Weasel Walter @ Hafenklang, Hamburg Ger 4/19/10

There were about 50 people there, standing, listening intently, and completely into it. Only about 5-10 were women. We fit comfortably into the room with the stage. There was the same amount of room adjacent and still part of the space (only a partial wall in between) by the bar, but no one had to listen from there. It's a dark room somewhat like The Delancy, which I think was the last place I saw Weasel Walter. I had to leave a 1 Euro deposit for my wine glass. It was a good glass of Italian wine for 3 Euro.

The show was awesome. It was very loud and intense for the most part. There were a couple of quiet pieces mixed in. I was really into it and dancing a lot. I love seeing people in Europe because I may never get a chance to see Shiek Anorak or Mario Rechtern again. They were amazing. Mario had the most interesting sax/string combination. When he was playing the string portion, he usually played it with 2 bows. He also played the soprano and baritone and a few other reeds. He had an interesting mic and a way to make some very cool sounds.

It was really awesome, especially for a Mon night when I'm stranded in a foreign country. I'm just praying to make it back in time for jazzfest ...

Note: I did make it back! I'll be in NOLA tomorrow!

Reggie Nicholson @ Roulette 4/11/10

I just had to go - I've been curious about Reggie for a while. It pays to advertise ... I got intrigued by noticing his ads in All About Jazz for his Timbre Suite cd. I'm so glad I made it! In addition to being great, he said this was there 4th gig in 3 years. I will get another opportunity at Vision Fest, so hopefully things are changing.

It was awesome. Lots of percussion. Various piece's from his previous cds as well as some new material. A friend of his, Ernest Dawkins, was in from Chicago and sat in on sax. He was amazing. It was awesome and totally worth missing the 1st 5 min of Treme.

Reggie Nicholson Percussion Concept

Bryan Carrott-Marimba, Percussion
Don Eaton-Percussion
Salim Washington-Woodwinds, Percussion
Reggie Nicholson-Drums, Percussion

Adam Rudolph @ City Winery 4/10/10

This was the fabulous Moving Pictures Octet that I never get sick of. I really love percussion!

I love the venue. The only downside is the sound is so great that any talking carries and distracts.

I got there a couple of minutes before it started, at 10:30. I chose a spot in the back where I could dance standing in front of a column and therefor not blocking anyone's view.

It was great! Very heavy on the percussion with some great bass, guitar, and reeds contributing. I loved it!

Adam Rudolph (hand drums, thumb pianos, vocal, percussion) is joined by Joseph Bowie (trombone, vocal, harmonica, congas), Graham Haynes (cornet, flugelhorn), Ralph Jones (bass clarinet, flutes, saxophones), Jerome Harris (guitar, vocal), Brahim Fribgane (oud, cajon, bendir), Kenny Wessel (guitar, banjo) and Matt Kilmer (frame drum, djembe)

Rosewoman/Ellman/Sorey @ Roulette 4/10/10

This was just as good as it looks - probably better. They played compositions by each of them and they were all stellar. My favorite was Tyshawn's. He had one and the others had 2. It was interesting that each one started off with just the composer playing. At the end they told us they left a lot of room for improvising, so that made a lot of sense.

I enjoyed Tyshawn more than ever before. He's going to grad school for composition. It may have affected his playing - at least his improvising.

They were all incredible and I was happy with my choice.


Roulette NYC 8:30pm
Time In Textures-- A Collaborative Experiment
Michele Rosewoman / Liberty Ellman / Tyshawn Sorey
20 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand Streets).
Reservations/Tickets: 212.219-8242
$15: General Admission

Sweeter Than the Day @ The Stone 4/9/10

This was great! It swung! It was definitely new and fresh yet had enough elements of all the stuff I love to make a really great set of music. Sometimes it was more jazzy, sometimes more bluesy. There was a really beautiful piece in the middle. A little of it was somewhat psychedelic, mainly for the guitar while the others were more bluesy.

I loved seeing Sara in this setting. She was a special guest and played quite a bit. It was more like she was playing parts that any horn could do. It was so cool to have it be a bassoon.

Each of the musicians were fantastic and caught me at various times. I loved every minute.

Sweeter Than the Day
Tim Young (guitar) Wayne Horvitz (piano) Tim Luntzel (bass) Dan Rieser (drums) Special Guest Sara Schoenbeck (bassoon)

HNK Trio @ The Stone 4/7/10

It was 1 hour of continuous, improvised music. It was great and very interesting. I had to sit in the "other front row", so I couldn't see the percussion very well because the piano was in the way. I could see Lê Quan Ninh's upper half, so I could sometimes get an idea of what he was doing. Wayne was interesting to watch, I did want to see more of the whole thing. It was interesting that somewhere in the middle I realized each of the artists was in their own zone and just feeling what they should be playing. While they were each part of a magnificent whole, they appeared to have no attention on any other part, and possibly not even themselves. They were each in "the zone".

The percussion was very interesting. He did a lot of scraping things on a large bass drum he had face up on a stand. He scraped various metal things like cymbals. Here's a picture of him and a similar setup. He also used bows, including both the traditional bow people play strings with and the bow part of the berimbau. One of my favorite parts was when he was playing the hell out of the drum using pine cones as mallets. It sounded great and was very powerful.

It was a great set!

10 pm
HNK Trio
Wayne Horvitz (keyboards) Lê Quan Ninh (percussion) Briggan Krauss (sax)

Danilo Perez – “Things To Come: 21st Century Dizzy” @ Jazz Standard 4/3/10

This was absolutely fantastic! It was all Dizzy tunes reinterpreted. It was absolutely fantastic. They were all stellar. I loved the percussionist, Jemey Haddad. He had a lots of stuff I never saw before. It was magnificent!


