. I feel like I’m having my first baby (except that it’s a 4-way collaborative birthing process, and it did take nine months from rehearsing/tracking to mastering/album art). Silence Fiction is my first experience co-producing and releasing a full-length album on a significant scale (indie budget, professional studios, robust sales plan, etc.) and as such I will post a few articles over the coming weeks reflecting on what I’ve learned in the process and what you can expect to hear when you purchase the album.
As a teaser, here is “Translation,” the lead single from Silence Fiction. Featured on the track is my other major project, Orquesta GarDel. Pierce’s lyrics are inspired by the true story of when he took Raphael Saadiq to see a GarDel show after his own concert at DPAC. Methinks there are more hip hop/salsa collaborations in my future…
I hope you enjoy the track, let me know what you think!
Back in April, I introduced you to Zenph’s third project, the original works and transcriptions of Sergei Rachmaninoff. At that time we had just finished our re-performance analysis and were producing the recording session with Sony and giving a live recital at Peace College in Raleigh. One set of album art, liner notes, advance reviews, and a killer press event later, we are weeks away from the September 22nd US release of the album through Sony Masterworks. You’ll be able to find it at retailers nationwide, as well as Amazon and other online stores. As always, I strongly recommend purchasing the CD over iTunes. Our team spent days of piano and mic positioning to bring you what we believe to be the most sonically pristine piano recording yet. The reward comes in listening to uncompressed audio files on a nice system, not bit-crushed mp3s on your iPhone.
On Monday September 21st, there will be a press event at Steinway Hall in New York with a special performance by violin superstar Joshua Bell (yes, the guy who played at a DC Metro stop and no one stopped to listen). Zenph has given him the opportunity to have Rachmaninoff accompany him on a Grieg sonata, and now it’s one of his favorite things to do (I wouldn’t blame him!). In fact, this track will be released on a Joshua Bell album days later, also by Sony Masterworks. Here is the link to purchase that.
One of my favorite things about the Rachmaninoff album is that it reveals years and years of misinterpretation by classical pianists. Somehow or another, it came to be that the “right” way to play a Rachmaninoff piece was to pound the crap out of the piano in a display of athleticism. And indeed, those pieces sound “badass” when performed that way. Extreme example? The Prelude in C# minor, Op 3 No 2. Exhibit A? YouTube. But what Zenph discovered in its analysis is that Rachmaninoff’s own touch was much more dynamic and gentle than was previously thought. His own interpretation of the C# minor Prelude is ever so subtle and creepy, instantly becoming my favorite version. That’s what I love about this company: it’s honest musical archeology, truth-seeking through data analysis.
If you are one of the 10,000 people who just saw Art Tatum play with Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band at the Hollywood Bowl and are curious as to how everything came together, welcome! This is not the official blog of Zenph Studios, the music technology company responsible for Art Tatum (and other artists) coming back to life through “re-performance,” but I am a Zenph employee, as well as a jazz pianist.
I am writing and updating this post over the course of the day of the show (this sentence is being penned in the hotel room). What show, you might ask? Well, today on a great bill of bands at the Hollywood Bowl (including the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Band), legendary jazz pianist Art Tatum (d. 1956) will be accompanied by a top-notch live big band thanks to the technological wizardry of Zenph Studios and the arranging wizardry of Gordon Goodwin. If you recall from my previous post about Zenph’s first Grammy nomination, Gordon wrote a jazz arrangement that dances around Zenph’s solo piano Tatum re-performance of “Yesterdays.” Up until now, this had been a studio project, confined to the world of multitrack recording and careful mixing. In the last few weeks, Gordon’s Big Phat Band and Zenph have been working hard to achieve a live, realtime performance of this amazing duet. That’s right, a real Yamaha Disklavier Pro on the Hollywood Bowl stage flanked by 18 of the West Coast’s best musicians. My role has been liaison between the Zenph camp and the Big Phat Band camp as well as playback engineer for the show.
