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I’m busy practicing for my first solo piano recording, which I’ll do at the end of this month. Scary! But it’s going well. Getting better all the time.

Meanwhile, a break from playing alone in my living room:

IBeam Brooklyn Piano Marathon 5pm – 11pm Sunday, December 11
Pianists from the jazz and improvised music community in NYC. I’ll be playing a twenty-minute set at approximately 9pm.
Suggested donation $20-$40
Ibeam 168 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Aves. Brooklyn, NY

Roberta Piket & Jamie Baum Duo
6pm – 8pm Tuesday, December 27
Roberta Piket – piano Jamie Baum – flute; free – All Ages
Whole Foods Edgewater 905 River Road Edgewater, NJ

And looking ahead, a couple of performances in February and March that I’m excited about.

Click on the links below to add these dates to your Outlook or Mac Mail calendar automatically.
Fun and safe!

In February, a rare trio performance with the great Billy Hart on drums, and phenomenal bassist Duane Burno at Smalls in NYC.In March, an extremely rare opportunity to hear the full eleven-piece ensemble from my CD,
Sides, Colors at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck, NJ. Add this gig to your Calendar

Holiday Reminder: CDs make a very personal and thoughtful holiday gift. Sides, Colors is available on CDBaby.com at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/robertapiket .

Have a great holiday and thank you for your support.

Roberta Piket – The Irish Times – Fri, Sep 30, 2011.

I’ve been preparing for my first solo piano recording! Come for the adventure, stay for the scariness as I play music by Monk, Corea, McPartland, Strayhorn, et al., as well as an original or two.

Thursday, Sept. 15th
One Set Only at 7pm
Miles’ Cafe
212 E. 52nd St. 3Fl. (b/2nd & 3rd Ave.) New York, NY 10022
E/V train to 53rd St./ Lexington, 6 train to 51st St.
(212) 371-7657
$10 cover, $10 minimum

Some other local dates this month:
-Ibeam in Brooklyn with two greats – Louie Belogenis and Billy Mintz playing improvised music on the following Thursday – September 22nd.

-Whole Foods in West Orange, NJ in a straight-ahead duo with another great saxophonist, Virginia Mayhew, on Tuesday September 27th. (Yes they have a grand piano there.)

See my web site for details.

Thanks for your support!

Roberta Piket performs a solo concert at Miles’ Café on Sept. 15th to prepare for her first solo piano recording this fall. Other performances this month include free jazz at Ibeam in Brooklyn with Louie Belogenis and Billy Mintz on 9/22, a straight-ahead duo with Virginia Mayhew at Whole Foods West Orange, NJ on 9/27 and the Myrtle Beach Jazz Festival on Sept 23rd with her trio. Meanwhile her latest CD, Sides, Colors, is getting great reviews in downbeat, JazzTimes, the Swiss daily Aargauer Zeitung and the NYC Jazz Record.

We’ve just completed Grammy submissions for Sides, Colors. If you’re a NARAS member (or just want to hear the music), you can listen to my three submitted tracks here:

Submission for best instrumental arrangement accompanying vocals (category 59)

Submission for best instrumental arrangement (category 58)

Submission for best improvised jazz solo (category 30)

I’ve tested these downloads on both Mac and PC. These are big files so give them a few seconds to load.

If you’d like to hear the whole CD, which we’ve also submitted for consideration for best jazz instrumental album (category 32), contact me.

I’m very proud of this recording. It’s my eighth as a leader and the first one I’ve submitted for Grammy consideration.

A drummer friend of mine requested a copy of Degree Absolute, the slightly off-kilter 17/16 funky organ/piano track on Sides, Colors. So I added it to the sheet music page on my web site. You can download it, and other original compositions of mine, for free here:

https://robertajazz.com/sheet-music/

I want to say how much I appreciate your continued support for my newest CD, Sides, Colors, which was released this past March on Thirteenth Note Records.

To say thank you, we’re sponsoring a contest at AllAboutJazz.com. AAJ is giving away five free copies of Sides, Colors. Anyone can become an AAJ member and sign up for the contest for free starting today. FIVE winners will be selected at the conclusion of the contest on June 27th. Sign up here:

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=81953

The CD has being getting great reception in both JazzTimes and Downbeat magazines.

Thematic diversity is the most intriguing aspect of pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger Roberta Piket’s latest release, Sides, Colors… The strings add a pensive, striking quality to Piket’s lines and Mintz’s colorations
-Ron Wynn, JazzTimes (May 2011)

And in the upcoming June Downbeat, Robert Doerschuk wrote a lovely piece in the Players section called “Beyond the Trio”.

We’ve also gotten great feedback on our “jazz video”, so if you haven’t checked it out, you owe it to yourself to watch it: Idy’s Dance

Some travel is in the works for later this year and early 2012. For news on upcoming shows, video clips and more, please “like” my Facebook page or visit www.robertajazz.com

Thanks again for your support, and don’t forget to enter the contest!

Best Regards,

Roberta

Visit Roberta on Facebook
New CD, Sides, Colors, now available!
Watch “Idy’s Dance”: A Music Video!

We’re finally releasing our “music video” for Idy’s Dance, produced by myself and Billy Mintz.

I don’t know if this is the first instrumental “real jazz” music video, but it’s certainly a first for us! Friends and loved ones who’ve seen it have reacted with either hysterical laughter, delight, or complete confusion. Let us know what you think! And please share it!

It’s happened before, to me and to many colleagues. In promoting a new CD, we send out loads of free copies to press and radio contacts. A few of those recipients then sell them and they end up on ebay or Amazon selling for $3 – $7. Keep in mind we are not talking about an old release. We are talking about a fresh CD, released only a few weeks ago, that is still being actively promoted. Obviously legitimate stores, those that are actually PAYING us for our music, cannot compete with a price set by those who get the CDs for nothing.

I understand that not everyone wants to retain every CD they receive. If you receive a courtesy CD that you don’t want, here are a couple of suggestions for how to address the situation without further destroying the music business. First, consider donating it to a local library. There is a chance that they might one day sell it but by then it will be a stale release so the bulk of the legitimate sales will have already taken place. Second, if you don’t like an artist’s or label’s music, ask them to remove you from their mailing list. Don’t worry about hurting our feelings. Most of us have limited resources and would rather direct our promotional time and money towards those who are interested in what we have to offer.

We debated whether to clip a piece off the corner of the paper packaging so that the CD at least cannot be sold as “new” for $3. In the end we decided to open the plastic wrapping, but not to damage the CD itself. We wanted the recipient to have a quality experience with the CD from start to finish. We also felt it was insulting to send out a damaged package.

Unfortunately it’s nearly impossible to tell who is doing the selling, or where the CD came from. It’s a shame that, because of a handful of bad apples, we will have to start cutting the corners on the CD digi-paks before sending out promotional items. I hope the 99% of our media friends who are not to blame will understand this decision and not take offense.