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!