Tonight in Sacramento, Tomorrow in Roseville

Hope to see some of you at these gigs:

Thursday, March 29th, 2007 6:00-9:00 PM
Arden Hills Resort Club & Spa
1220 Arden Hills Lane
Sacramento, CA 95864
916-482-6111
Piano/Aaron Garner, Bass/Rob Lemas and Drums/Rick Lotter

Friday, March 30th, 2007 9:00 PM - midnight

Town Lounge
1595 Eureka
Roseville, CA
916-789-1900
Piano/Aaron Garner, Bass/Rob Lemas and Drums/Rick Lotter

From the Dept. of Frustration

Up to my ears in charts, practicing, writing, rehearsal schedules, taxes... Cell phone rings: "I won't be able to watch both the kids this afternoon after all--can you come pick up the baby now?" "Jeez, I really needed these four hours." "Well, I could leave them with a stranger and be back in an hour..." "Fine, I'll be there as soon as I can." Click.

Gah!

Wave of the Future: Fans Subscribing to Songwriters?

Here at ThinkSong, we read the news about the collapse of the major record labels so you don't have to. Specifically, "The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor" in the New York Times. Here's the useful part, for futurists out there:

Many music executives dispute the idea that the album will disappear. In particular, they say, fans of jazz, classical, opera and certain rock (bands like Radiohead and Tool) will demand album-length listening experiences for many years to come. But for other genres — including some strains of pop music, rap, R&B and much of country — where sales success is seen as closely tied to radio air play of singles, the album may be entering its twilight.

“For some genres and some artists, having an album-centric plan will be a thing of the past,” said Jeff Kempler, chief operating officer of EMI’s Capitol Music Group. While the traditional album provides value to fans, he said, “perpetuating a business model that fixates on a particular packaged product configuration is inimical to what the Internet enables, and it’s inimical to what many consumers have clearly voted for.”

Another solution being debated in the industry would transform record labels into de facto fan clubs. Companies including the Warner Music Group and the EMI Group have been considering a system in which fans would pay a fee, perhaps monthly, to “subscribe” to their favorite artists and receive a series of recordings, videos and other products spaced over time.

Executives maintain that they must establish more lasting connections with fans who may well lose interest if forced to wait two years or more before their favorite artist releases new music.

Bad News for Retail CD Sales, Good News for Indie Music

My dad just forwarded me this depressing Wall Street Journal piece describing the how CD sales are slipping due to digital downloads, the demise of record stores and price pressure from Big-Box retailers--but I think they left out two important factors:

"In a dramatic acceleration of the seven-year sales decline that has battered the music industry, compact-disc sales for the first three months of this year plunged 20% from a year earlier, the latest sign of the seismic shift in the way consumers acquire music.

... The slide stems from the confluence of long-simmering factors that are now feeding off each other, including the demise of specialty music retailers like longtime music mecca Tower Records. About 800 music stores, including Tower's 89 locations, closed in 2006 alone. In recent weeks, the music industry has posted some of the weakest sales it has ever recorded. This year has already seen the two lowest-selling No. 1 albums since Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales, was launched in 1991. One week, "American Idol" runner-up Chris Daughtry's rock band sold just 65,000 copies of its chart-topping album; another week, the "Dreamgirls" movie soundtrack sold a mere 60,000. As recently as 2005, there were many weeks when such tallies wouldn't have been enough to crack the top 30 sellers. In prior years, it wasn't uncommon for a No. 1 record to sell 500,000 or 600,000 copies a week.

... Digital sales of individual songs this year have risen 54% from a year earlier to 173.4 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But that's nowhere near enough to offset the 20% decline from a year ago in CD sales to 81.5 million units. Overall, sales of all music -- digital and physical -- are down 10% this year. And even including sales of ringtones, subscription services and other "ancillary" goods, sales are still down 9%, according to one estimate; some recording executives have privately questioned that figure, which was included in a recent report by Pali Research.

