Edmar Castaneda
I’m the kind of person that sometimes has to listen to a song twice to really get it. Not this guy’s music though. I was driving to a party one Friday night and I switched on NPR and LiveSet was on (live concerts on the radio, pretty self explainatory) and they were playing a concert With the Edmar Castaneda Trio with vibraphonist Joe Locke. I swear I heard all of about three minutes of it and I was ready to just sit in my car and not go to the party. I had never heard a harp like this before. Normally its just ” Enter!” brrriinnNNNGGGG! Edmar sounds like a latin upright player, a jazz pianist, and a flamenco guitarist all wrapped up into one. He starts off his tune Cuarto de colores with an abstract mix of flourishes from the percussionist and what sounds like a Paco De Lucia interpretation of the intro to Miles Davis’s “So What.” The group takes a breath and then Edmar bursts into this energetic rhythm that takes off into the song. The trombone player, Marshall Gilkes, starts off by recreating what sounds like a really groovy…. monkey? Anyways it sounds cool and I used to play trombone and I’m pretty sure I can’t do that. He then goes on to play the fairly simple and catchy melody all the while with Edmar in the background being the one man harmony/ groove machine. Gilke’s solo is equally and impressive as it is appropriate. Practically sucking all of the juice he can out of the small rhythm section in a short amount of time. After the trombone is the harp, which is simply amazing. Edmar seems to find a way of periodically changing his perspective on the harp which in turn creates a completely new sound, all within a few measures.
There is a lot that you could compare this music to, but you can’t say it really sounds exactly like anyone thing. Edmar has used the harp to create new kinds of musical thought, and that is something that I would skip any party to hear. (Actually i went to the party and it sucked. I wish i had stayed in the car)
Here is Edmar Castaneda, Marshall Gilkes, and Dave Siliman playing Cuarto de Colores.
And here is a link to listen to that concert through NPR. The last song is their version of Autumn Leaves. Definitely worth hearing.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101203007
Cajon!
I haven’t posted in a while, but im starting up again. So I was looking for a percussion instrument that i could start playing, but i didn’t wanna just jump into something that i wasn’t reaaly excited for. Then I discovered the cajon. Cajon is spanish for box and that is literaly what it is. It’s a box. The drum came from peruvian slaves that would play on shipping crates. Cajons of today have strings, snares or even bells inside the drum to give it more sound. The one i have is about as tall as my knee and as wide as my foot. On the front of the drum there is a faceplate, or tapa, which is loosely screwed onto the rest of the drum. This is the side that you mostly play on. My cajon also has a knob on the right side that adjusts the snare inside the drum. So how do you play it? First you sit down on it facing the side with the tapa. On the tapa there are two main hits, they are very similar to that of a conga drum. The slap: simply slap the drum a little inside of the corners to get a snare-like slap sound. The bass: slightly cup your hand and hit the tapa just above the center of it. The cajon is useful because its bass and snare sound make it a cheap and portable alternative to a drum set.
This group in the video isn’t exactly what I prefer to listen to but it’s a good example of a modern use of the cajon, and the guy’s voice is pretty good.
Pretty soon i think im gonna get a video of me playing it with a little group im in.
Ray Brown
Saturday night I saw a Ray Brown tribute band that had Christian McBride, Benny Green, and Greg Hutchinson. The music was swinging like crazy and the mannerisms by the band had the group I was with laughing in awe a majority of the time. At one point during one of McBride’s solo’s Hutchinson (drums) asks “Where’s he at?” Insisting that he had lost his place in the form. After a signal and some delicate chords from the piano they were back on track. If i were to play at the Manchester Craftsman’s Guild and do that, I’d probably be kicked off stage, but these guys, everyone was already aware of how great they were. So in the midst of all this intense music it was a bit of comic relief.
They did the tune “Milestones,” i never like this song all that much (except when Evans does it with Scott LaFaro, you can’t really go wrong there) but after hearing there arrangement of it i can’t wait to play this song. Ray Brown is a bad mother – - .
This video is Ray Brown, Christian McBride , and John Clayton playing “Blue Monk”
Bill Evans – Time Remembered
Evans is by far my favorite pianist not alive today. His use of expressionistic harmonies and rhythmic displacement turn out some the most beautiful music. I’ve heard this song described as a painting, a portrait of Debussy and Chopin rolled into one jazz chart (if you can call it jazz). Sometimes it just feels like natural music just pouring out of his fingers, as if he wasn’t planing on playing anything, it just came out. If you notice his hands are sort of puffy, this was a side effect of hepatitis that surprisingly doesn’t effect his playing. Eddie Gomez on bass, Marty Morrell on drums.
I’m Old Greeeegggg!!
This is real old, but I think its appropriate for whoever stumbles across this page. By the way, I haven’t posted for a while and I haven’t meant not to so i will from now on.
Bill O’reilly
I really can’t stand to watch this guy, and to see a kid show him up like that is great.
