Positive vibes from radio promo

I just spoke with Mark Rini at Groov Marketing in Hollywood. He sent me this nice note last week when I was working my tail off at a conference (and gave permission for me to post from it): "WOW. Alexa, this is an exceptional release. I have heard countless versions of All Blues, but never one with such an original signature on it. And..your version of Morning..it has an almost Manhattan Transfer feel to it, and I'm not even a fan of Manhattan Transfer, but I love what you did with it."

I talked with him yesterday. Now I'm feeling a bit confused, to be honest. Apparently, if I go forward with a radio push for this, with an add date of April 19 or so, it's unlikely that after that I could get a record deal for it. Just now I've been looking at some distributors' web sites. But the more success I have with this record, the more likely the next one will do well. I'm so tired right now--I don't really feel ready for a "next record," not to mention that I have no money for it.

Anyway, he felt really great about my record, said it was unique and that despite the glut of female vocalists he felt mine stood out, especially for World and Latin specialty shows--less for straight ahead jazz. Not a surprise, I suppose. I'm off to phone up some distributors and at least do a bit more investigation before I discard the idea of getting distribution.

Looking at Radio Promotion

I spoke yesterday with Mark Rini at Groov Marketing in Hollywood. They now handle all radio promo for Blue Note, and come highly recommended from people I met at the IAJE in January. I think I'm getting ready to do the radio promo push. I asked him if I should coordinate radio play with a tour, and he said it was alright to just do radio first, that would help me get tour dates later. He asked if I had distribution; I said no. He said it would take 4-5 months to get it, but they can work with an artist who only has Internet sales, it's just harder because many jazz listeners are older and want to be able to go into Tower Records to buy a copy of your album. But again, he recommended going ahead with promo, and using the results as impetus for getting a distribution deal on my next album. The distributors he recommended were City Hall and North Country. I'll look into them, but on the whole I found his advice reassuring. I told him about being featured at the top of the hour on Listen Here with Mark Ruffin and Neil Tesser in Chicago, and he said that was huge. But he also said (and I had already learned this in at the IAJE) not to send out any more CDs because it will dilute the effect of a radio promotion campaign and make it harder to place high on the JazzWeek charts. I'm sending him a copy of the CD today. I hope he likes it!

Grace Cathedral

I'm really grateful to Canon Rick Johnson at Grace Cathedral--he had a nice profile written about my work as a cantor published on the fantastic Grace Cathedral website. The Sundays at Six service has been so marvelous for me these past two years--I was there when they started it, and Christopher Putnam hired me in an effort to add more contemporary music and a shorter, less structured service for people who weren't as interested in the full morning mass. It's just so unusual--a few Sundays ago, Canon Johnson had a short film shown in place of the homily, called Parable. It was shown at the 1965 World's Fair, and tells the story of Jesus as if he were a circus clown. I found it so moving--I think they may still have this available on the Grace.com website. I recommend reading the amazing quotes from Alan Jones, dean of the cathedral, too. Very inspiring words, such as this one, which I added to my personal quotes file:

"We use the phrase 'going live' to describe an experience when life in all its fullness and fragility breaks upon our consciousness, when the here and now is as exciting as it gets. Real-time performance with all its inherent risks and rewards. Knowing what an awesome thing it is to be alive and aware. (The alternative is 'going dead' — an insidious process that can happen almost without our noticing as we pursue our busy lives, and that distorts and impoverishes our vision of life.)"
— Seasons of Grace

I can't say enough that I wouldn't even have gotten this gig if it weren't for my mother, Christine Leigh-Taylor, who was ordained at Grace Cathedral as an Episcopal priest in June 2002.

More radio play

Last week, Jon Denny, host and producer of a weekly 3-hour radio show called VIVA THE RHYTHM! on Clear Channel radio 690 AM in Southern California played my version of "Smile Please" and said he'd continue playing my music in the weeks to come. He's also invited me to be a guest on the show. I'll have to coordinate that with some gigs down in LA. VIVA THE RHYTHM! is syndicated to over 150 stations nationwide.

He writes, "Thanks to the mention in our friend Rudy Mangual's LATIN BEAT, I heard some of your music and thought it was terrific."

Synchronicity

Was just in LA for the day and picked up a Milan Kundera book in the airport store. "Ignorance: A Novel." I've read a lot of his stuff, though I can't really remember it anymore. But this passage from p. 5 caught my eye:

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. To express that fundamental notion most Europeans can utilize a word derived from the Greek (nostalgia, nostalgie) as well as other words with roots in their national languages: añoranza, say the Spaniards; saudade, say the Portuguese. In each language these words have a different semantic nuance. Often they mean only the sadness caused by the impossibility of returning to one's country: a longing for country, for home. What in English is called "homesickness."

... But this reduces that great notion to just its spatial element. One of the oldest European languages, Icelandic (like English) makes a distinction between two terms: soknuour: nostalgia in its general sense; and heimpra: longing for the homeland.

... In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there.

I've been thinking about how to write a song about those feelings, though I myself haven't had them, haven't been driven from my homeland (the farthest I've gotten from my homeland of Berkeley is Oakland). Visiting Cuba made me think of it--how that nostalgia grips its exiles and how when they finally return to their fictional paradise they will strangle it with modernity.

Funny how I was just contemplating the meaning of saudades (see below) and I pick up this book.