Things have been extremely busy and school is coming to a close. My recital is over and it went well. Everyone involved played their ass off and I received a lot of great feedback.

I also just came back from Mexicali to perform a concert and workshop on improvisation and collaboration at the Centro Estatal de las Artes that was put together by Carmina Escobar. It was a nice group of people that went, we had musicians, Wadada Leo Smith, Vinny Golia, Scott Collins, Sarah Phillips, Ingo Deul, and Megan Fong We also had visual artist Francisco Martinez, video artists, Bo sul Kim, visual artist Evelyn Serrano, and dancer Kathy Carbone.

We performed a concert on Thursday night and then had a workshop on Friday and a performance with the workshop participants on Saturday. We worked mostly with dancers, theater people, and visual artists. The people we met in Mexico were very friendly, open, and talented. I think that my group learned as much as the artists of Mexicali did.

Mexicali Workshop Pictures

First off, my recital is rescheduled for April 1st. No joke. Here is the poster that Kio Griffith, a great artist and graphic designer, created for the event. I think it looks pretty awesome and I am still finding some of the detail in it:



Everything else:

Too much going on, my grandfather, Vernon Burns passed away last week, I'm going to miss him. He was a great strong man, who lived a long life. The upside is that I got to see a bunch of relatives I hadn't seen in a very long time.

Yesterday was the first annual "Fresh Squeezed" Festival @ CalArts, put on by Sarah Phillips, Megan Fong, and Scott Collins. I think the event was a success . There were a variety of music students, writers, and video artists who played from 2 PM until 1 or 2 AM. Quite an event! I played @ Noon with Megan, Sarah and Carmina Escobar for a nice performance and then Vinny Golia did a collaborative work with video artist Caroline Kim and a dancer, who I didn't catch the name. Caroline told me it was a test run, but it was fantastic! I was finally glad to get to see her work as I had missed the last couple of performances she had done in LA.

I then played a solo set in the Tatum coffee house and later, I played a set in the Main Gallery with Here No Evol, my band moniker, where we play time based pieces laid out over whatever time-limit is presented to us. This time it was 25min. and the band was made up of my wife, Misuzu Kitazumi on japanese koto, Carmia Escobar on vocals, Sarah Phillips on piano, Scott Collins on Guitar, Casey Butler on soprano sax, and Ingo Deul on drumset. I think it came off pretty well.

Right after, Misuzu on koto, George McMullen on trombone, and I played a trio in Tatum that was quite impromptu and quite successful. Congrats to Sarah, Megan, and Scott again for putting on the great festival that all of the students will remember!

It is titled 'Ball Lightning Formation' and was recorded live last Wednesday, 03-05-08, @ the Nova Express closing party. Andre LaFosse played as well as Chris Opperman and it was a fun time! I went on at about 12:30am, played till 1:00am, and there were tons of people there. I'm sure I played to 50+ people, some coming and going, it was great!

Have a listen here:

'Ball Lightning Formation' (30 min.)

...due to a power failure in Santa Clarita.The sound engineer, John Baffa said it was the first time he ever had to cancel an event in his time @ CalArts. I think this is the first time I have ever canceled an event as well.

The whole thing will be rescheduled, the only real problem is getting all of the musicians back together to rehearse. Vinny Golia, Ulrich Krieger, and Randy Gloss are very busy players/teachers. Also, Don McLeod and Rocio, the butoh dancers (who gave their time for free, I might add) have hectic schedules and that is not to even mention the students own crazy schedules.

The other bummer is that I had planned out my semester so the recital was done early and I could then concentrate on my thesis and other classes, now that has been thwarted and I am going to have to scramble around more than I had hoped.

Oh well,

Had a crazy week that felt like a month last week. We had violinist, Mark Feldman (He gave me a pack of cigarettes and he had my favorite quote from the week "It's like when you go to a violin recital and the player sounds like Jack Benny" Ouch!!) , pianist, Sylvie Courvoisier, and pianist, Art Lande @ CalArts teaching workshops on improvisation.

Also on the weekend was Wadada Leo Smiths Creative Music Festival @ The Redcat with The Art Ensemble of Chicago. If that wasn't enough, the NAMM show was in town as well. NAMM is a music equipment rtrade show with lots of rock stars, wanna-be rock stars, and excellent musicians all under one roof. A sampling of who I saw, was Stevie Wonder, Sting, my old teacher Jeff Berlin, Jonas Hellborg, Scott Henderson, the guitarists of Slipknot and Dragonforce, and a bunch of posers. I also saw some old friends like recording engineer Marty Beal. One things for sure, NAMM has nothing to do with music just gear.

Now, Jonas Hellborg I actually talked to about classical Indian music for about 20 minutes and he was very nice. I was a little star struck and he wanted me to show him some Indian Tala I had learned, while he was making coffee at the Warwick booth (the makers of his new amp and bass guitar), but I declined. I have become interested in his music the last couple of years because he really gets the Indian thing and incorporates it really well with Western musical ideas. I asked him how he incorporated it so fast into his playing and it was nice to know that it has taken him 25 years to get where he is at with the Indian stuff.
There's still hope!


I also played in George McMullen's recital on Sunday. We played music to Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" and an opus for Dr. Martin Luther King that was very touching.