Vagabundeo Makes KCSM Top 100 of 2007!

From KCSM Music Director Jesse "Chuy" Varela:

"I share with you a list compiled from the www.jazzlist.org database of KCSM Jazz 91, in the San Francisco Bay Area, of the top 100 spun records of 2007 at our 24/7 jazz station. Our DJs are some of the most knowledgeable and include Alisa Clancy, Melanie Berzon, Chris Cortez, Clifford Brown Jr., Keith Hines, Kathleen Lawton, Dick Conte, John Rogers, Wolfe Rickets, Greg Bridges, Jayne Sanchez, Michael Burman, Richard Hadlock, Mal Sharpe, Dave Ramirez, Alicia Lopez, Ron Pelletier, Lee Thomas, Herb Wong, Bob Parlocha and yours truly, Jesse 'Chuy' Varela."

KCSM TOP 100 PLAYED NEW RELEASES OF 2007

1. Ed Reed: Love Stories (Ed Reed Songs) - 89 spins

2. Bobby Hutcherson: For Sentimental Reasons (Kind Of Blue) - 78

3. Jackie Ryan: You and the night and the music (Open Art) - 77

4. Kurt Elling: Night Moves (Concord) - 70

5. Jules Broussard: With Strings Attached (Darling & Kid) - 68

6. Rebecca Parris: You Don't Know Me (Saying It With Jazz) - 63

7. Herb Gibson: Let's Play (Silverado) - 63

8. Dayna Stephens: The Timeless Now (CTA) - 61

9. Abbey Lincoln: Abbey Sings Abbey (Verve) - 56

10. Jon Mayer: So Many Stars (Reservoir Music) - 54

11. Kenny Burrell: 75th Birthday Bash (Blue Note) - 53

12. Calvin Keys: Hand Made Portrait (Silverado) - 52

13. Michael O'Neil: Still Dancin' (Mosax) - 52

14. Ron Carter: Dear Miles (Blue Note) - 51

15. Patti Austin: Avant Gershwin (Rendevous) - 49

16. Beatlejazz: All You Need (Lightyear) - 49

17. Gerald Wilson: Monterey Moods (Mack Ave) - 49

18. Terrell Stafford: Taking Chances (Max Jazz) - 47

19. Tierney Sutton: On The Other Side (Telarc Jazz) - 47

20. Brian Bromberg: Downright Upright (Artistry Music) - 44

21. Russell Gunn: Plays Miles (High Note) - 43

22. Larry Willis: Blue Fable (High Note) - 43

23. Michael Brecker: Pilgrimage (Heads Up) - 42

24. Grady Tate: From The Heart (Half Note) - 42

25. Andy Bey: Ain't Necessarily So (12th St. Records) - 41

26. Joe Zawinul: Brown Street (Telarc) - 41

27. Monk's Music Trio: Monk On Mondays (CMB) - 39

28. Jack Sheldon: Listen Up (Butterfly) - 39

29. Eric Alexander: Temple Of Olympic Zeus (High Note) - 38

30. Kate McGarry: The Target (Palmetto) - 37

31. Houston Person: Thinking Of You (High Note) - 37

32. Jimmy Cobb: Cobb's Corner (Chesky) - 35

33. Steve Nelson: Sound - Effect (High Note) - 35

34. Michel Camilo: Spirit of the Moment (Telarc) - 35

35. Steve Kuhn: Live at Birdland (Blue Note) - 35

36. Kerry Strayer: Play it where it lays (KS Productions) - 35

37. Bill Charlap: Live at the Village Vanguard - 34

38. Hank Jones: Kids - Live at Dizzy's Coca Cola Club (Blue Note) - 34

39. One More: The Summery - The Music Of Thad Jones Vol.2 (IPO) - 33

40. Houston Person: Thinking Of You (High Note) - 33

41. Poncho Sanchez: Raise Your Hand (Concord Picante) - 33

42. Wil Blades: Sketchy (Doodlin') - 32

43. Harry Connick Jr.: Chanson Du Vieux Carre (Marsalis Music) - 32

44. Dee Dee Bridgewater: Red Earth - A Malian Journey (Emarcy) - 31

45. Joshua Redman: Back East (Nonesuch) - 31

46. Queen Latifah: Travlin' Light (Verve) - 31

