Bands

Bands I am in that have shows upcoming:

• Surrealestate: improvisation collective. Playing twice in October under the direction of Cristian Amigo, once in the World Festival of Sacred Music and once at CSUDH.
• Bruce Friedman Edgy Quintet: with Rich West, Motoko Honda, and Eric KM Clark. Playing ResBox August 18, Bruce and Motoko have a CD called Edge Study with liner notes by Christian Wolff. We may be playing Wolff's "Edges" on this gig.
• Charles Sharp Group: with Anthony Shadduck, Andrew Lessman, and special guests. Playing mostly Charles' originals, which often have me and Anthony playing in different keys and meters. A really interesting two-bass free jazz band. Playing the Open Gate series in Eagle Rock Sept. 3 and somewhere in San Francisco Sept. 11, both sharing the bill with Rent Romus' Lords of Outland + Vinny Golia.
• Ben Rosenbloom trio: with Alan Cook. Playing at the Battery Books & Music June 26. A piano trio which covers a lot of stylistic ground, from Iyer-ish odd meter vamps to Paul Bley free ballads.

Bands without pending shows:

• MESTO
• Scrappers
• Rich West's Homunculus/Confabulators
• Zebra Logic
• Four on a Hill
• Scott Heustis Group
• L.A. Collective
• The Decisive Instant
• The Changing Same
• Melic Sub Rosa
• Dot Dot Dot
• Alexander Vogel Quartet

More about these when I have something to promote or semi-publicly contemplate.

A Year Later

I am returning to this blog with the goal of writing more frequently and casually, discussing projects in more detail than is really possible on Facebook. Anyway, here's what's up:

Writing:

New Black Music: LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and Music, 1959-1965. Still plugging away on the rewrite. I had resolved that 2010 would be the year to hit it or quit it, and I didn't get it done, but I got close enough to want to keep going. We shall see...

The Cost of Free Jazz: Charles Sharp put together a panel with himself, Jeff Kaiser, and me, all talking about the business side of the music, for the Experience Music Project Pop Conference in February. Vinny Golia was our respondent. I am supposed to be looking for a journal that would publish our papers together.

American Music: These cats have asked me to write a couple of CD reviews for them. It's fun and I hope they will continue to do so. I can't really see pumping out short pieces for say, All About Jazz, but American Music gives me enough space to feel like I've really engaged with an album.