longtimenoblahg

lots of exciting stuff these days.

Had my first rehearsal with a new, as-yet-nameless band last week, formed specifically to try some new music of mine. The personnel is

Tim Berne - alto
Oscar Noriega - bass clarinet
Mary Halvorson - guitar
Chris Lightcap - bass
Tomas Fujiwara - drums
me - piano

needless to say - though I'll say it anyway - I'm very excited, both to have a band at all and to have one full of such amazing musicians who are willing to play some strange music.

Speaking of Tim Berne, Ethan Iverson of the Bad Plus blog has a really long, really great interview with him here:

part one: http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2009/06/interview-with-tim-berne-part-one.html

part two: http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2009/06/interview-with-tim-berne-part-2.html

the end of part two includes a mention of Adobe Probe [the Berne band I'm a part of] as well as a link to a video of me playing his piece Huevos Expanded at my solo gig at The Stone this past January.

gigs: next one is this coming Sunday, 6/28, at the Saratoga Jazz Festival with Ralph Alessi's band, which will also include Tony Malaby, John Hebert and Mark Ferber. Also I recently played Ortlieb's with Tarus Mateen and Doug Hirlinger, which was a huge amount of fun, easily the most fun I've ever had playing standards.

tillnextthyme.

-mm