47. Sonny Fortune: You and the night and the music (18th & Vine) - 30

48. Herbie Hancock: River: The Joni Letters (Verve) - 30

49. John Hicks: On The Wings Of An Eagle (Chesky) - 30

50. Robert Glasper: In My Element (Blue Note) - 29

51. Sachal Vasandani: Eyes Wide Open (Mack Ave) - 29

52. Hot Club of SF: Yerba Buena Bounce (Reference) - 28

53. Frank Morgan: A Night In The Life (High Note) - 28

54. Hendrik Meurkins: New York Samba Jazz Quintet (Zoho) - 28

55. Mark Weinstein: Con Alma (Jazzheads) - 28

56. Phil Woods: American Songbook II (Kind Of Blue) - 28

57. Randy Crawford & Joe Sample: Feeling Good (PRA) - 27

58. Various: Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life (Blue Note) - 27

59. Conrad Herwig: Sketches of Spain y Mas (Half Note) -26

60. Paquito D'Rivera: Funk Tango (Sunnyside) - 26

61. David "Fathead" Newman: Life (High Note) - 26

62. Avashai Cohen: As Is (Half Note) - 25

63. Don Friedman: Waltz For Marilyn (Jazz Excursion) - 25

64. Fred Randolph: New Day (Creative Spirit) - 24

65. Bobby Sanabria: Big Band Urban Folk Tales (Jazzheads) - 24

66. John Santos: Papa Mambo (Machete) - 24

67. Will Bernard: Party Hats (Palmetto) - 24

68. Bill Holman Band: Hommage (Jazzed Media) - 24

69. Jim Snidero: Tippin' (Savant) - 24

70. Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker: Get Ready (Mack Avenue) - 23

71. Chembo Corniel: For The Rest Of Your Life (Chemworo) - 23

72. Dena DeRose: Live at the Jazz Standard (Max Jazz) - 23

73. Tia Fuller: Healing Space (Mack Ave) - 23

74. Kenny Werner: Lawn CHair Society (Blue Note) - 23

75. Michael Wolff: Jazz, Jazz, Jazz (Wrong) - 23

76. Bob Mintzer: In The Moment (Art Of Life) - 23

77. Dafnis Prieto: Absolute Quintet (Zoho) - 22

78. Carl Saunders Exploration: The Lost Bill Holman Charts (MAMA) - 22

79. Charles Tolliver Big Band: With Love (Blue Note/Mosaic) - 22

80. John Calloway: The Code (Bombo) - 21

81. Anat Cohen: Poetica (Anzic) - 21

82. Eldar: Re-imagination (Masterworks Jazz) - 21

83. Freddy Cole: Music Maestro Please (High Note) - 20

84. Deborah Cox: Destination Moon (Decca) - 20

85. Steve Khan: Borrowed Time (Tone Center) - 20

86. Bill Mays Inventions Trio: Fantasy (Palmetto) - 20

87. McCoy Tyner: McCoy Tyner Quartet (Half Note) - 20

88. Peter Zak: My Conception (Steeplechase) - 20

89. Cyrus Chestnut: Cyrus Plays Elvis (Koch) - 19

90. Deep Blue Organ Trio: Folk Music (Origin) - 19

91. John Fedchock: Up & Running (Reservoir) - 19

92. Bruce Hornsby: Camp Meeting (Columbia) - 19

93. Sammy Figueroa: The Magician (Savant) - 18

94. Maria Schneider Orchestra: Sky Blue (Artist Share) - 18

95. The Stryker/Slagle Band: Latest Outlook (Zoho) - 18

96. Alexa Weber Morales: Vagabundeo/Wanderings (Patois) - 18

97. Terrence Blanchard: A Tale Of God's Will - A Requiem For Katrina
(Blue Note) - 17

98. Quartet San Francisco: Whirled Chamber Music (Violin Jazz) - 17

99. Antonio Sanchez: Migration (Cam Jazz) - 17

100. John Scofield: This Meets That (Emarcy) - 17

Personal Technology Update: How Far We've Come

Just think, it's been almost eight years since intrauterine entertainment technology became possible, finally alleviating the boredom of those first nine months of development...