Sunday April 1 - 4
Danilo Perez – “Things To Come: 21st Century Dizzy”
Danilo Perez – piano
David Sanchez – tenor saxophone
Rudresh Mahanthappa – alto saxophone
Amir ElSaffar – trumpet, voice
Jamey Haddad – percussion
Ben Street – bass
Adam Cruz – drums
The gifted Panamanian pianist and composer Danilo Perez has appeared on our stage many times before. But this engagement promises to be a truly special one: an all-star tribute to the music and spirit of Danilo’s mentor, the legendary Dizzy Gillespie (1917–1993). As the youngest member of Gillespie’s United Nation Orchestra, Perez learned first–hand how this jazz giant embraced musical and personal collaborations throughout the world. “21st Century Dizzy” features arrangements of both Gillespie favorites and original group compositions, performed by a handpicked band with its collective roots in Afro–Cuban, bebop, Indian, African, and Middle Eastern music. “When the dust settles, the pianist Danilo Perez will be looking like one of the best things that happened to jazz around the turn of the millennium.” (The New York Times)

Improv Night Part 2 4/3/10

For the 2nd set we lost Nate but gained Jeremiah Cymerman and Jim Staley. They were joined in the first piece with the 3 altos: Zorn, Erlich and Rothenberg. Sometime in the middle of that piece, a musician friend of Zorn's walked up to him and asked if he could join in. He sat down at the drum kit and started playing intensely. It looked like it surprised the others because it stopped the action for a bit. Zorn annonced Mark Miller from LA. I got the feeling he was in NYC ages ago. They started up again and after a bit of semi-awkwardness it got great again. It was definitely much louder with the drummer than before.

Next was a great trombone/laptop duo. Staley and Morie are both tops.

Then it was Douggie Bowne on drums and Ned Rothenberg on alto. Brilliant!

3 clarinets (Ned, Marty, Jeremiah) and Ikue Morie were awesome! I never noticed the bottom piece of Marty's clarinet is a little different from the traditional. It's a subtle difference. He and Ned were hitting the bottom and Marty makes a bigger percussion sound when he does it. Hitting the bottom where the hole is.

It appears Dougie and Ikue are a good team and they did another duo piece, the last time being the first set.

The last piece before the grand finale was a great "out there" John Zorn/Jim Staley piece.

The grand finale was phenomenal. Ned and Marty played altos. It was really great.

After they were done, the crowd wasn't going anywhere. They kept clapping and we actually got an encore out of it. Jeremiah and Dougie still had some juice left and came up to give us a nice duo piece.

The crowd tried again after that, but that was it. It was awesome!

Improv Night Part 1 @ The Stone 4/3/10

Marty Erlich starts us out with a great clarinet solo piece.

Next we get an incredible Nate Wooley trumpet solo. He finished up with this amazimg and loud cool wind sounds. I've only heard him do quiet wind sounds in the past.

Then we get a duo piece with John Zorn on alto and Dougie Bowne, the drummer. It was excellent! I asked Bruce from DMG who he was. He told me he was out of commission for a while and who he used to play with. I just found this on the internet, which tells who's he's played with and a little about the condition he had. You wouldn't have known it the other night!

This was followed with another duo piece with Ikue Morie on laptop and Ned Rothenberg on alto.

Now we move on to a trio, Marty Erlich on alto, Nate Wooley on trumpet and Dougie Bowne on drums and cymbals. Marty set us up nicely by requesting lots of cymbals from the getgo.

They were about to go back downstairs when Zorn declared it was time for the horns. The 3 altos and Nate gave us an incredible piece.

It only made sense after that to have a percussion piece with just Ikue and Dougie. That was awesome.

We finished up with 2 stellar pieces with all 6 artists. Zorn caught me during the 2nd piece and blew me away.

Tiny Resisters @ Jazz Standard 3/31/10

This was incredible from start to finish.

I got to see Alan Ferber for the 2nd time this week, which was great. John Ellis was awesome.

I couldn't see Rudy Royston, but he sounded great. Todd told us the only repeat in the 2 sets was the 1 that featured Rudy. I should have done 2 sets.

Eric Deutch was great, I don't see him enough. I always love seeing Adam Levy on guitar.

Jenny Scheinman was amazing as always. She blew me away with anything she played. The same goes for Todd. I just realized he never uses a bow. I find that interesting.

He said this is the 1st time they've played Jazz Standard. They were only booked for 1 night and it was full for each set. I think it would be awesome to give Todd a residency for a month where he can do a different project each week potentially with different people with some overlap. It could even work alternating Tiny Resisters and Blood Orange with different people. Then, the next month they could give the residency to Steven Bernstein. Then Marco Benevento and so on and so on.

Wednesday March 31

Todd Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors
Jenny Scheinman – violin

John Ellis – tenor sax, clarinet

Alan Ferber – trombone

Adam Levy – guitar

Erik Deutsch – piano

Todd Sickafoose – bass

Rudy Royston – drums & percussion
Todd Sickafoose, whom the L.A. Weekly called “one of the most comprehensive musical minds of this coast,” relocated to Brooklyn in 2005 and quickly established himself as one of the most comprehensive musical minds of this coast. A former bass student of Charlie Haden, tutored in composition by the great pianist Mel Powell, the man whom The New Yorker called “Ani DiFranco’s secret weapon” has also worked with Trey Anastasio, Andrew Bird, Don Byron, Nels Cline, Myra Melford, and Bobby Previte, just to name a few. Todd’s 2008 Cryptogramophone CD Tiny Resistors was his third and most fully realized recording as a leader: It made the “year’s best” lists in The Village Voice, Boston Globe, JazzTimes, All About Jazz, All Music Guide, and PopMatters. Don’t miss this special one-night stand with Todd and his all-star band!