Meanwhile, one billion songs a month are traded on illegal file-sharing networks, according to BigChampagne LLC."

What two factors did the WSJ miss, you ask? Well, I was on an educational conference call last night with New York City publicist Ariel Hyatt. She emphasized having realistic expectations in attempting to garner attention for your new release. It's tough out there, she said, first off because this country is in a recession and we're at war. It's funny how rarely anyone says that. We are now so disconnected from the results of our military engagements and disenfranchised as citizens that we forget the most obvious of realities. Now, I realize that not all consumer spending indicators correlate to these factors--probably the novelty of DVDs and home entertainment systems, for example, buoys their sales. But CDs are 20 years old. They are not a perfect medium (none is). And there is a locust-like cloud of new releases out there, as the indie movement gains strength (you've seen the American Idol auditions: There are a lot of people who think they have talent and don't). The major labels are imploding. From the publicity standpoint, there are some ugly trends:

--Staffing at entertainment and culture sections at major newspapers
has been slashed (Ariel claimed it's to make room for war coverage--I can't say one way or the other). Reporting (second only to musician as a job you do for love, not money) pays a pittance. Most writing is either by syndication service, ensuring that identical Associated Press articles fill papers nationwide, or by freelancers who earn 80% less than a pittance.

--Newspapers are losing print advertisers and subscribers to the Internet.

--As major labels have downsized, the market is packed with formerly corporate publicists who are hawking the wares of bands.

--In the age of reality TV, blogs and Web, media savvy is on the rise, further clogging the market with information as bands improve the effectiveness of their publicity.

That said, I am ever the optimist. Here's what gives me hope:

1. Musicians who are in this for the long haul still stand out. It will take years for you to be noticed by influential reporters in New York City, for example. But with consistency, creativity and plenty of follow up, they will write about you.

2. We can call the shots. At the SXSW music conference this year, apparently the mood was upbeat as everyone finally realized that indie music is here. There are no more "discoveries." It's up to us to make our own success, now. Tools of immense power and persuasion are at our disposal.

3. The drumbeat of stories about the demise of the retail music industry ignores the indie side, focusing exclusively on the majors. Anyone in this business for a few years soon hears the horror stories of rip-offs, locked-away masters, forgotten royalties, mismanagement, creative quashing and cookie-cutter makeovers that bands endure with major-label deals. This is business, and really, is any business pretty? We have a chance now to define our own futures outside the confines of corporate America. How exciting!

4. Indie music is rallying against some of the unfair business practices of the major labels--and succeeding. One suggested remedy to the payola scandal uncovered by then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was to require radio stations to devote a percentage of air time to local bands or independent artists. And there are other positives associated with indie music's new clout: Digital rights may be easier to protect when bands are small and local, leading to the "don't steal from your friends" effect. Hey, it could happen.

5. We all need beautiful music in our lives. Styles, sounds, instruments, venues, technology, techniques and performers will change, but melody and rhythm are as elemental to us as air and water.

Play on!

Thank You DJ Jayne!

Jayne Sanchez has recently played two tracks (Autumn Leaves and Your Love) from my first album, Jazzmérica, during KCSM's popular prime time Jazz Oasis program! I was wondering about the surge in traffic to my website! It is so gratifying to know that my first record has received national and international airplay entirely through word of mouth, as I did not hire a radio promoter.

Organizing Charts

On Saturday morning I went to my occasional salsa ensemble class (we have all been jamming together in one form or another for years now, since before my first son was born!). They requested I send the music for Wayne's arrangement of El Cantante, which I wanted to work on, beforehand. So on Friday night (I considerately figured people could download it at 6 am Saturday before class ;-)), I started scanning and I discovered an amazing organizational tip that I will now share with you: You can scan your music charts in black and white as PDFs, adding multiple pages as you go, and you end up with compact files that you can easily print in the future rather than laboriously collate at a copy store one hour before the gig!

