Now…I don’t often ask people to get involved in the actual financial mechanics of the various bands in which I play, but I’m going to make an exception here. Cecilia Coleman is the most original and yet simultaneously deeply rooted jazz composer that I have had the pleasure to hear in several decades. She is floating this wonderful NYC band…The Cecilia Coleman Big Band…on a shoestring and a prayer, and she deserves all the help she can get. The personnel of this real, live NYC jazz band is extraordinary…it includes the single most unjustly ignored great jazz saxophonist on earth as far as I am concerned (the astounding Bobby Porcelli), the best valve trombone soloist I have ever heard (Mike Fahn) and an array of younger soloists that is a survey of just about everything interesting that is happening in the NYC mainstream jazz scene today.
The first album…”Oh Boy”… is very good, and she is developing as a composer amazingly quickly.
In order to continue to finance the band she is using the web-based project-starter “Kickstarter.” Please go here to check out this effort, and please, please drop some dollars into the kitty if you can spare them.
The way that Kickstarter works is as follows:
(From Wikipedia)
One of a new set of fundraising platforms dubbed “crowd funding,”[3] Kickstarter facilitates gathering monetary resources from the general public, a model which circumvents many traditional avenues of investment.[4] People must apply to Kickstarter in order to have a project posted on the site, and Kickstarter provides guidelines[5] on what types of projects will be accepted. Project owners choose a deadline and a target minimum of funds to raise. If the chosen target is not gathered by the deadline, no funds are collected (this is known as a provision point mechanism).[6] Money pledged by donors is collected using Amazon Payments,[7] and initiating projects requires a U.S. bank account, barring foreign users to use the site as a result.
Kickstarter takes 5% of the funds raised; Amazon charges an additional 3-5%.[8] Unlike many forums for fundraising or investment, Kickstarter claims no ownership over the projects and the work they produce. However, projects launched on the site are permanently archived and accessible to the public. After funding is completed, projects and uploaded media cannot be edited or removed from the site.[9]
Go to the site. And think about how closed-off the corporate “jazz” system is today. Go read my post Music and the Culture? We Have All Been Soundbitten here for some more info on that idea. If you want the music to continue and grow without interference from corporate entities whose sole purpose in life is to make a quick buck, crowd-sourcing seems to be the best…and maybe the only…answer.
Later…
S.
P.S. That trombone solo on the site’s “Oh Boy” cut? I know that fella very well. Bet on it. Like it or lump it…the real deal, live and un-gimmicked at the legendary studio of jazz recording legend Rudy Van Gelder. The way it’s s’pose to be.
Rec this up, please. And tips? Send them to the band.
Please.
Later…
AG
you mostly play the trombone, right?
Didn’t you study tuba? Ever play that these days?
Since this diary doesn’t offer a lot to talk about (as opposed to offering something to do) maybe you could tell us about the instruments you play.
I know I’d be interested.
I play all of the lower brass…different sizes and style of tenor trombone also bass trombone, tuba, euphonium, valve trombone. I teach high-level brass students…graduate students and pros, mostly…all brass, not just lower brass. I’m also a composer, arranger, music director and more and more I have been teaching music theory and ensemble work for younger players…teens.
Jazz, latin, pop, commercial studio work, B’way if I must…
40+ years in NYC. Never a dull moment. Never a dull week, anyway.
Not one.
Interestingly, over those 40+ years the general level of playing has gone up so far, so fast that it’s almost unbelievable. Not the peaks…truly great players are always astounding…but the mass of players is twice as good, twice as young as were the generations before.
Beautiful to watch.
Beautiful to be part of it.
Fun to be pushed by them, too. Bet on it.
AG
P.S. Nice of you to ask.
I know you can play a wide array of instruments. But what do you wind up playing most of the time?
About 70% of the time I play various tenor trombones, Booman. Each one…each size…has a different sound and a different function in the music. It’s kind of like being a serious character actor. Each role calls for a different appearance. Most brass players can’t do this. It just kinda happened with me…I had to learn how to go from mouthpiece to mouthpiece, embouchure to embouchure. In that process, I also learned…maybe discovered is the right word…some very new approaches to brass playing, approaches which I now teach.
I may as well out myself to some degree on the web, although I will continue using the name “Arthur Gilroy” for my socio-political writing. Go here and check out my website if you want to get an idea of what I am teaching. “Pages 1-8” at the bottom of that webpage is the introduction to one of my books. If you are interested not just in music but in the structure of music…how it works, like how politics “works” rather than the shallow overview presented by the media…those pages will give you another view of what is really happening when you listen to any music on earth.
Later…
AG
I read your introduction. I can’t say that I understood too much of it though. But then I can’t read music and I don’t really understand how a trombone works. It’s hard for me to imagine how you can get so many different notes out of it.
Read it again.
It’s math, Booman.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and so on.