New Sony In-Utero TV To Entertain Children In The Womb

LOS ANGELES-The entertainment industry is abuzz following the Sony Corporation's unveiling Monday of the Utertron 9000, a state-of-the-art in-utero womb-entertainment system for children between the ages of minus nine months and zero.

Gift-Giving Ideas! Vagabundeo and Jazzmérica

Are you drawing a blank on what to buy this year? Music is always a wonderful gift, especially if you know it has been lovingly written, arranged and recorded by those who, for reasons of mental health, cannot prevent themselves from creating sonic art.

You have many options online and in stores to purchase my new album, Vagabundeo. Because Jazzmérica, my first album, is not as widely distributed (although there are some copies available at various online retailers), I highly recommend buying it from the super-customer-oriented folks at CDBaby.

Here are a few ways you can listen to and buy Vagabundeo:

Amazon (they're selling MP3s too now)
iTunes (entire album for $9.99, or each song for $0.99)
CDBaby (20% discount if you buy more than one copy)
LatinCoolNow (MP3s)
Down Home Music (a great store in Berkeley on Fourth Street near Hearst)

And here's where you can buy Jazzmérica:

CDBaby (20% discount if you buy more than one copy; you can listen to all tracks online)
Amazon

A heartfelt thanks to the hundreds of listeners who have bought my albums. I hope they've brought you as much enjoyment as making them gave me.

Happy Holidays!
--Alexa

David Byrne on the New Music Business

In this very informative article in Wired, David Byrne does a great job of breaking down the business models available to musicians today, from DIY to join-the-borg equity deals (where you get lots o' cash up front from a major label and no ownership or control).

"What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music," Byrne writes. "At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that's not bad news for music, and it's certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists."

You should absolutely read this article if you want to know what he perceives to be the six business models available today. (There is a companion piece talking about Radiohead's pay-what-you-will Internet sales model, which I found less valuable.) But the following are words to live by:

In the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions. It was communal and often utilitarian. You couldn't take it home, copy it, sell it as a commodity (except as sheet music, but that's not music), or even hear it again. Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone — a memory.

Technology changed all that in the 20th century. Music — or its recorded artifact, at least — became a product, a thing that could be bought, sold, traded, and replayed endlessly in any context. This upended the economics of music, but our human instincts remained intact. I spend plenty of time with buds in my ears listening to recorded music, but I still get out to stand in a crowd with an audience. I sing to myself, and, yes, I play an instrument (not always well).

We'll always want to use music as part of our social fabric: to congregate at concerts and in bars, even if the sound sucks; to pass music from hand to hand (or via the Internet) as a form of social currency; to build temples where only "our kind of people" can hear music (opera houses and symphony halls); to want to know more about our favorite bards — their love lives, their clothes, their political beliefs. This betrays an eternal urge to have a larger context beyond a piece of plastic. One might say this urge is part of our genetic makeup.

These are the other words to live by:

Touring is not just promotion. Live performances used to be seen as essentially a way to publicize a new release — a means to an end, not an end in itself. Bands would go into debt in order to tour, anticipating that they'd recover their losses later through increased record sales. This, to be blunt, is all wrong. It's backward. Performing is a thing in itself, a distinct skill, different from making recordings. And for those who can do it, it's a way to make a living.

Amen, amen, amen. Isn't it widely known that George Harrison and the Beatles were the first to turn the album into an art form distinct from live performance? Having made four studio recordings in the last four years, I will say that nothing compares to the intense learning you gain via that process, in all spheres of music (songwriting, arranging, practicing, musical technique, recording and production, marketing, distribution). The missing piece? Performance.

