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!
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!
In a meeting this past Christmas, Andy and I decided to finally let loose from our high expectations and just start writing original tunes for Orquesta GarDel. We were intimidated by all of the Puerto Rican, Cuban, and American composers and bandleaders that have come before us, and worried if people would think our “podunk” North Carolina salsa was worthy. We realized that we should just try to write GarDel music, not other people’s salsa. We are a collection of 12 musicians of all ages and musical backgrounds; our influences are disparate but we have a common passion for the clave.
So far we have held two rehearsals on three (unfinished) pieces by Andy and one (unfinished) piece by me, and the process has been very fun. Andy and I bring in chunks of ideas and let the band play them through and make suggestions. Brevan comes up with great percussion breaks, Jamie starts to improvise possible coros. The collaborative spirit is right there.
And, as if the Salsa Muse was offering a guiding hand, NewMusicBox just published a fascinating interview with legendary arranger and trombonist, Willie Colón. He says something that speaks to what I love about music, and the understanding I have of salsa:
A lot of people like to characterize salsa as a pastiche of Cuban son. There’s no denying that there is a Cuban influence and a Cuban base to it, but it’s so much more. Salsa is not a rhythm, it’s a concept. It’s a way of making music. It’s an open concept and the reason that it became so popular is because it was able to evolve and accept all of these other musics. We put the bombas and plenas in it; we put calypso, samba, bossa, and cumbia in it. It’s definitely not even a Puerto Rican or a Cuban music. It’s a reconciliation of everything you can find. And I think it could have only happened here in New York, where you had so many different kinds of people living and playing together. We used to get a lot of the black jazz players. They wanted to come and play salsa so they can blow over the changes. Where are you going to find players like than other than in a big city like New York? This was not going to happen in Cuba or Puerto Rico; it had to be here.
I like that. “Salsa is an open concept.” It is exciting to watch GarDel’s interpretation of that concept finally start to blossom. You will be able to hear us unveil these new tunes Thursday night at the Shakori Hills Music Festival in April!
Hello Sylvia and readers of Onda Carolina.I wanted to take the time to respond to your post publicly: as it stands, our local Latin music community is still small enough that there needn’t be an unapproachable distance between the artist, the critic, the listener.
I definitely encourage more discussion like this amongst local dancers and aficianados.The last thing I would want to see is an attitude of “Wow, the Triangle is so blessed to have a big salsa orchestra, so we best not criticize it, lest its success be diminished.”Hardly.Y’all are allowed to hold us up to your high standards, that’s how we grow and improve.
If you’ll remember the discussion from a previous post, I mentioned GarDel’s struggles of entertainer vs. artist, dance band vs. listening band, and cover band vs. original material, and how those dualities complicate our decision making process.If our catalog has recently become slightly homogenized, it is because we weren’t looking carefully at the band’s presentation at that level.Andy and I have spent the last few rehearsals guiding the band through a series of exercises that help the members listen to each other more, towards a better rhythmic concept for the rhythm section and a conscious focus on dynamics and articulations for the horns.These incremental improvements may not be readily apparent to an audience, especially for a band that rehearses and plays out only so often, but it is the essence of ensemble playing.Diversifying the musical library is one of the next tasks Andy and I will fold into the mix.Even then, we will learn the lesson of “you can’t satisfy everyone” (even amongst band members).Which artists should we focus on?What about this album?Should GarDel ever play merengue and cumbia or should it remain a “pure” salsa band?And so on.
Looking back on 2008, I think GarDel has entered its early adolescence and 2009 will see the band mature into a “grownup band.”Andy and I have a dream for the band that sees it becoming its own master, defining a sound that places it beyond “cover band/dance band/local all-star jam session” and into a realm of mostly original material, inspired by the bands roots as a “salsa dura” ensemble, but influenced by our diverse cultural backgrounds and eclectic taste in music.The current roadblock?A lyricist!But that is for another post.
Hey all, GarDel just played two pretty big club dates this past weekend. It was great to be indoors after mostly playing muggy outdoor festivals. The difference between playing to a general crowd and to a hot floor of world-class dancers was remarkable. Andy and I each premiered some new arrangements that we’ve been transcribing. Sylvia Pfeiffenberger, the Triangle’s Latin music journalist/warrior, posted a blog about the Thursday show here. Check out her blog and learn about the burgeoning Latino music culture in North Carolina!
Hey all, today is a great day for the salsa band that I co-direct (as well as arrange and play piano for), Orquesta GarDel. We are the cover article for the Independent Weekly, the Triangle’s premiere alternative weekly newspaper (North Carolina’s Village Voice, if you will).
Here is a link to the article, which traces the story of the band’s founding to it’s future aspirations and cultural significance in the larger Triangle music scene.
I am so proud of this giant, hard-working band of musicians from many backgrounds. It is great to be able to share our story with a wider audience.
Please read the article, check out GarDel’s music, watch for new shows, and let me know what you think! I’ve never been quoted so much before…