So simple.
Read until you understand.
Or…continue listening to people like like the Grateful Dead, who regularly add 1 + 2 and get 3.15 or 2.79.
Your choice.
I think…
AG
Here’s the thing, Arthur. I’m probably tone deaf. I certainly have no sense of pitch. Born that way. I can kind of envy you for your higher level of perception. But I also am glad that I don’t suffer from some jarring annoyance every time someone plays slightly out of tune. For me, the message of songs has already been equally important to the sound.
Take the following live performance from The Boss.
Here are the lyrics:
The context: Bruce was getting divorced from his supermodel wife. He was feeling like a failure. He was hurt and confused. He must have been worrying about what his father thought. So, he thinks back to what his father meant to him, what he learned from him, how he felt on his wedding day.
Do I give a shit if the horn section is playing slightly out of tune? Honestly, I’m glad I don’t know if they are or if they are not because it could only detract from the poignancy of what Bruce is trying to do.
Maybe you listen to that live performance and think it is a travesty made by hacks. Maybe you think they’re true professionals. All of that is irrelevant to me. What matters is what Bruce is saying and the sound he uses to evoke my emotive response.
He’s not my boss, Booman. If I want poetry I’ll take T.S. Eliot or James Joyce or Bob Dylan, thank you very much, and if I want music? Oh…the choices are endless.
Springsteen is just another blown-up media figure, a Jersey rocker with a huge self-importance problem. I could give a shit about what supermodel he married…in fact, I have no idea who she was…and I could give a shit about his stardom or the stardom of the other Jersey shore-level rock club musicians who made their big money on the back of his stardom as well.
Last year I went on a couple of weeks-long tour with one of them. He treated the very high-level NYC musicians that he hired like peons; he couldn’t play three notes in a row without fucking up; he is rich as Croesus and he thinks that possessing that kind of wealth makes him somehow special. So what? Business as usual in the Omertican star-fucking machine. I have seen it for 40+ years. Nuthin’ new, just business as usual. The NYC players took his money, took his disrespect and then went home to their families and their daily attempts to make real music in a culture that values the false above all else. These people are the real heroes, in my opinion. Not Bruce Springsteen. All he really has is money and press. Money, press and vast audiences of dumbed-down Omerticans.
So it goes at he end of the American Empire.
So it goes.
AG
your argument is really kind of repulsive.
I certainly understand that no one likes to be treated like dirt. But I don’t think you can vouch for the good manners or even the musicianship of everyone who ever played with Bob Dylan. That’s a cheap attack.
But if you don’t recognize Springsteen as a legit heir to Woodie Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan, you’re basically illiterate yourself.
WTFU.
Not to mention that Bob Dylan chose Springsteen to induct him into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That seems to me to a more credible acknowledgment of his talent and qualities than yours.
#1-What was the list of choices that was presented to him?
#2-Dylan always knew on which side he wanted his bread buttered. I don’t hold it against him, because I find his lyrics flat-out genius work. I suppose if I found the same quality in Springsteen’s work I’d feel the same way, but a Dylan/Springsteen comparison would be like comparing James Joyce and someone like P. G. Wodehouse. I find Springsteen’s lyrics sappy…pseudo-intellectual complaint and a celebration of the mediocre.
So it goes.
AG
P.S. Further, if you want to talk about specifically American song-singers/songwriters form Springsteen’s generation, I’ll take John “Cougar” Mellencamp every time. The day that Bruce Springsteen writes a song as true, simple and strong as “Jack and Diane” is the day that I’ll start paying attention to him. Until then he’s just Billy Joel from 50 miles or so further west. Supermodel troubles and all.
How does the trombone work.
I know “the music goes round and round” primarily as a trumpet showcase, but here’s Tommy Dorsey killin’ it on the trombone (and the orchestra killin’ it on theirs too). Push the little valve down, and the music goes round and round…
Here’s some trombone up close and personal. Also a whole lot of people having a good time.
one of the best trombone songs…evah
dinah washington, c: 1954
enjoy
I mean…riiiight. That’s a good ol’ dirty, double-entendre blues, and the old-style blues trombone solo…probably from one of the Basie band members, maybe Vic Dickenson…is down and dirty too.
But you want to hear the grandaddy of us all?
Take a listen to this guy!!!
Never mind the corny setting…when Louis Armstrong first heard Jack Teagarden, it was love at first listen. And remember…w/out Louis Armstrong, jazz wouldn’t have happened. A towering presence in the music. Even 75 years after Yeagarden first came to prominence, he’s still the greatest, overall. And this is coming from a player who is fluent in idioms way, way past the styles that he played in terms of difficulty, harmonic complexity, etc. It really makes no difference. Genius. Nothing less.
Believe it.
AG
The solo on the 1st vid starts at about 2:11. On the 2nd…around .34.
AG