One day Zenph will champion gestural capture and beat induction such that Art Tatum could “follow” Gordon’s live conducting. Until then we have to work with an entertainment industry staple (for better or for worse): the click track. I’ve spend the past few weeks figuring out how to use the Disklavier Pro as a synchronization master to drive a playback computer so that all 18 musicians can hear piano and click track in their earbuds to precisely follow Tatum’s timing nuances. Tatum does not play perfectly metronomically: his swing and his phrasing ebb and flow as is necessary for his virtuosity, he even adds a few beats at certain cadences just to get an idea across. Major props to Gordon for creating an arrangement and click track that wonderfully captures these ideas and hit points.
I’m headed out the door to the venue, check back for updates to this post throughout the day!
*******UPDATE 7:45pm, 15 minutes to showtime******
Tech rehearsal and soundcheck went just fine. I just went out onto the dark stage one last time to make sure the piano was OK and saw a praying mantis perched under the small piano lamp right on the keys. It was a wonderful moment of nature and solitude compared to the detail-oriented hustle and bustle of the day so far. Art Tatum’s widow, Geraldine, will be in the audience tonight, and we’ve heard that she is extraordinarily excited to hear her late husband play again in front of such a crowd. Industry and marketing aside, it’s moments like these that make me happy for what Zenph can do for people.
Yesterday The Beast headed over to the local NBC studio to tape a segment called Sessions At Studio B. Jake Seaton, Content Producer and Music Blogger for the station, has done a great job featuring local bands by producing 30 minute concerts and streaming them live to the web. We had a lot of fun hanging out with the crew, learning how to play to a robotic camera, and performing new songs from our EP and upcoming album. Check it out!
I’m happy to announce The Beast’s second release, entitled Catalyst. This came about through working with the Durham Arts Council and Sound Pure Studios to do a fundraiser concert. We wrote two songs for the occasion, with two great collaborators in mind: vocalist Nnenna Freelon and guitarist Chris Boerner (The Proclivities, Mosadi Music). The entire Catalyst project came together in just three weeks from songwriting to tracking to mixing to album art, a fantastic effort from everybody involved.
Please tell all your friends that you can download the album for free at our newly redesigned site: www.thebeastmusic.com. I hope you enjoy it!
From the press release:
Durham, NC – On May 21, 2009 visionary hip-hop quartet The Beast, and Grammy nominee Nnenna Freelon performed an intimate benefit show for the Durham Arts Council at Sound Pure Studios. Held entirely within the recording studio, Freelon performed one song which she, along with Sound Pure staff members, used as an opportunity to explain the recording process for the attendees. The Beast closed the show, performing two original songs: “Once Again,” featuring Nnenna Freelon, and “Come Up, Come Down,” featuring guitarist Chris Boerner. This intimate live performance, recorded and mixed at Sound Pure Studios, will be released Monday, June 15, 2009, as a free downloadable EP entitled Catalyst, exclusively at www.thebeastmusic.com.
The Durham Arts Council billed the show as “a unique evening of music, fabulous food, and an inside look at the artistic process in a recording studio.” With only 25 seats available, the event sold out quickly. All proceeds went towards the Durham Arts Council’s arts education program and grants. While Catalyst is available as a free downloadable EP, The Beast encourages a donation to the Durham Arts Council, with the hopes that their music will continue to support the arts in Durham beyond the May 21st performance.
I wonder if a histogram of bloggers and their usage habits might mimic a Gaussian distribution (remember the bell curve from high school?). On the low end is a chunk of people who set up a blog and forget about it the next day, leaving their two posts in the dust. On the other end are the entrepreneurs who are trying to make a living at it: posting meaningful content every day, linking the crap out of their peers, and Tweeting faster than they can breathe. But in the middle of the graph sits a giant hump of interesting, but inconsistent writers who sometimes have spurts of genius but otherwise never log in.
