Blog
Apr 21, 2012
Last night in the park was amazing. At around 8:30pm the last streaks of magenta were falling from the indigo night sky. A group of young actors was playing a word game in front of the Garibaldi statue, a circle of congueros was playing and singing, a pianist was playing under the arch. It was too much, really. I was giddy and grabbed this image and this sound recording. Someties NYC is magical.
Apr 7, 2012
“ Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
Alan Watts
Apr 5, 2012
This song.
Feeling coddled or alienated by humanity's urge to sublimate nature into a mediated annoyance replaced by air conditioned, flourescent-lit consistency? No? Me neither.
Really though, let's go buy Farmer's Almanacs and be a bit more aware of natural rhythms, eh? The moon? Seasonal food? Weather? The very seasons? These things mean very little to me in my urban NYC environment and I think I miss them.
Instead of working on a paper - this...
I was curious about which music I've listened to most in the last year so I, for the first time, organized my iTunes library by number of plays. I was mildly surprised by the results. As an exercise in "oversharing", here are the top ten:
1) Midlake "Bandits"
2) Thom Yorke "All For the Best"
3) The Shins "Fighting In A Sack" (really?)
4) Lovedrug "Blackout"
5) Matt Ammerman "Sitting Strong" - download HERE
6) J.S. Bach "Goldberg Variations" all 30 variations, too. GLENN GOULD IS MY SPIRIT ANIMAL.
7) Owen Pallett "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt"
8) Wilco "Ashes of American Flags"
9) Kneebody "Clime Pt II" Couldn't find it on YouTube so here's Dr. Beauchef, Penguin Dentist
10) The Beatles "Dear Prudence"
Weird, right? No jazz (does Kneebody count?)? No afrobeat? WTF? While this may not be representational of my listening, it IS interesting to see which tracks I've listened to ad nauseum. So. There's that. Back to Aristotle then? Yes.
Apr 3, 2012
Duo Gig tonight with Jay Vilnai!
Making likeable noise tonight from 8-11 at Brooklyn's very own Saraghina (435 Halsey St, Bed Stuy, Brooklyn). Check out Jay HERE, he's a helluva musician. I'll be bringing a few saxophones and my bass clarinet while Jay will be on guitar, etc. Great food, atmosphere, wine, people. Seriously, a good hang. COME THROUGH.
Mar 2, 2012
Musics: Been listening and sitting in.
Turns out NYC is full of ridiculous talent. Turns out that some of this talent belongs to friends of mine with gigs. Case in point: Mr Tom Larsen's The People Vs Tom Larsen. Tom plays the hell out of the guitar, is working a lot, and is kind enough to let me play a few tunes from time to time. So then, check him out. Other recent fantastic friends/acquaintances I've been digging include but are not limited to: Liam Robinson with the Becca Stevens Band and the Red Light New Music ensemble, Steven Lugerner (check out his Chives stuff), Rob Haight with Juilliard's Jazz Artist Diploma Ensemble, and my old friend Ricardo Vogt with Esparanza Spalding. Serioulsy, these people are just dripping with talent.
In other news, classes at NYU are chugging along nicely. I'm hitting the third-of-the-way-through-the-semester slump where I don't want to read anything and I don't want to write anything. I just want to eat Chinese pork dumplings and watch the simpsons. Oh, and drink beer. I'll soon get over it, though, and rock out a few academic papers. Only 290 days until I have to turn in a thesis. Why, that's practically tomorrow!
Feb 19, 2012
Feb 5, 2012
Great new ALDRIC writeup. Best of 2011? Check it out!
Check out the great review that Dave (the AllAboutJazz Download of the Day editor) gave my band ALDRIC's Anvils & Broken Bells. He's been kind enough to include us in his Best of 2011 section. A bit from the lengthy writeup:
...they’ve fused the post-rock of today with the 80s NYC downtown jazz scene skronk & sizzle of Zorn’s Naked City... I keep finding more and better things to appreciate about it, and enthusiastically include it as one of my top recommended albums of 2011. -www.birdistheworm.com
Thanks for the kind words, Dave!
More about the band and record here and here.
Jan 24, 2012
GPOY
Grace Church (Broadway and 10th) has some pretty windows. AND falsely advertized Bach at noon. Booh.
This is my lucky year - so say DRAGONS!
Angela and I headed over to Chinatown Monday the 23rd for the New Year's celebration. We weren't dissapointed. Not only were there adorable children dressed as dragons (see below), we were blessed by dancing dragons (this being the year of the dragon and all) while we ate in a cheap-ass restaurant. These dragons were really doing it - I got luck all over my face.