In the last year I have steadily increased my performing. It can be frustrating at times, because there's a steep learning curve there too. I have been performing as a singer all my life, from a very young age (with my first major solo, at a show with Bobby McFerrin in a theater packed with hundreds, coming at age 11). But you can spend your whole life refining your repertoire and artistic definition. If you are lucky, you begin to perform on your own terms. You learn what works, what moves people, what gets them on their feet, what brings tears to their eyes. It's showmanship, baby, and there ain't no way to learn it but live and on the stage.

Great Songwriting Blog

My friend and co-composer Vince Mansel hipped me to this Berklee Music blog by singer/songwriter Andrea Stolpe on songwriting and song publishing. She has some useful tips here and good stuff on her website too.

Multicore Makes Major Daily News

I've been writing about the multicore chip revolution and how it will affect software developers for about a year now over at DevX.com's Intel-sponsored portal, Go Parallel. This is the first piece I've seen in the New York Times on the topic. I sure would like to know if this was the result of a PR pitch from Microsoft. I'd be willing to bet it is, given the Redmond focus. Not that it's not newsworthy, but it would be nice to see something like this appear in the mainstream because developers themselves were wrestling with it, not because software vendors were pitching their solutions to the new paradigm.

Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust

...

The chip industry will continue to be able to add more transistors to a silicon chip for the foreseeable future, but the problem lies in the amount of power they consume and thus the amount of heat generated. That will limit the rate at which processing speeds increase.

The need to get around what the industry is calling the “power wall” has touched off a frantic hunt for new computing languages, as well as new ways to automatically break up problems so they can be solved more quickly in parallel.

Although the Microsoft effort was started about five years ago by Craig Mundie, one of the company’s three chief technical officers, it picked up speed recently with the hiring of a number of experts from the supercomputing industry and academia.

Mr. Mundie himself is a veteran of previous efforts in the supercomputer industry during the 1980s and 1990s to make breakthroughs in parallel computing. “I’m happy that by hiring a bunch of old hands, who have been through these wars for 10 or 20 years, we at least have a nucleus of people who kind of know what’s possible and what isn’t,” he said.

The more recent arrivals at Microsoft include luminaries like Burton Smith, a supercomputer designer whose ideas on parallel computing have been widely adopted, and Dan Reed, an expert on parallel computing.

...

From MySpace to Mass Media

This New York Times piece about singer/songwriter Ingrid Michaelson is not the first time she's received major newspaper coverage. This article, like others in the past, plays up the "discovered on MySpace" angle, which is a variation on the old "discovered artist" myth. What they don't tell you is how normal her story is for a musician--especially a songwriter. Well, except for the mass market success part. They also don't tell you that being "discovered" on MySpace takes a lot of work, and a few very very good songs. But this is what journalists want to write.

(The other interesting thing about this NYT article is the prominent advertising for CHANTIX, a pharmaceutical whose name implied it was some sort of panacea for singers. I eagerly clicked on the ad, only to learn that it's for quitting smoking. Although that's not bad advice for singers.)

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Ms. Michaelson’s climb out of obscurity started, as is so often the case these days, on the Internet. Now she is known to many “Grey’s Anatomy” fans for her quirky, heartfelt songs that were featured over the past year on the ABC television series. After a cross-country music tour, she is performing on Wednesday at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan, and she pointed out that the concert sold out a month ago without any advertising. (She has added a concert on Feb. 15 at Webster Hall.)

Not bad for someone who, until May, was teaching in an after-school theater program in the Stapleton neighborhood of Staten Island, where she still lives with her parents, a dog and a pet rabbit in the house she has inhabited since she was born.

“It’s so uncool, it’s cool,” said her mother, Elizabeth Egbert, the executive director of the Staten Island Museum.