My greatest fear is losing my charts, many of which I've hand-written (I studied music manuscript in college--a dying art), or brought back from my teachers in Cuba on government-issued music paper that has a small picture of Che Guevara on the margin (see above). I also worry about giving the last copy of one to a musician on a gig and then realizing later I don't have any left. I've developed elaborate systems of hidden folders, secret bookcases and backyard burrows to safeguard my original charts. Now, with the invention of the computer and the scanner, it looks like those days are over! My only complaint is that if I scan something in wrong, say, with the first page askew, and I don't realize it until later, I seem to have to scan the whole thing in all over again (i.e., all pages of an 8-page chart). Perhaps Adobe Acrobat or some PDF editing program would let me fix a single page? Another positive is that I believe there's pretty accurate OCR on some of the new music software like Sibelius, and you can import your old charts (assuming you have $600 to buy the software, which I don't).

Anyhow, I got so obsessed with scanning charts that I was up until 4 am doing it! And I'm about to scan all my drummer charts right now. What fun!

State of the Nation: What I Learned in Jazz Class

Who knows, this may be apocryphal. It's probably true--I've similar experiences where I was shocked by the writings of students from a prestigious local university (one that I didn't have the grades to get into!). I edited this piece down a bit.

What I Learned In Jazz Class

These are quotes from students in a college jazz
history class. They are extracted from the essay
topic, "What I learned over this semester in jazz
history." These are all genuine responses,
completely unaltered. They are all 18+ year old
students; not high school or middle school age kids.
None of them are music students; they all took this
class as a gen. ed. credit and a hopeful "easy A".

"Free Jazz is an era that I wished I had never learned
about.

"Free Jazz. Wow; what a sound it makes. An awful,
horrible sound. I don?t see how that can actually be
called a sound. My 5 year old nephew could pound on
the piano and make the same sound! He may even make a
better sound. To be honest, that sound is one big
mess.

"With swing, it's kind of up in the air for me. I must
say I tried like hell to keep up with it.

"My favorite jazz has a bluesy, Mexican feel to it.

"Though Jazz started in New Orleans, it traveled all
around the world picking up and dropping off things
along the way.

"One thing that confused me was Jelly Roll Morton. Did
he play with the Red Hot Chili Peppers? I didn?t think
that they were around back then.

"Jelly Roll (Morton) bridged the gap between piano and
ragtime.

"My grandpa likes it, but I think scat stinks.

"I wished Don Cherry would put his trumpet back in his
pocket.

"There is not enough space in my head to fit all that
I learned.

"This class taught me about a lot of things that I
never knew about.

"Some of the big jazz musicians we learned about were:
Louis Armstrong, Duke, Charlie Parker, Dizzy
Gillespie, T. Mark, Ken Barns, Buddy Baldwin,
Jellyroll Mortin, Sydney Bichai, Fats Waller,
Earl Hines, and many many more.

"Coming into class on the first day, I assumed there
would be a boring professor standing in front of the
class droning on and on about jazz. Here's where it
started; this is who played it; and here we are today;
blah, blah, blah. I now realize that my assumption
wasn't all that wrong.

"I assumed that jazz had started in the
African-American community only because it fulfilled a
multi-cultural course that I was required to take.

"Jim Crow, in a way, was the first jazz musician.

"Jazz was put into effect by Jim Crow's Law.

"I learned in this class that, contrary to my moms
opinion, Kenny G is a joke. A really non-funny one.

"I fell in love with that tune, Stablemates. It really
hits home.

"Jazz musicians dont play for women any more.

"I learned that going to jazz concerts gets me in good
with the girlfriend.

"I learned a lot about Be Bop, Swing, Drugs, and
Fusion.

"I found new respect for Miles Davis. He was adamant
about not using drugs when everyone else was trying to
get him to try some.

"I liked hearing the Original Dixieland (Jazz) Band,
and how they were the original Dixieland band.

"You might want to mention to future classes that jazz
brings true romance to a scene.

"I'm glad I took this class, because I feel more
comfortable to talk about jazz in its awesomeness.

