Yesterday, by a vote of 409-0, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 894, a bill “Honoring the 50th anniversary of the recording of the album “Kind of Blue” and reaffirming jazz as a national treasure.” The bill goes on to affirm that the House: (1) honors the 50th anniversary of `Kind of Blue’ and […]
Thoughts
Back in October I wrote a blog post featuring 10 Jazz Musicians You Should Follow On Twitter. I promised that it would be the start of an “ongoing, if irregular, series”. So far it’s been more irregular than ongoing! Today I officially make the series ongoing, but with a twist. Instead of focusing on jazz […]
This past Saturday my band Water Babies played a double-bill at a The Comet Tavern with our friend, saxophonist Lee Redfield. Lee’s band plays pop covers in a jazz style, funkier soul-jazz tunes and some more free, modal kinds of explorations. Water Babies plays what we call “Spontaneous Funk”, which is all improvised funk music. […]
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not much of a golf fan. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been on a golf course myself, and on one hand the times I’ve watched the sport on TV. I have nothing against it, it just doesn’t interest me that much. […]
This weekend, in response to the feeding frenzy of consumerism that is Black Friday, I decided to offer downloads of all Jason Parker Quartet CD’s for free. I thought about reducing the price down to $1.00 or something cheap, but in the ended figured I’d just give ’em away and see what happened. The Debate […]
The Get Inspired Project is the brainchild of Toni Reece. She has taken on the task of collecting some amazing stories of how people inspire others and what they need to be inspired themselves, and is presenting a new story each day this year. At the end of the year, there will be 365 profiles […]
My wife wrote the following post at her blog, Artcetera, and I thought it was so cool that I asked her if I could use it as a guest post on my blog. What she wrote about applies across the board for artists, and is just good life advice too. And imagine how proud I […]
Now that the CD Release Party for my new CD “No More, No Less” is behind me I must turn my attention to the next step in the process: How do I get people to actually hear the darned thing? In this post I will detail a few of the steps I’ve taken to get […]
Every Friday on this blog is “Makin’ it Happen Friday”, where I feature another musician who’s found a way to make a living playing music. I am constantly inspired by others, and hope to pass that inspiration on to you. Andrew Oliver is a pianist and composer from Portland, Oregon. Andrew spent his formative years […]
The Matt Wilson Quartet played a show last night in Seattle as part of the Earshot Jazz Festival. I had seen Matt play before, and attended a clinic he gave at the Port Townsend Jazz Workshop that was one of the most inspiring clinics I’ve ever been to. I knew I was in for a […]
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