Today is Horace Tapscott's birthday! Help me celebrate Horace & His contributions to music & Los Angeles.
You can Google Horace & see his accolades, but Saturday night's performance of Horace's Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra at The World Stage reminded me that, among other things, Horace was about mentorship & music for all. He originated the phrase, "This is a community orchestra. This is your orchestra."
Fritz Wise
Trevor Ware
Horace Tapscott
When my father was about my age he had a brief bout with colon cancer. They took out about 2 inches of colon & we never heard from it again. We don't mess with it. I get checked every 5 years. I'm encouraging all my brothers to love your family by taking care of yourself as you would your child. They need you more!
#live
#healthy
The California Jazz Foundation hosts its 20th Anniversary Gala April 11th at The Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The event will pay tribute to Dave Grusin & John Dolphin (If you've never heard of Dolphin's of Hollywood come get a little jazz history). Help CJF on its mission to support jazz musicians with emergency needs. CJF has awarded over 500 grants to jazz musicians in need. Please help ensure this vital support continues.
Yeah, I'm tryna use new tools as they come available, but for the life of me I can't get Google to recognize the audible difference between "sax" & "sex" as I dictate. I'm tryna check everything before it goes out, but, for a musician, this is a big problem.
Forgive me in advance...
The Count Basie Orchestra - We Out Here!
Been to Texas, Nevada & Arizona doing clinics & shows. Heading to California tomorrow.
Most of the pics are the band working with students at Univ of Texas (courtesy of Scotty Barnhart)
Morning choruses
I recently had lunch with a friend of mine who's a poet. Toby and I had this great conversation about editing when we're writing and when we're performing. What is the purpose of editing during performance?
I think of editing as playing the right notes as well as the right spaces between them. It's not a straightforward thing to do fully, particularly when you've just play 50-elevum choruses being as supportive as possible. A mindset shift (from support to melody) is required. Your purpose, in that moment, is shifted. You have to recognize and go with it. When I get to this stage, my challenge is to play melodically as possible. For me, that means ensuring the spaces are just as prominent as the notes.
I try not to practice as much as possible, but this is what I'm working on these days. I try to gamify the approach as much as possible by creating little exercises like this one. This morning, in my search for melody, I struck on this song and played several choruses, trying to find my most melodic expression. Still working. Lemme know which one speaks to you.
The singing is my attempt to acknowledge the melody that's rising inside of me in that moment. There's always music inside (if we listen) and the goal is to simply sing the melody I hear in my head and let my hands fall into the right place. Still working.
#WhatPractice?
#acousticbass
#acousticbassguitar