Ms. Michaelson has inherited her mother’s dry wit, which she combines with youthful enthusiasm and a penchant for funky eyeglasses. “Apparently my glasses make me sound just like Lisa Loeb,” she deadpanned, alluding to articles that compared her to Ms. Loeb, a well-known singer.

FREE Christmas Concert and Sing-Along!

December 23rd, 2007 - 7:00 PM
Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist
1661 Fifteenth Street at Julian Avenue San Francisco, CA 94103-3511
(415) 861-1436
www.saintjohnsf.org
Price: $0

Please join us for this FREE Christmas concert and JOIN IN on singing some of your favorite carols.

I'll be performing solo (Christmas isn't complete for me if I can't perform O Holy Night somewhere), duo and with YOU. Charles Rus is my concert co-conspirator. He's a pianist/organist/vocalist and super cool San Francisco person (he frequently kayaks under the Golden Gate bridge!).

A native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Charles Rus has given solo concerts throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. He is also organist for the San Francisco Symphony and has played many soloist and ensemble roles with the orchestra in their home at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. He has also toured extensively with them.

Charles began his involvement with the organ by working with George Bozeman and Company Organbuilders in Deerfield, New Hampshire. After receiving degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Folkwang Hochschule für Musik in Germany. His teachers include Russell Saunders, Robert Glasgow, John Ferris, and Gisbert Schneider.

Mr. Rus has been Professor of Organ at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In addition to teaching and performing, he is musician at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist. He is a composer of mainly choral music, some of which is published in the Episcopal Church's hymnal Wonder, Love, and Praise.

Mr. Rus can also be heard on solo recordings and with the San Francisco Symphony.

From The Onion

Man Finally Put In Charge Of Struggling Feminist Movement

WASHINGTON-"All the feminist movement needed to do was hire someone who had the balls to do something about this glass ceiling business," new head feminist Peter "Buck" McGowan said.

Dance Dance Rueda Resolution

Our rueda de casino class at ODC Dance in San Francisco culminated with a performance on December 7. The intermediate class choreography, which I learned, was challenging and upbeat. The advanced choreography was not only challenging and filled with time changes, it was sexy as hell. "Where's my sexy moment?" I complained after our show. I asked my friend Vince, who came with his dancer wife Heike, what he thought of my group's performance. "How did YOU feel?" he diplomatically replied. Still, I thought we did a good job. I learned alot from Sidney and Ryan, our instructors, in terms of the detailed way they listen to a salsa song and interpret it via choreography. And the crazy energy backstage before the show, with all the different groups in their costumes (ranging from grass skirts to clogs to skimpy samba garb), was so fun. "Wow, you really can go back to high school!" I said to one of my fellow dancers.

It was a lot of work, which I hadn't anticipated (there were multiple rehearsals per week, but I managed one extra on Tuesday nights at Dance Mission in addtion to the Sunday class). I also learned about some Oakland rueda classes which I want to explore. And I reconnected with some friends I had made several years ago when Emilio and I were going to a regular rueda class in the Fruitvale district in Oakland. Of course, all of them are now in the advanced class because, unlike us, they didn't stop dancing when that class ended! Anyway, I plan on taking other classes with Sidney and Ryan (I want to try the salsa workout at Dance Mission) and dancing more more more!

I am an enthusiastic dancer, which compensates somewhat for my lack of training, but I love the motto of ODC, which is that everyone is a dancer. There are so many styles taught there, including release, a new form of modern dance, multiple Brazilian styles, several West African styles, Afro Haitian... the list goes on. I'm glad I finally found a way to fit more dance in my life. Maybe my husband and I can even hire a babysitter and dance together? A girl can dream...

Sonoma's Jazz Lodge

This past Friday I got to play a duo gig with my good friend Stephanie Ozer at the Lodge in Sonoma. I drove up to her house, since she lives in the area, to review the tunes. We ended up having such a wonderful time chatting before, during and after the gig that that was almost the most memorable part. She told me some great stories, which I probably shouldn't share, about her tour with Brazilian jazz legend Leny Andrade, with whom she also recorded her album O Comeco: New Beginnings in Brazilian Jazz. Not that they were bad stories, just lessons learned from touring.