Color me some version of the middle variety: I want to write, but haven’t found the focus of this particular blog. Is it for me to announce achievements, shows, and new tracks? Is it to posit myself as an expert in my field (at least a dozen books for $15 on Amazon tell you to use your blog to do this)? Is it to post whimsical life observations? I suppose it is a mixture of all three, which represents the present state of my life. I am not yet a full-time “career artist”, I am not on the hustle 24/7. A large part of my creativity and energy goes into my role as a technologist and researcher at Zenph Studios (which I love). Another large part goes into directing or participating in The Beast and Orquesta GarDel. There’s my ever-maturing relationship with Lauren. And somewhere on the side is a guy who practices and composes and is just waiting to leap out and speak his true voice more often. A fractured life? Perhaps. But a disconnected one? Hardly. A thread of gratitude and experiential education weaves through everything.
I wanted to use this post to “press reset” and catch you up on some of the cool things I’ve done in the past few weeks. Each deserves its own well-written post, but a list will have to suffice instead.
1. Orquesta Gardel played its first out-of-town gig at a Cinco de Mayo festival in Charleston, South Carolina. Andy and I rehearsed the group, packed a cooler of killer sandwiches and ferried 13 people 300 miles away in 5 cars (couldn’t afford a van rental). It’s tough to play to a crowd of strangers, especially ones who are serious about their Latin music, but we made a lot of friends by the end of the night. The DJ even announced us in at the after party!
2. The Beast has been working hard on its full-length album. We are finally bringing to life the tracking session we did in January at Sound Pure studios. Songs are being rearranged, I’m writing a lot of horn charts and programming some clever synth stuff. This will be the biggest recording project I’ve worked on thus far. Our baby has a far way to go, but it promises to be a very unique album.
3. I got to hear and meet Moldover at Alliviah’s in Durham last weekend. This is the guy who coined the word “controllerism,”: a true instrument developer and sound-reimaginer. His original music is really cool, and his efforts to educate and build a community around controllerism are to be respected. I really look up to him for combining clever programming with meaningful musical results, one day I’d like to have more time to develop this side of my craft. Check out his videos here.
4. I have an intern at Zenph. This kid is brilliant. As an electronic artist, he goes by the name Hidden Cat, and his songs have been reviewed by Rolling Stone and charted in the U.K. Awesome! We’re working on a re-performance of rock legend, Jerry Lee Lewis.
That’s all I can think of for now, time to go buy some basil plants at the farmer’s market (how Saturday of you, Eric!). Stay tuned next week for a big announcement about a special Beast release (not the album, something sooner and sweeter)!
GarDel at Spring Shakori '08; photo credit Jeff Fowler
I feel like my life has been on fast forward with no pause to breathe over these past three weeks. Upon returning from the Kennedy Center residency and concerts, I dove into rehearsals for Orquesta GarDel and The Beast, founded and performed with a dream project of mine, a live electronica quartet (great first show, guys! let’s do it again soon!), as well as helped Zenph Studios finish up our third album (Rachmaninoff), annnnnd filed the dreaded income taxes.
But it is all worth it because this weekend is the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance. Every time I come to this festival as a performer, I am energized by the positive, appreciative vibe of the attendees, campers, and volunteers. Being surrounded by woods with no internet is also invigorating, of course. This festival marks some firsts for me:
1. Orquesta GarDel will be unveiling an original song (one of many to come) as well as a re-vamped stage show (Thursday 10:45pm Dance Tent)
2. Not only will The Beast be playing (Saturday 5:20pm Meadow Stage), but also giving two workshops about harnessing the power of creativity through understanding the story of African-American music, as well as hosting a jam session for teenagers. I am really looking forward to seeing who shows up and contributes to these experiences.
3. This is the first Beast show to feature a live horn section (featuring my great friends, Andy Kleindienst and Tim Smith, both also in GarDel). I wrote the charts late last night, we rehearsed today, it really gives a new element to the show.
4. Lauren (my fiancée, I will do a separate post about how awesome and wonderful and amazing she is and how we are totally pumped that we’ve got a wedding date on the calendar) and I are camping overnight. So long taxes, hello vegan food, campfires, ponchos, and hula hoopers!
Day and weekend passes are still available at the Shakori website. Come find me and say hello!
