Thursday, November 29, 2012

RADIO ZERO Benefit for Sandy Relief concert tonight!

////TONIGHT, Thurs 29 Nov 2012
8 pm-10:30 pm
at the Sycamore
1118 Cortelyou Road, Brooklyn. Q train to Cortelyou.

I'm excited to participate in this performance tonight with the other wonderful improvising musicians in the Radio Zero music series.

Including:
Martin Urbach - Drums
Kenny Warren - Trumpet
Patrick Breiner - Saxophone and Clarinet
Adam Schneit - Saxophone and Clarinet
Will Mcevoy - Bass
Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic - Bass
Erika Kapin - Violin
Juan Pablo Carletti - Drums

Radio Zero Improvisors Pool benefit for Hurricane Sandy Relief (all dollars go to Jazz Foundation)
Many amazing bands will play. Some have never played together before. We will be pulling names from a hat and forming duos, trios, quartets, quintets, and more based on chance! Pure improvisational bliss. Art will flow as will your generous donations of cash, non perishable foods, blankets,etc.
$10-20 suggested

The Jazz Foundation is a great organization. They have a good track record of helping displaced New Orleans musicians post-Katrina.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Schubert at The Firehouse Space


On Sunday I saw a great concert of music by Franz Schubert at the Williamsburg venue Firehouse Space. The concert was presented by the Brooklyn Art Song Society as the third part of a series focusing on the music Schubert composed during the last year of his too-short life.

"Facing the inevitability of his own untimely demise at 31 years of age, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) composed an astonishing quantity of music of unearthly beauty in the last 365 days of his life. Brooklyn Art Song Society is proud to present the complete song cycles, miscellaneous songs, and representative two- and four- hand piano works from the most inspired year of the most inspired composer of art song."

The music that really drew me to see this performance was the song cycle "Wintereisse", which has been an obsession of mine since I stumbled upon a recording by Sviatoslav Richter and Peter Schreirer in Academy Records two years ago. It was an intense experience to hear the twenty-four songs in their entirety. The music is unrelentingly bleak, as a rejected lover wanders in a frozen winter landscape.

Check out Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake's version WITH MUSIC VIDEO! This is awesome. I think some of the Wintereisse music bears a distant relation to certain hyper-emotional pop music, it's almost proto-goth in a way.



The cycle ends with one of the most haunting pieces of music I've ever heard, "Der Leiermann" (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man), where the protagonist encounters an old beggar playing a hurdy-gurdy at the edge of town. The late, great Fischer Dieskau's version of this is unforgettable.



Saturday, November 17, 2012

Better late than never....


In the summer of 2011 NOOK recorded seven new tracks which have been lying dormant like some pre-historic beast frozen during the coming of an ice age, waiting to be thawed and reanimated to spread mayhem upon the planet.
This is exactly what is about to happen, my friends. Kenny Warren and I have ventured back into the studio with the help of the intrepid mixing engineer Jonathan Anderson and are putting the finishing touches on this wolly mammoth.
It's quite an experience to revisit music after such a lapse of time. I'm very excited to finish this project which features some excellent playing by the band: James Windsor-Wells on drums, Jeremy Viner or Saxophone and clarinet, Ben Gallina on bass, and a special guest appearance by Andrew Smiley on guitar.
More info and perhaps some music to listen to soon.....



Friday, November 16, 2012

"Different Times" Reviewed by Step Tempest blog

Richard Kamins writes a brief but very nice review of Old Time Musketry's new album "Different Times" in his blog, Step Tempest.

http://steptempest.blogspot.com/2012/11/gravity-defying-musical-notes.html

Thanks to the folks who came out to our show at Milk and Roses last night, we enjoyed our first appearance at this fine establishment.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Old Time Musketry at Milk and Roses tonight!

Old Time Musketry is playing tonight at a cool new spot in my beloved neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Milk and Roses is a charming restaurant/cafe with a baby grand piano and book-lined walls, friendly staff, and obviously good taste in booking live music. Ha-ha-ha....


We go on at 8pm, we're playing some new music, too!

Milk and Roses is located at 1110 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn.

The band (as always):

JP Schlegelmilch - Piano and Accordion
Adam Schneit - Saxophone and Clarinet
Phil Rowan - Bass
Max Goldman - Drums