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Nov
17
RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY: Ben Folds A-Cappella Everyone who ever joined a concert of Ben Folds knows that he likes the people to sing-along with him. “Not the same” and “Army” are perfect songs to do so. Consequently he now made a record with a-cappella versions of some of his best known songs performed by Choirs from Universities across the U.S. He asked these groups to submit Youtube Videos of their versions. Around 200 groups answered and now a few made it to join him on this record. In my opinion, Ben Folds is a very good example to demonstrate how music business should work in these days. He does MySpace concerts where he plays the songs that where requested in real-time during the concert and in this case he started a contest for a-cappella groups to join him on a record. Enclosed you can find the song “Not the same” 1st in the album version (taken from Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001) and 2nd in the a-capella version performed by The Spartones From Greensboro, NC.

RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY: Ben Folds A-Cappella

Everyone who ever joined a concert of Ben Folds knows that he likes the people to sing-along with him. “Not the same” and “Army” are perfect songs to do so. Consequently he now made a record with a-cappella versions of some of his best known songs performed by Choirs from Universities across the U.S. He asked these groups to submit Youtube Videos of their versions. Around 200 groups answered and now a few made it to join him on this record. In my opinion, Ben Folds is a very good example to demonstrate how music business should work in these days. He does MySpace concerts where he plays the songs that where requested in real-time during the concert and in this case he started a contest for a-cappella groups to join him on a record. Enclosed you can find the song “Not the same” 1st in the album version (taken from Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001) and 2nd in the a-capella version performed by The Spartones From Greensboro, NC.

Nov
12
THE ART OF JAZZ – Jim Flora The cover art for these Jazz albums comes from Jim Flora (1914-1998) who was as creative as productive especially during the 50’s and 60’s; including covers for Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and many more. For more information on Jim Flora, take a look at his website http://www.jimflora.com.

THE ART OF JAZZ – Jim Flora

The cover art for these Jazz albums comes from Jim Flora (1914-1998) who was as creative as productive especially during the 50’s and 60’s; including covers for Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and many more. For more information on Jim Flora, take a look at his website http://www.jimflora.com.

Nov
11

REPLAY OF THE DAY: Jim Hall & Pat Metheny-Into the Dream

I took this song from the 1999 album “Jim Hall & Pat Metheny” as a good example that collaboration in Jazz can create a completely new song. If you hear the Song just performed by Pat, it sounds more like a demonstration of his 42 string! Pikasso guitar built by Linda Mazer. Together with Jim it’s a totally different song and simply beautiful.

Pat's Picasso guitar

Nov
09

MGT (Wolfgang Muthspiel, Slava Grigoryan & Ralph Towner)

at Centralstation Darmstadt (7.11.09)

I had the pleasure to join the concert of MGT last Saturday in Darmstadt (Germany). The venue was not sold out, surprisingly for me, because at least Ralph is a well known guitar genius for many years, but for all people who joined it became a two hours short trip into guitar heaven. They started with solos and Wolfgang mentioned this as a warm-up for each of the three. After that they played as duo as well as trio. Most of the material they played was from Ralph Towner. The whole show was incredible with really loud moments when e.g. Ralph used his 12 string to set the beat, intense silent moments (Beneath an evening sky) and moments of perfect technical synchronicity between Wolfgang and Slava in even high speed parts (Chez Ta-dah) Overall I thought that it’s not possible that they know each other no longer than 3 years. As encore they played the well known song from Ralph, called Icarus, a perfect one to close the show. Finally all three came back after the show; signed CD’s and chatted with us.

Aug
05

Tour update: MGT (Muthspiel/Grigoryan/Towner)

This guitar trio was assembled for an Australian tour in 2007, which was so successful that the trio has become an ongoing entity. The 6- and 12-string acoustic guitarist Ralph Towner is the best known in the jazz world, for his numerous albums for ECM. Melbourne’s Slava Grigoryan has forged a handsome reputation as a classical stylist, while Austrian jazz guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel is known for his subtle employment of electronic effects. It goes without saying that the musicianship here is flawless. What makes the set truly special is the rapport between the players. They are currently touring through Europe, don’t miss the chance to see them now!!

29.10.2009: Luxemburg (L), Philharmonie

30.10.2009: Köln (D), Philharmonie

31.10.2009: Essen (D), Philharmonie

05.11.2009: Ravensburg (D), Trans4JAZZ-Festival

07.11.2009: Darmstadt (D), Centralstation

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REPLAY OF THE DAY:

Elevation of Love by Esbjörn Svensson Trio (E.S.T.)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esbj%C3%B6rn_Svensson_Trio)

Elevation of Love is an uptempo Jazz-Track from Swedish Jazz Trio Esbjörn Svensson Trio, taken from the album “Seven days of falling” from 2003. E.S.T. reinvented the style of the classical Jazz-Trio by using e.g. effects for piano and double bass. Instead of focussing on Jazz-Standards like Jarrett, Peacock, DeJohnette, E.S.T. wrote their own songs.

Esbjörn Svensson died in a diving accident in Sweden June 2008. I miss him and his great live performances.

Jun
24

REPLAY OF THE DAY

A beautiful solo-track (just classical guitar) of one of the greatest and under-recognized musicians of our days, Ralph Towner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Towner. Forget about putting him in a box and label it Jazz, Folk or Classical, he just makes music. The track was taken from the album “Ana” that came out back in 1997. You can choose from the live performance (Youtube-Video) or the audio track taken from the album.



Ralph Towner

Jun
23
A lovely anecdote about Bill and Steve: I always thought, that Apple invented the graphical PC-UI, but that’s wrong! Take a look at the picture, it shows the Xerox Star (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star), developed at PARC (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center). Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were invited to PARC to take a look at the system. Later in 1983, Bill answered to Steve the following after being called a thief during the announcement of Windows: “Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.

A lovely anecdote about Bill and Steve:

I always thought, that Apple invented the graphical PC-UI, but that’s wrong! Take a look at the picture, it shows the Xerox Star (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star), developed at PARC (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center). Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were invited to PARC to take a look at the system.

Later in 1983, Bill answered to Steve the following after being called a thief during the announcement of Windows:

“Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.

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