Author: Roberta

Look for a new recording by the trio with Billy Mintz and Ratzo Harris in the next several months. Several people in a posiion to know have told me this is my best trio yet. I am very excited about this new recording, which is now in the mixing/mastering stages.

I’ll post some samples soon.

You can also download free leadsheets to some of my originals at www.robertajazz.com/leadsheets.html
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I almost forgot to post this picture of the Space Needle in Seattle.

Well the tour is over and I’ve been home several days. We finished up with two gigs in Seattle and a gig in Eugene, OR.

Last Friday we played at Tula’s in Seattle. It’s a straight-ahead jazz club with a very nice grand piano and a sound system. Some good friends came out to hear us including saxophonist Cynthia Mullis (we used to play together in an all girl big band but don’t tell anyone 😉 ) , pianist Carolyn Graye and drummer/Microsoft computer genius Jeremy Jones, whom I first met a few years ago when I was a guest artist at Duke U. and he was a young upstart there. (Thanks for putting Ratzo up, Jeremy!) Also stopping by before his gig was drummer Matt Crane, who, along with his wife Tanya, was generous enough to share his home with Billy and me.

It was the night after Thanksgiving. We had a good crowd the first set (a few people were noisy but soon left – everyone else was fantastially quiet and attentive), although it slowed down after that – possibly because we played a 90-minute first set.

The next night we had a quadruple bill at Gallery 1412, a hip little space. The evening opened with a brief yet stellar solo set by Ratzo. He told us that it was only the second time in 30 years he had performed solo which I found surprising given his remarkable virtuosity and unique conception on the six-string. Then Dottie, Mike and trumpeter Jim Knodle played. Then Fragments played. (Thanks to Eric and Scott for making the trek up!) Then Billy finished the evening with a beautiful solo drum set, setting the mood with the lights turned down.

Monday night we played at Sam Bond’s Garage in Eugene. It was not what I expected. It was a nice room where everyone seemed to know everyone else. The piano was disappointingly out of tune, and we considered not playing. A woman sitting nearby heard us talking, and told us that she had come down specifically to hear us. This surprised me as I had never before been to Eugene. It turned out that Melissa Bearns had written some very positive things about the trio in that week’s Eugene Weekly (scroll down the page quite a big). So I felt that we should really play. Before I knew it half the people in there were on the phone trying to find us a decent keyboard. Dottie told me the vibe of the place reminded her of that TV show, “Northern Exposure”. We didn’t get a keyboard, but decided to play anyway. It all worked out for the best. The piano was out of tune in a rather funky, honky-tonk upright sort of way. But the action was pretty good and the soundman, Brian, did a very good job of bringing out its best. It was a very laid back gig, which allowed us to relax and be creative; a nice way to end the tour.

I really liked Eugene. What a cool town and what great people.

That same night we drove back to Oakland! Ratzo drove for 4 hours, then Billy took over for another 4 or so, then we stopped at Denny’s for breakfast (not much choice there – man have they gotten expensive!) and I drove the remaining two hours to Scott’s place where we crashed until later that evening when it was time for Ratzo and me to fly back to NY and Billy and Dottie to return the van to LA. We all made it back safely.

Thank you for following our tour. To those who came out to hear us, to those who hired us, to those who wrote about us, thank you thank you thank you for your support! Now won’t someone else write something on this damn blog!!

I’m too tired to write; here are some pictures I’ve been meaning to post.

Here is a picture of Mt. Hood I took during the drive up to Portland from California.

In Seattle we stayed at the home of some good friends of Billy who like listening to James Brown. Here is some footage of Billy dancing to James Brown.

Here’s a picture of me driving the van:

Happy Holidays. Yesterday we played here in Portland at Dunes. It was a small bar with a pretty good Sohmer upright. Sohmers are good pianos and this one was in good shape. A friend of Billy’s named Leif, a saxophonist, set it up for us. Thanks Leif!

Leif also recorded it and gave me CDs. Maybe I can put up a sample clip. I know I keep threatening to do that.

Apparently we played a two hour set which I find remarkable, as I had no idea how much time was going by. (Billy nominally “led” this gig as he had booked it but we played both our compositions, and I did the speaking.) To play for two hours so effortlessly seems a big stretch for me. I don’t think I could have done that on the first gigs. I, individually, and the trio collectively are getting more of a flow going, I think.

A free trio opened for us led by Portland drummer and writer Tim DuRoche. They sounded very good. It is hard not to be influenced by what you hear right before you play, and by what you perceive as the expectations of the audience. Perhaps as our trio plays more together this will become less of an issue for me. After the gig we went to a restaurant called Montague’s. It was late at night. The food was very good but the music (mostly dance and hip-hop) was way too loud for a restaurant. I asked Ratzo if he thought we would have played differently if this music had preceded our set instead of what did precede us and he agreed that we would have. How to get over this issue and just play the “pure” music that truly identifies you? I think it may be impossible. Of course we’re influenced by experiences and environment, and isn’t that how it should be? Billy agreed with me that this dichotomy exists. Oh well. We played some good music; I guess that’s all that matters.

This afternoon the trio played at Chez Hanny. San Francisco resident Frank Hanny opens up his living room to concerts Sunday. These kinds of house concerts are much more prevalent on the west coast than in NY. I did one once in Brooklyn in an old Victorian house. I guess most of the homes in Brooklyn are too small, although you would think some of the people in those beautiful brownstones would want to do something like this. I guess people in NY have to work too hard to pay our exhorbitant housing costs to think about holding concerts.