The Chinese New Year fortuitously corresponds to NYU's beginning of the Spring semester. Looks like I'll be knee deep in Aristotle and Descartes for yet another blessed semester. Squee! I've got a few fun gigs coming up as well on various instruments and with different types of band so keep your eyes open. That clarinetist killing it with the Gypsy Jazz group while you eat dinner could be me.
Jan 19, 2012
Have you checked out Sleep No More yet?
So, last night I got to sit in with one of the house bands in the Sleep No More lounge thanks to my good friend and marvelous drummer, Dave Tedeschi. Basically, Sleep No More is an immersive retelling of Macbeth in a late 30's hotel. You wear a mask, walk around five floors of the hotel following actors, peering in room after room, and having the most Lynchian experience of your life. Check out the site, buy tickets, have a remarkably unique theater experience. DO IT. I can't say enough about how amazing this show is. DO IT.
Jan 1, 2012
AJ's Wrecent Writing About Nietzsche and Music - The Gang Gets Thinky
Hey guys - I took a Nietzsche class this last semester at NYU taught by the effervescent and melodious Professor Friedrich Ulfers. I ended up writing a paper examining the concept of a truly Nietzschean, Dionysian music as manifest in the relatively young tradition of Free Musical Improvisation. Are you a musical improvisor? Do you seek to swim in Dionysian annihilation? Maybe this could prove an interesting read. Check it out if it's up your alley, any thoughts or feedback are more than welcome.
Cheers!
Free Musical Improvisation, Dionysus, & Nietzscheʼs Ontology of Becoming
|| Wrapup ||
I've somehow managed to survive the semester, have written and submitted 40ish pages for end-of-semester assignments at NYU, hit up Wisconsin to visit family and eat far, far too much, and close the year with good people and good victuals. 2011 was challenging but fruitful and found me playing music on four continents, releasing a record, relocating, changing my primary vocation from saxophoning to reading, and moving from painfully skinny jeans to slightly less skinny jeans. Oh, and I got a bass clarinet.
I can't thank you all enough for whatever part of my life you've played. 2011 has been quite a net positive - thank you. Let's read more and write more and learn languages more and travel more this 2012, eh?
Nov 30, 2011
This is making the rounds and for good reason: PAYTON GETS IT ON THE NOSE
Musical juggernaut Nicholas Payton, "On Why Jazz Isn’t Cool Anymore . . . ."
Nov 17, 2011
From NYC's Foley Square
The New York Supreme Court building from the OWS crowd in Foley Square. The front of the building reads, "The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government." We are (I am) the 99%. Also - beautiful night for a stroll over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Nov 8, 2011
Mr. Sean McCluskey
So, my buddy Sean released a record a few weeks ago. Guess what - it's really good. Fantastic piano trio date with Chicago mainstays George Fludas and Dennis Carroll. Listen to a few tracks at his site. He visited me in Brooklyn from his native Boston this last weekend. We hung, played some bass clarinet and accordion duets (you're welcome, neighbors), had a random conversation in French with a Belgian man on the train, and hit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Magical bromance time.
Aaaand - on the topic of new music to check out: I caught violinist Zach Brock and The Magic Number this last Friday night in Manhattan. Fantastic sets of original music. Check him and them out HERE. Inspiring writing and playing.
a few things...
I just read Elizabeth Grosz's Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Question: How does ANYONE still cling to Cartesian Dualism as a viable model of consciousness? Anyone? You there in the back? Any ideas? Yeah, I understand that It's difficult if not damned near impossible to talk about the practicalities of lived experience in non-dual (mind/body) language but, it's so damned far from the reality of lived experience. How's this going to play out? Is everybody going to read Merleau-Ponty's The Phenomenology of Perception and a mess of Nietzsche and then hug it out?
Also - Google image search this: Codex Seraphinianus
Also - Briane Greene wants to answer all of your questions about the universe and everything. Do so here: http://worldsciencefestival.com/blog/topic/ask_brian_greene. The more I learn about theories of consciousness and ontology, the more they fit with current theories of physical reality. It seems that at the quantum state, scientific descriptions of matter become plastic and poetical. Metaphysical duality becomes not either/or, but both/and. Reality hinges now on a chiasmic unity, an invaginated and self infolding dual/unity. Wave/particele. Tiny vibrating strings? Gah!
Also - go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Go NOW. It's amazing.
Oct 31, 2011
The Goat Rodeo Sessions
Hey you guys - Yo-Yo Ma, fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassist Edgar Meyer, and mandolinist Chris Thile made a record. For real. I've been on a bluegrass tear recently and this record is not helping. Not only is this a great album, it's perhaps my new favorite term. Check it out.
Goat Rodeo - definition courtesy of Urban Dictionary: "About the most polite term used by aviation people (and others in higher risk situations) to describe a scenario that requires about 100 things to go right at once if you intend to walk away from it."