Author: Roberta

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SOLO CD RELEASE TODAY!!

Today is the first day that my first solo piano CD is officially available. This is the first time I’ve done a recording of almost all standards! I felt that for my first solo recording I wanted to start with material as fundamental and malleable as the standard repertoire, a common reference point that I am very comfortable with.

After my last few records, this CD wasn’t so much about stepping out of my comfort zone. It was about stepping back into my comfort zone, and finding out if I still have something to say.

The CD and audio samples are available at CDBaby.com. Downloads are available via itunes and other services.

If you like the CD I hope you’ll share a link to it on Facebook or Twitter. If you do share one of the links below,  I’ll send you a free bonus alternate take NOT on the CD! (Be sure to let me know so I can send you the track!) Here’s how to share the link:

Share the CD on Facebook.

Share the CD on Twitter.

Now contact me so I can send you the bonus track.

I’ve been sharing a series of videos on YouTube of both out-takes and “in-takes” from the studio. The videos include my take on a number of standards including Monk’s Dream, Marian McPartland’s In the Days of Our Love, the lovely bossa nova Estate, and the Dietz/Schwartz classic I See Your Face Before Me.

To be notified when they are up, you can either subscribe to my YouTube channel, or “like” my Facebook Page.

After all that clicking and sharing and watching, don’t forget that you can actually purchase the CD at CDBaby.com, itunes and other places including Amazon, Rhapsody, etc.

Thank you for your support!

Roberta

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Jazz Pianist Roberta Piket Plays Standards and Sings at Smalls in NYC with Putter Smith and Billy Mintz

Media Contact: Geneya Brooks, assistant@robertajazz.com www.RobertaJazz.com High-res photos: http://robertajazz.com/press-photos-2/

Add to Outlook or Mac Calendar

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pianist Roberta Piket brings a new trio to New York’s Smalls Jazz Club on Monday July 23rd, featuring west coast bass stalwart Putter Smith and drum great Billy Mintz. Focusing on the American Songbook repertoire, Roberta, who has been singing with increasing frequency, will sing several of her favorite standards including Burton Lane’s Too Late Now, the Harold Arlen classic Come Rain or Come Shine (which begins as a vocal/drum duet with Mintz) and the Gershwin standard He Loves and She Loves.

Bassist Putter Smith is one of LA’s busiest musicians. He has worked with Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Warne Marsh, Alan Broadbent, Bob Brookmeyer, Billy Eckstine, Diane Schuur, Lee Konitz, Jackie and Roy, Carmen McRae, Gary Foster, Art Farmer, Blue Mitchell, Art Pepper, Ray Charles and many more.

In an extraordinary career spanning nearly 40 years, Billy Mintz has played with Lee Konitz, Eddie Daniels, Harold Danko, Mose Allison, Mark Murphy, Bobby Shew, Charles Lloyd, Vinny Golia, and the Alan Broadbent Trio. In recent years, Mr. Mintz has taken on new roles as a bandleader and a composer, performing his own compositions with various ensembles. He also frequently performs solo drumset concerts.

Roberta Piket Trio Monday July 23rd, 2012 at 7:30 and 9pm, $20 admission good for the whole night, all ages admitted Smalls Jazz Club | 183 W. 10th St. at the corner of 7th Ave. in New York City.

For video and sound clips please visit www.robertajazz.com

 

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SOLO: New Solo Piano CD Release coming August 1st

For immediate release

Contact: Geneya Brooks | Thirteenth Note Records | assistant@robertajazz.com www.robertajazz.com

 For a courtesy press copy of Solo either on CD or via mp3 download, please email: assistant@robertajazz.com

 
Artist: Roberta Piket
Title: Solo
Label: Thirteenth Note Records

CD Release Date: August 1st, 2012 

Thirteenth Note Records is pleased to announce the August 1, 2012 release of pianist Roberta Piket’s ninth CD and her first solo piano recording. “I get restless easily and I’m always looking for new challenges,” Roberta reflects about her decision to record, at this point in her career, a full-length solo album. Her most recent CD, Sides, Colors, explored the pastel shades and supple textures of an ensemble enhanced with strings and woodwinds. Love and Beauty, from 2006, presented her advanced concept of the modern jazz piano trio. And on her 2003 release, I’m Back in Therapy and It’s All Your Fault, she experimented with electric instruments and groove-oriented pieces.

So, for Roberta, a solo CD represents a new musical challenge, another fresh area of exploration, and the next step forward in her continuing growth as an artist. “This is the first time I’ve done a recording of almost all standards,” she continues. “I felt that for my first solo recording I wanted to start with material as fundamental and malleable as the standard repertoire, a common reference point that I am very comfortable with. After my last few records, this CD wasn’t so much about stepping out of my comfort zone. It was about finally stepping back into my comfort zone, and finding out if I still have something to say.” ”

­­­Grounded in both the modern jazz tradition and the works of the contemporary classical composers she admires, Roberta combines an infectious swing with an adventurous harmonic sense. Her playing, characterized by both a strong sense of direction and a striving for new territory, is at times melodic and pensive, at other times angular and dissonant.