Anyway, we had a nice crowd. Everyone was very attentive and quiet. It is so great to play consistently almost every day with the same people. I feel that this trio has really evolved over the last week. Imagine if we had six months on the road!

Finally a picture of all three of us! Thanks to the audience member who took this.

My playing has been better over the last couple of gigs. I think the Thursday gig on the keyboard made me appreciate anew the possibilities inherent in playing a good acoustic piano. Also, gigging every day and thinking about nothing but music helps. (It’s one of the great things about being on the road.) I have been stretching out more soloistically on intros and generally just delving into each piece in a more focussed way.

I recorded the gig on minidisc but I’m not sure how the sound came out. If it’s good I may post a sample or two in the blog. I have to get the sidemen’s permission first.

Okay, I feel back to my old self now. I was really depressed about the electric piano gig at Tropical. Last night we played at the LA County Museum of Art and they have a beautiful 9-foot Grotien-Steinweg.

We set up with Billy next to the piano and Ratzo next to him. It seemed to work well. We played Alice In Wonderland, which is a tune I’ve always loved but for some reason have never played with this trio. We went through about five or six metric modulations. It was fun. I think we will add this tune to our repertoire.

I sang Billy’s tune Destiny, for which he’d written lyrics. Billy has been trying to get me to sing on my jazz gigs for a while. As I explained to the audience yesterday, I am a “closet singer”. Back in New York I occasionally do some gigs at senior citizen homes where I play and sing standards. I love it, and the audience is very appreciative. However, I was a bit trepidatious about singing for people under the age of 92. It was well-received, though. Chuck Perrin at Dizzy’s pointed out the other day that this kind of thing warms up the audience for the less accessible stuff we do, like Claude’s Lament.

Today we’re driving up to the Bay area for the triple bill tonight. Hopefully we’ll get some new people blogging on here!

Last night I made a decision that I will never play a piano trio gig again on an electronic piano. It is impossible to get any real subtlety of tone or touch. Especially when playing someone else’s keyboard, you never know if the action is going to be decent or not, and usually not.

We had a pretty good crowd, probably due in part to Greg Burke’s Jazz Pick Of The Week in LA Weekly. I was especially pleased and honored to see musical luminaries Mike Melvoin and Vinnie Golia there.

Here are some pictures from the Two Bass Band part of the evening. Below, Billy and Ratzo discuss the charts, and saxophonist/arranger/composer Kim Richmond warms up.

Here are some pictures from our clinic at Saddleback yesterday. I took the pics so there are none of me this time. I’ll make this short because we are on our way out the door to Tropical now for our Trio/2 Bass Band double-bill. This should really be fun.

Ratzo and Billy were both really great – totally articulate and encouraging. I think it was a very good clinic.

We also got to play trio for a while, and we tried a new setup with Billy behind me and Ratzo by the piano. As I suspected, it didn’t work well to have Ratzo and Billy so far apart. Maybe tonight we’ll try it with both of them behind me. The problem is sometimes I can’t hear Billy that well. I never thought I’d say that about a drummer, but better that way than the opposite, which is more typical!

Today Ratzo, Billy and I are giving a clinic/demonstration at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, where our good friend Joey Sellers teaches. Joey is a truly great trombonist/composer. (Joey will be playing with the Two Bass Band tomorrow night at Club Tropical in LA. See the itnerary here.) I had the pleasure of playing with his Jazz Aggregation a few times when he was living in NY. He and his wife Suzy graciously put Billy and me up last night so we didn’t have to drive back to LA after the Dizzy’s gig.

Tuesday was a busy day. Billy rehearsed the West Coast Two Bass Band at the musicians’ union in LA. It was my first time at the LA union. Unlike the NY local, the pianos are all in very good condition. Billy composed and arranged a piece for piano plus Two Bass Band. So I rehearsed with them, and then went to get a coffee after taking some pictures of Billy conducting the other pieces.

After the rehearsal, Billy, Ratzo and I drove down to San Diego, where we played at Dizzy’s. Dizzy’s is a performance space in downtown San Diego primarily featuring jazz. It’s owned by singer/songwriter Chuck Perrin.

(When I first played there, about four or five years ago wth Virginia Mayhew’s group, it was a very desolate part of town, a few blocks from the gaslamp district. Now the area has been built up. I pulled up to discover that the new Padres stadium, Petco Park (yucky name – maybe they should change “Dizzy’s” to “Dizzy’s Coca Cola – ” oops, never mind.) has been built right across the street from the venue. Owner Chuck Perrin, who has done an amazing job of creating a space where the music is foremost, says he does not hold concerts on nights when there are events at the stadium. In fact, the traffic is so bad he avoids the area all together. Looking at this behemoth, I can’t imagine how disastrous something like that will be if it gets built in downtown Brooklyn, as Bruce Ratner is now trying to do. Of course let’s not forget all those great jobs selling hot dogs that will be created.)

I love playing Dizzy’s because the audience is so appreciative, they have a very nice Baldwin grand, and a good PA. Because it not a bar or club, there are no clanging cash registers or phones ringing while you are performing.

After the gig we went to the City Deli with some friends of Billy’s that he hadn’t seen in years, singer Coral MacFarland Thuet and her husband Max Thuet. Billy ordered a vanilla malted and it was fantastic.