I haven't played with Stephanie for a while, but one thing I enjoy about playing with different musicians is how the repertoire reflects their tastes and experience. Stephanie has a wonderful light touch with Brazilian jazz, so of course we did a couple of tunes from her record: Rio, Ave Rara and Velho Piano (well, we only practiced that one but didn't do it live. I do want to learn it, though).

She also hipped me to a nice Indigo Girls original called History of Us. The chorus has a lyric that ever so slightly sets off my goop-o-meter:

"So we must love
While these moments are still called today
Take part in the pain of this passion play
Stretching our youth as we must
Until we are ashes to dust
Until time makes history of us"

But I forgive it that because of the gorgeous imagery of the last verse:

"There are mountains in Switzerland
Brilliant, cold, as they stand
From my hotel room, watching the half moon
Bleeding its light like a lamb
And the town is illumined
Its tiny figures are fast asleep
And it dawns on me, the time is upon me
To return to the flock I must keep."

Well, to be honest I also have trouble with "bleeding its light like a lamb" (or is it lamp? But then it wouldn't bleed), but there is Jesus imagery throughout the song. I think it's an example of something where the original performance is so emotionally present that it overcomes limitations of the lyric. I mean, my lyrics have millions of limitations. Sometimes you stick with what you've got and then you sing the heck out of it. But it also reminds me of college, because Indigo Girls were big back then, and they have a lot of resonance with brooding female intellectuals.

We also had fun doing Chucho/Mambo Influenciado, and after singing the tricky horn line in Chucho in unison with Stephanie on piano, she soloed and then I invented a little coro, rather kitschy, that went "En Sonoma, paramos camino, En Sonoma, gozamos el vino."

I saw some good friends at the gig, and only had one yucky incident when a red-faced guy approached Stephanie and me during our last break. "How much are your CDs?" he asked, flipping through a wad of cash. "They're $15 each," we said. "Jeez. $15? How about 10? I'll take 10." "You want 10 CDs?" "No, I'll give you $10." "Sorry, they're $15." He said something rude and turned away. "He's drunk," I said to Stephanie, but after that I kept my eye on him, hoping he wasn't going to stick around to the end of the gig. Close to the last song, he got up and waved to me before leaving. Sheesh! I have no patience for wine-soaked hagglers who live in the lap of luxury, man!

Crock Pot Success!

A few months ago I bought an inexpensive crock pot and cooked one recipe I found online and it came out tasting like a mid-week nursing home special. The crock pot subsequently sat unused in a corner. But at the bookstore I recently picked up Slow Cooker Recipes, which was on sale for $1, and saw some yummy looking things in it. Yesterday I broke out the crock pot again, and it turned out great! To commemorate this momentous occasion, I thought I'd share the recipe (and my modifications).

Fall-Apart Pork Roast

2/3 cup whole almonds
2/3 cup raisins
olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
4 cloves chopped garlic
2 3/4 lbs. lean boneless pork shoulder or loin roast
1 can diced tomatoes
1 cup cubed bread of any type (day-old bolillos is authentic)
1 cup chicken broth
2 oz Mexican chocolate, chopped
2 tablespoons-1/2 can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (La Costena brand tastes best--spicy, so taste as you add until it's to your liking)
chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

Toast the almons and raisins, then add some olive oil, garlic and onions. Cook until soft and transparent, set half of the mixture aside for garnish.

Brown the roast in olive oil on all sides, 5-7 minutes. Place in crockpot.

In blender, puree almond-onion mixture with tomotoes, broth, bread, chocolate and chipotle peppers. Taste for spiciness; a half a jar of chipotles is perfect for our taste but probably ambulance-requiring for blander American palates. Two tablespoons, which the recipe originally called for, doesn't seem enough to give flavor. Pour puree over roast in crockpot. Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours or until pork is done.

