I was so proud to participate in the Seattle Jazz Community Haiti Quake Fundraiser last Wednesday. I played at LUCID Jazz Lounge with four of my great friends, and there were 6 other bands in 6 different venues up and down University Avenue in Seattle. Overall we raised more than $4000 which will be sent […]
Thoughts
I had a truly remarkable “full-circle” moment last Friday that I’ve been wanting to share with you. You can read some of the backstory here. The short version is that 35 years ago I had a life-changing experience when Dizzy Gillespie and his band descended on my elementary school and played a short show for […]
My wife alerted me to yet another way to help spread the word about people in the blogosphere doing things to help out with Haiti earthquake relief. Through Danielle LaPorte at White Hot Truth.com she found out about the Help Haiti Blog Challenge put together by Kelly Diels. Kelly says: You’ve got something to offer: […]
UPDATE: Lucid and other University Ave businesses are planning a benefit on Wednesday. Details ASAP. I’ve been seeing the images from Haiti off and on for the past day and I can’t even believe the destruction and tragedy that is happening there in the aftermath of Tuesday’s earthquake. The word tragedy gets thrown around a […]
If you’ve read any of my online bios or the early post on this blog called First, a Little History you already know my Dizzy Gillespie story. If not, read on… When I was growing up we listened to lots of classical music around the house, as my dad was a big fan. The first […]
Thanks to a tweet by Bob Lefsetz I came across the blog of Danny Barnes. I’ve been familiar with Barnes since my friend Matt turned me on to his band Bad Livers many years ago, but I had never seen his site before. Not only is the whole website beautiful and easy to navigate, Barnes’ […]
MusicianWages.com has organized a group blogging event for all musician bloggers. They asked us to blog today about the many changes, opportunities and surprises the music industry has seen in the past decade. The idea was to write a letter titled “Dear 1999” that answers the question “If you could go back to 1999 and […]
My wife recently emailed me a link to a blog post by Natalie Christie, The Tiny Soprano. Christie’s post is about learning and mastery and resonated with me as a musician. In this post was a link to a TED talk by Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, author and leadership expert. It is […]
I had heard about the documentary Playing for Change – Peace Through Music for some time, but only had the opportunity to watch it this past weekend. I’d been feeling sick and not sleeping well for a few days, and was pretty down on Sunday afternoon, when I found myself alone in the house on […]
This week I had two gigs that reminded me how fortunate I am to play with the folks I do. The first was Thursday night, when Clave Nagila played at Egan’s Ballard Jam House in Seattle. This is a project I started to blend Latin-jazz with the Jewish melodies I grew up singing at synagogue. […]
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