Author: Roberta

We’ve been on the road for two days and it feels like a week. We’ve already done three gigs. For obvious reasons I haven’t had time to do any blogging.

Wednesday night we played at Dizzy’s in San Diego which is always a nice place to play. The vibe is great and we had a good turnout, thanks in part to the stunning voice of our guest vocalist, Coral Macfarland Thuet, who sat in on a few tunes, including Billy’s composition, Destiny.

One of the things that makes the tough aspects of the road bearable is the warm hospitality of people like Coral and Max. Coral made us an amazing, healthy and fresh Mexican meal when we arrived Wednesday afternoon, jetlagged and exhausted from the early morning flight. After a brief nap and shower we were ready to face our first audience.

Thursday we did a midday concert at Palomar College. They have a beautiful Falcone piano. Billy’s old friend Gunnar Biggs teaches there now. He brought a score of Billy’s from 20 years ago. There were no written notes, just instructions such as to play very intensely and, “don’t be afraid to die.”

Last night we played at Joseph’s, which is a venue that Jeff Gauthier booked for us last minute when the Club Tropical summarily cancelled his Cryptonight series. We had a great audience with a couple of noticeable exceptions. After the gig I announced that the price of the CD would vary depending on how well behaved that particular audience member had been during the performance. I gave several away to our good friends, and set the price at $25 for two rather loud and clueless blondes (nothing against blondes who are not loud and clueless).

The nice thing about the Joseph’s gig was that we had a decent crowd even though the venue was changed at the last minute. Jeff did a good job of getting the word out. It was almost a who’s who of LA jazz. Several writers were there: Kirk Silsbee, Greg Burk and Chris J. Williams; as well as the pianist Mike Melvoine and my old friend Zev Feldman who works for Concord Records now. It was also great to see Dottie Grossman whom faithful bloggers (all 2 of you again) may remember from last year’s tour.

Okay, now that I’m somewhat caught up, I’ve got to drive to Aliso Viejo now. We are getting a video of this performance and I will try to post it, as Richard Nixon would have said, “at some point in time.” Also time to think about getting the camera out.

Here’s the update on the LA gig (see previous post for explanation):

Please note that this concert will take place at 8PM at Joseph’s Cafe in Hollywood (click for directions).

Joseph’s Cafe 1775 N. Ivar
Hollywood, CA
(323)462-8697

Valet Parking $5 for the entire evening if you arrive before 9:30PM ($10 if you arrive after 9:30)

I know, faithful blog readers (all 2 of you). I swore after last year’s Club Tropical gig I wouldn’t play an electric keyboard with this trio again. Since last year Jeff Gautier had brought a grand piano in to the venue, so I thought I’d be in the clear. But due to these unforeseen circumstances, here I go again. It’s a different keyboard this time so wish me better luck with this one.

Apparently the new owner of the building that houses Club Tropical is not an ardent art lover. The restaurant’s been abruptly kicked out and with it the Cryptonight concert series that Jeff Gauthier ran for three and a half years. Jeff is working hard to come up with another venue and we should know what’s up by tonight. Right now it looks promising that we will have a place to play in LA on Oct 12 so watch this space or email me.

I’m greatly looking foward to this tour. The trio played in New York a few days ago at the Kitano and despite the fact that I was recovering (barely) from a bad cold, I thought the ESP between us was amazing. (Was it just the cold medication?) A lot of trust has developed between the three of us and I’m eager to see where we are after playing together every night for a few weeks.

I’ll try to blog the tour as best I can and put up a few fun photos. A lot of people enjoyed the photo of Billy dancing to James Browne that I posted on the 2005 West Coast tour blog.

I do promise to make a video download of a performance available to CD purchasers at some point.

I’ve been too busy to blog this residency, but here’s a quick summary. We are down here to arrange the music from a book of African-American spirituals compiled by Sam Rivers’ grandfather. It’s incredibly inspiring to work with Sam Rivers. His intellect and musical curiosity are daunting. At 82, he continues to write and play every day. He has been very accessible to us and it’s been a joy spending time with him and his daughter, Monique. Monique takes care of the business. She is amazing. Every artist should have a Monique!

Here’s a picture of Sam Rivers and me in the theatre at the ACA after Sam’s outreach lecture/demonstration for the local community in New Smyrna Beach where ACA is located. At the end of his talk, Sam and all seven of the associate artists read some pages of music he wrote years ago and apparently just found. We each picked a page from a stack of them. All the pages consisted of very angular, possibly serialist (I didn’t have time to examine it too closely before playing) lines. There was not a clef on any of the pages. Then he counted it off and we all played our pages simultaneously. It was an interesting experiment to say the least. Actually I thought it sounded pretty good!

I am working on an arrangement of a hymn called “Come Down Angels” for jazz orchestra which I will not get to hear while I’m down here. It’s going to be fairly large scale. I’m working on sketches now. I have the outline of the sections and how they’ll fit together. Now I’m filling in with motifs and harmonies. It’s going well.

We are also writing arrangements of various verses of the hymn, My Friends and Neighbors. This one is for our ensemble and we will perform it at the In and Out which is the performance at the end of the residency where the community is invited to see what we are doing.

One of the other things I’m working on for myself while I’m down here is memorizing some of my compositions. So if you’re planning to see the trio on tour on the West coast next month, I hope you’ll notice me working without a “net”.

I’m enjoying the space to create music and practice without the distractions of the city and everyday life. If only real life could be like this.

I was very pleased to learn yesterday that I was accepted into the September Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency with master artist Sam Rivers. Here are some details.

The ACA is a great place. I was there a couple of years ago for a residency with Steve Lacey. Unfortunately Mr. Lacey was too ill to attend and pased away shortly thereafter. However, I met Eric Clark and Scott Hil there and that is how our new music trio Fragments was eventually formed.

I encourage any serious artist or writer to check out the ACA’s residency opportunities. It’s a beautiful environment where you can focus on your work (the food’s really good too).

In October Billy Mintz, Ratzo Harris and I will take it on the road again. We’ll be touring the West Coast. More details as they come in.

I just finished a 6-horn arrangement for a pop tune with a Latin flavor written by my oldest brother, Joe Piket. This is our first collaboration (at least since I was ten year old singing Jim Croce’s “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” into his first multitrack recorder while he played guitar behind me).

The Tune is called One T, No C. Can you figure out what it’s about?

Audio from the Fragments recording is up. We are hoping to get some kind of distribution or record label behind this great project. Click here.

Just returned from a 2.5 week trip to Europe. I had a gig with Jamie Baum’s Septet, and decided to stay and see what’s happening in Europe. It was very interesting and inspiring. I visited three cities I had never seen before: Barelona, Berlin and Paris.

I played with some wonderful Europe-based musicians, including gigs with Masa Kamguchi and Joe Smith in Girona, Spain, and with Rick Margitza (with Gilles Naturel and Karl Jannuska) in Paris. Also played some really fun informal sessions; in Berlin, with JeanFrancois Prins, Kai Schoenburg, and Marc Muellbauer and a fantastic free session with my old friends bassist Chris Dahlgren and drummer Maurice DuMartin; in Paris with violinist Cecile Broche and a beautiful quartet session with harmonica player Olivier Kerouro, drummer Matthieu Chazarenc, and bassist Nicoles Moreaux.

I took a ton of pictures. You can view them by following these links:

Barcelona sightseeing

Barcelona Cathedral

La Padrera (Gaudi Museum)

Berlin sightseeing

Potsdamm

Paris sightseeing

Now that I’m back we’ll finally be doing the mixing for the new trio record.

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!!