"Drugs caused many artists their careers in many ways.

"Jazz is a style of music that is almost very sober.

"I figured jazz started in the 1960s, but to my
surprise, it started back in the late 18th century.

"Smooth jazz now just plain old angers me.

"A lot of the things that I learned were facts that I
never new about, not only in jazz, but in life as
well.

"I got really excited by the tenor sax, soprano sax,
baritone sax, but not so much the alto sax.

I hear the hard-bop jazz influence on bands today such
as Matchbox Twenty and Dave Matthews Band.

I'm now going to start this essay on jazz.

I learned the definition of supreme technical
virtuosity is to play like Louie Armstrong.

"Charlie Parker was a famous jazz musician who played
saxophonists.

TV has become more jazzy to me now.

Studying jazz has been a coming out party for me.

I loved the vibrational solos of Clifford Brown.

When I think of tradition and instruments, I think of
Fiddler of the Roof.

I learned a lot from the different guest speakers in
class, whether they were an experienced piano player,
a director of music at a major motel, or a guitar
player with an oddly placed hankercheif in
his pocket.

Jazz has the technique of classical music, the feeling
of blues, and the hope of children everywhere.

I know what troubles musicians now when I watch and
listen to them play.

My ties to jazz were through Bleeding Gums Murphy, a
character on a TV show called the Simpsons. It comes
on at 8pm on Sunday nights.

I was surprised to find out about the different styles
of jazz like hard, be, and post bops.

When I try to play jazz, I mess around with the
instruments pounding out random notes that were just
me making nonsense up and it sounding like a big pile
of crap.

Jazz is more profound when it doesn't help pay the
bills.

Hip hop and pop are fine, going out for fame and bling
bling. Jazz has been around for a while, is out of
style, but can really sing.

Jazz is a very dynamic kind of music. Loud and Soft.

Swing makes you want to get up and dance and free jazz
just makes you want to get up.

If any kind of music can calm a hectic day, its cool
jazz. If you feel like going out and dancing, however
there is ragtime.

In conclusion, jazz is music.

Jazz has come from the fields of New Orleans to my 2pm
class, and beyond.

Unlike other forms of music, jazz is listened to by
old people as well as us.

Steve Turre has taught me that sea shells should be
left on the ground instead of his mouth.

Over the course of the semester my knowledge of jazz
has gone from nothing to practically nothing.

Even though I probably won't listen to jazz after this
semester, it has given me a greater appreciation of
movies.

Jazz to me was the shops from groups in streets
downtown in the olden, golden days.

Jazz is not as popular with all of the adolescence
going around.

I like jazz more in books than on cds.

I remember coming into class with no facts but a whole
plate of bullshit to dish out

I found myself learning about Blues, Early Jazz,
Dixieland, Swing, Be Bop, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, Cool
Jazz, Hard Bop, Free Jazz, Third Stream, Japanese,
Post Bop, Fusion, Smooth, Modern Jazz, and the list
goes on.

Call and Respond is where one musician plays and the
other one tries too hard to figure out what he's
doing.

The people in Dixie Land originated jazz music.

Jazz is now a part of me from 2pm-3:15pm every Tuesday
and Thursday.

Jazz started in the fields where they used
hand-me-down instruments and wore hand-me-down
clothes.

If Wynton Marsalis said jazz was dead in the 1970s,
what was he playing at the time?

Weather Report was the final big band back in the day.

My girlfriend and I both agreed the next morning that
jazz-club food was something we could've done without.

Jazz agitates me.

I like jazz, but I need something else besides rhythm,
melody, and harmony.

I had no clue that so many (musicians) used drugs.
Thinking about that, there is no doubt that they are
living the life I dream of. They are spending money on
things that they don't really need or even want.'

''I noticed that there weren't many jazz women in our
textbook until I looked to see that the author was a
guy. All guys are sexist, women bashers, who don?t
ever give us our credit.?''

'The part I most enjoyed was studying and appreciating
slavery.