Roberta has played professionally as a sidewoman with David Liebman, Rufus Reid, Michael Formanek, Lionel Hampton, Mickey Roker, Harvey Wainapel, Eliot Zigmund, Benny Golson and the BMI/NY Jazz Orchestra and has thrice been a featured guest on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, on National Public Radio. She has also performed with some of the most interesting musicians in European and American creative music, including drummers Klaus Kugel and Billy Mintz, and saxophonists Petras Vysniauskas and Roby Glod and Louie Belogenis. A gifted composer as well, Roberta was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk BMI Composers’ Competition.

Track List
  1. 1.       I See Your Face Before Me
  2. 2.         Monk 1: Variations   on a Dream
  3. 3.         Monk 2: Monk’s   Dream
  4. 4.         Something to Live   For
  5. 5.         Estate
  6. 6.         Nefertiti
  7. 7.         Claude’s Clawed
  8. 8.         Litha
  9. 9.         In the Days of   Our Love
  10. 10.     Beatrice
  11. 11.     Improvisation   Blue

 

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The Ritual Defacing of My CDs

We’re getting ready to send out a big mailing of my new Solo CD to press and radio. I once again find myself in the bizzarre position of having to mutiliate my CD packaging, because if I don’t, a small percentage of the CDs will end up being sold as new on Ebay for about two dollars.

A colleague of mine commented that he’s not bothered by this issue, because he doesn’t make the CDs to make a profit, but more to get gigs. It’s not that I expect to make a lot of money selling the CDs online. However, it’s degrading to see the brand new product of my blood and sweat practically given away on Ebay like a soon-to-expire bag of frozen peas on sale at Walmart.

I understand financial need, having been a professional musician most of my life. Some jazz writers get hundreds of free CDs every month. I understand they can’t listen to all of them. But selling them as new is greedy and wrong. It undermines the artist who trusted you to treat his/her music with respect, it undermines what’s left of the record business, and it undermines the music by cheapening it to the point where people think a song is worth, not even the lousy 99 cents itunes charges, but perhaps 20 or 30 cents.

So it comes down to this: Should I clip the corner? Write on the CD with a sharpie? Or just take the plastic off? (In the latter case it will have to be sold as “like new” or “almost new”.) I haven’t made up my mind yet.

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2012 Updates

My first ever solo piano CD is mastered and we’ll start sending out promo copies soon. The release date is September August 1. (We’ve moved it up!) After years of performing primarily with a trio, this has been a scary and exciting adventure. Of course over the years I’ve done a number of solo performances (including Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz three times) but doing a whole CD of nothing but solo was a great challenge and I learned a lot from it. I feel my musicianship has developed in ways it wouldn’t have otherwise.

I’m also excited that another CD I’m on will be released around the same time. As you may know, for the last few years I’ve been spending some time in Europe every year playing with several colleagues and friends there. One of the groups I regularly play with consists of Roby Glod (saxophones), Mark Tokar (bass) and Klaus Kugel (drums). They are all phenomenal musicians, and they’re all from a different countries (Luxembourg, Ukraine and Germany respectively)! We did a concert a couple of years ago in Luxembourg, and Klaus has decided to release the recording on his own well-respected Nemu Records. It will be called “Live at Op Der Schmelz”.

What’s cool for me about these two releases happening so close together is that they are so different. The solo CD is primarily standards. In fact it’s the first time I’ve done a record of almost all standards. I felt that for my first solo recording, I wanted to start with this foundation. By contrast, the quartet plays originals by all the band members, and we improvise very freely on them. As Duke Ellington said, “there are only two kinds of music – good and bad”.

My March concert at the Puffin with the large Sides/Colors Ensemble went very well. In addition to playing the arrangements from the CD, I wrote several new arrangements for four strings, four winds plus rhythm section. It was gratifying to see how my writing chops have developed. The four arrangements on the CD took about two years to refine to the point where I felt ready to perform and record them. By contrast, this year I wrote three new arrangements in a couple months and we had one rehearsal to try them out before performing them. Progress!

The musicians were great too! They did a phenomenal job. I was lucky to have great section players across the board who can also solo – even the strings! The world is changing indeed. I’ll try to post some video from the concert as soon as I have time. I’m looking forward to the next time I get to play with this group again.

In case you’re in NY, I’ll be returning to the classic piano trio format at Smalls on July 23rd. Click here to add it to your Outlook or Mac Mail Calendar. I’ll have Billy Mintz on drums, and his friend from way back, the great Putter Smith, on bass. Putter lives in LA and has been gracing NY with his wonderful musicianship with regular visits over the course of the last couple of years. We’re lucky to have him for this night. It’ll be an evening of standards from the jazz repertoire and the American Popular Songbook.

Looking ahead, on September 14th I’ll perform a solo concert in Baltimore at the beautiful An Die Musik performance space. Click here to add it to your Outlook or Mac Mail Calendarhttp://robertajazz.com/RobertaBaltimore.ics

Thanks for reading this far. Comments, suggestions, feedback welcome.