Serve with steamed couscous with vegetables, or with rice. Garnish with cilantro and reserved almond-raisin-onion mixture. Enjoy!

Most Horrible Holiday Recipe Award

I just read this disgusting gem in a special December 2007 issue of People. Apparently you blend and then refrigerate until it thickens. I don't think you're supposed to drink it.

"Hungry Girl's No-Nonsense Nog"

5 cups light vanilla soy milk
1 small pack instant sugar-free fat-free fake-vanilla-flavored pudding mix
6 no-calorie sweetener packets
1 tsp. imitation rum extract
1/2 tsp. nutmeg

What a waste of nutmeg! And who came up with that headline?

Scientific Proof!

Music lessons pay off in higher earnings: poll

8:23pm Wednesday, Nov 14

TORONTO (Reuters Life!) -
Those hours practicing piano scales or singing with a choral group weren't for nothing because people with a background in music tend to have a higher education and earn more, according to a new survey.

The poll by Harris Interactive, an independent research company, showed that 88 percent of people with a post-graduate education were involved in music while in school, and 83 percent of people earning $150,000 or more had a music education.

"Part of it is the discipline itself in learning music, it's a rigorous discipline, and in an ensemble situation, there's a great deal of working with others. Those types of skills stand you well in careers later in life," said John Mahlmann, of the National Association for Music Education in Reston, Virginia, which assisted in the survey.

In addition to the practical skills gained from studying music, people questioned in the online poll said it also gave them a sense of personal fulfillment.

Students who found music to be extremely or very influential to their fulfillment were those who had vocal lessons and who played in a garage band. Nearly 80 percent of the 2,565 people who took part in the survey last month who were still involved in music felt the same way.

"That's the beauty of music, that they can bring both hard work and enjoyment together, which doesn't always happen elsewhere," Mahlmann added in an interview

Politics and Music and Madness

So on MySpace I just saw the Hillary for President page and there's a good protest song (if a bit obvious) playing by Pink called Dear Mr. President. Now, my politics, in broad brush strokes, are probably not much of a surprise to anyone given where and how I live (actually, the surprise to some might be that I'm not further to the left). I generally try to avoid discussing them here, however, because political blogs abound and I sometimes feel like there's no winning these discussions. It's almost more interesting to apply subtle diplomacy, no? To somehow make your points come across through story and example rather than banner and slogan.

Along those lines, I recently came across some advice for musicians: don't use your artistic platform to campaign; let your music speak your politics. There were two reasons for this. The first is that you will alienate some potential fans--possibly as many as half of them, in this country. (That seems craven, right? What, my music is more important than electing a president? On the other hand, imagine an artist you adore espousing politics you despise and you see how ugly this gets.) The second reason is that music fans come to you for respite from the propaganda and the 24-hour news cycle. We are artists, and as such our job is to inspire, transport, nurture and energize people with our creativity. In times of crisis, society needs us more than ever to paint its portrait, to mirror its many faces. That means we do our duty as citizens, but also our duty as musicians, composing, playing, practicing, wandering as troubadors, setting the language of the day to songs that encapsulate our turmoil. You know, songs like "Oops, I Did It Again" or "Promiscuous Girl" ;-).

That said, for many reasons I am excited about the possibility of Hillary as president. Should I become her "friend" on MySpace, I wonder? Well, the scary thing is the number of totally insane comments from friends on her page. I took a look at those comments and thought, do I really need these folks to know my name? I mean, they're not even from people who are against her candidacy--they appear to be from schizophrenics. Yikes. Makes one realize, there are jobs a lot worse than being a musician. Try being leader of the free world. Talk about becoming a lightning rod! It's a dirty, dangerous job and I am glad I don't have to do it.

Vote For Meeeeee!

I'm honored to have been nominated for Best Latin Jazz Vocalist of 2007 by The Latin Jazz Corner. Won't you visit them and vote for me, along with all your latin jazz favorites? Just click on the image and then scroll down for the vocalists. Obrigada!!!!