Id like to see midgets getting bribed in every jazz
club. Not just with Birdland. I'm of course talking
about the jazz club, not Charlie Parker.

Weve had our share of good times and bad times over
the semester. By bad times, I mean my tests.

I could go on and on about jazz, but I won't.

I technically wasn't in your class but I was happy to
be along for the ride.

I was in jazz band in high school but we didn't play
jazz music.

Dizzie Gillespie was the one who jammed on the drums.

I thought doing our listening report would be a
painful sort of torture.

I was bummed out at the beginning of the semester
because I thought Louis Armstrong was going to be one
of the guest lecturers.

Hans Groiner 'Fixes' Thelonious Monk

This is pianist Larry Goldings. I wonder if he'll post more episodes?

More On Critics Via Venezuela

By pure accident I found this blog posting, "Críticos crónicos de la crítica," by Luis Barrera Linares, a professor of literature in Caracas:

O abundan los que padecen el síndrome del abuelo, el niño y el burro: si el hombre va sobre el asno, censuramos su descaro de dejar al pobre niño a pie; si es el chico quien hace de jinete, pues mire usted que la juventud de hoy no tiene compasión con los ancianos. Como se les ocurra montar ambos al burro, ¡malvados, no tienen compasión del pobre animal! Y si ambos van andando al lado del jumento, ¡vaya que son idiotas!, cansarse caminando cuando pudieran evitarlo.

Translation:

Many suffer from the syndrome of the grandfather, child and donkey: If the man rides the burro, we criticize him for leaving the poor child on foot; if it is the child who is the jockey, why, look at how today's youth disrespect their elders. And if both ride the ass, what sadists, have they no compassion for the poor animal? And if both walk alongside the animal, what idiots, exhausting themselves by walking when they could avoid it altogether.

Opera's American Idol

Here's a great article in Newsday on how opera competitions keep the talent pool fresh and channel stars to the world's preeminent stages.

I liked this quote from 29-year-old Stephen Hartley, who won in a regional phase of the New York Metropolitan Opera auditions:

While the prize money helps defray the $1,200 that he and his wife, also a singer, spend on voice lessons and coaching sessions every month, even winning one of the $15,000 grand prizes might not liberate him from his day job. Nor, he says, would getting cut be enough to derail him. "I want to put every ounce of my being and drive and focus into becoming a success. For me to stop for financial reasons - that's a long way off."

In a world where even success can mean living in airports, postponing children, choosing which bills to pay and absorbing avalanches of rejection, that kind of doggedness matters at least as much as a natural vocal gift. "If you don't have the determination, you'll give up on yourself before others do on you," says Nichols. "You just have to be more miserable not singing than you are going through it."

Alexa's Tips for Musician Moms, Episode 9, Takes 1 and 2

Critics: A Critique

I went to see Kurt Elling's 10 pm set at Yoshi's on Thursday night. His chops are amazing, and, as I commented to the table mates I had just met as I was finding a seat to watch the show, the most uncanny thing is that he sounds exactly like his recordings! Elling's pitch is unerring, and the unusual timbre and resonance of his voice were powerfully present, not buried in the mix as so many of us singers end up. I ended up buying a "digital download" for $15 (too steep!) of his latest album, Nightmoves, which consists of a jewel case with everything but the disc--perhaps it has to do with the album's April 3 street date. He's been touring extensively to promote this, his maiden effort on the Concord label. I can't say enough about how creative and masterful he is as a poet and singer. The Rumi-influenced vocalese lyric on Ellington's "I Like the Sunrise" is based on Von Freeman's improvisation in a 2002 recording--check out these words (here's where you can find the entire lyric):

Don’t worry about saving this music
or be scared if the singing ends or the piano breaks a string
for we have fallen to a place where everything is music and singing
everything is recovered and new
ever new and musical and even if the whole world’s harp should burn up
there would still be hidden there
the spirit of song there to linger on

I also loved his cover of Betty Carter's composition Tight. I've never done vocalese, but he inspires me to try in the future.

So here's where the critic comes in: The day before, I read a review of Elling in the paper that essentially said he was slick and technically flawless, but would never be considered among jazz's greats because he has no heart or soul. Ouch!! And the drag is, having read that, it lingered in the back of my mind during the performance, as I evaluated his moves based on this one critic's comment, wondering if they were too calculated. Ultimately, I discarded this notion, blown away by the depth of poetry and the Sinatra-to-Stevie Wonder-like range Elling displayed. The next day, my singer/writer friend Emily pointed out that they used to level the same charge at Ella Fitzgerald, a criticism that has always annoyed me terribly. What, do you have to be a heroin addict to have feeling? Isn't the joy in Ella's voice a feeling? "I think they tend to say that about singers who are really skilled," Emily said. "Sometimes people want to hear something rough."

All this got me thinking about how critics frame our response to the arts.

Criticism is necessary, or if not necessary, instinctive. We all judge. Critics, of course, are paid to have opinions, and I again speak from journalistic experience when I say it's easy to sound opinionated, but hard to fully support your statements with evidence. As critical as I am of myself and others in daily life, I try to avoid criticizing musicians and singers publicly--why punish my peers for making themselves available and vulnerable on stage? And I especially avoid the "you asked for it" backlash that writers often employ, stooping to cheap psychoanalysis of all performers as attention-seekers. Few call writers, dentists or executives attention-seekers, but anyone who takes pride in their work seeks the attention of others in the form of readers, patients or customers, right?

The other aspect of criticism is the cloak of legitimacy it weaves--granted, a legitimacy those of us with nascent careers are actively in search of. A wonderful example of this came to light the other day in the New York Times: A little known British pianist, Joyce Hatto, recorded more than 120 CDs of the classical piano repertoire from 1989 until her death in 2006 at age 77. "Intriguingly, she gave to the music a developed although oddly malleable personality. She could do Schubert in one style, and then Prokofiev almost as though she was a new person playing a different piano — an astonishing, chameleon-like artistic ability," writes Dennis Dutton. She was revered as a "prodigy of old age."

Turns out, after reams of critical praise, it was only last month that the British magazine Gramaphone discovered that she and had ripped off every last recording from other pianists' recordings. The moral, according to Dutton? "Music isn’t just about sound; it is about achievement in a larger human sense. If you think an interpretation is by a 74-year-old pianist at the end of her life, it won’t sound quite the same to you as if you think it’s by a 24-year-old piano-competition winner who is just starting out. Beyond all the pretty notes, we want creative engagement and communication from music, we want music to be a bridge to another personality. Otherwise, we might as well feed Chopin scores into a computer." He finishes with the observation that, to his surprise, there are young pianists toiling in obscurity of whom he should be aware.

Look, I understand the whole problem of being overwhelmed by the volume of recorded material out there, but to assume that only a handful of pearls lie at the bottom of the vast musical ocean leads to the emporer's new clothes syndrome, where critics follow each others' lead and lavish praise on one safe bet (who turns out to be a fraud) while ignoring others who would require them to risk their reputations (and test their own technical knowledge) by evaluating the unknown.

It's like velvet paintings. When I, raised in an intellectual Berkeley family, married Emilio, from a small town in Mexico, we spent years battling the taste issue. Early on, I was forced to explain why velvet paintings were kitsch. Only I couldn't, other than to say I just "knew" velvet paintings were in poor taste. Now, with all the TV shows I admittedly love to watch, is there an epidemic of uniform "good" taste defined by the critics who police fashion, home decor, child rearing, food and music? I'm all for beauty, but I want to absorb the arts first, and judge them later--according to my own criteria, not the standard checklist of pedigree, hipness, branding, looks or popularity.

Enough opining, I'm off to view the YouTube editor's picks (they have editors?) in the humor category...

Alexa's Tips for Musician Moms, Episode 8

Tips for Musical Moms, Episode 7