Saturday night, I went out to hear Mark Guiliana (drums) at The Vanguard in NYC. Late set. Joined by Jason Rigby, saxophone; Shai Maestro, piano; and Chris Morrissey, bass. What an absolutely beautiful sonic evening. They gave few titles for the songs they played - a misfortunate omission, I feel - I always want to know the name of the tune I’m listening to - even if it’s after the fact - or something that inspired it - or even who it was written by - I know it’s a jazz instrumental gig - I just like knowing what I’m listening to - it helps the imagination - especially those new to a person’s music).

Today, I had a double-header.  I went out to hear something called “Explore” that a friend – and fellow singer - of mine, Sirintip, invited me to come and check out.  Then to Mezzrow to hear Daivd Cook & Henry Hey.

So, with this blog, I don’t really have any reason except that it seems like an opportunity to write about music, about people I care about, and about this city I love.  As I said, I go out to a lot of music.  Sometimes, I’m the only person in the audience for these shows and sometimes I’m one of a whole bunch of people.  But either way, I love supporting live music, my friends, and venues that provide live music listening opportunities.  Here’s my thoughts on some of the stuff I’ve heard.

With the advent of informal and peer-based learning instruction within academic situations - specifically in relation to popular music and popular music education - there is an increasing interest in discontinuing one-on-one instruction within these programs. While this post focuses on the vocal realm, I welcome insight and thoughts from other disciplines, as this continues to plague my consciousness, no matter how many ways I approach the thought process. And believe me.  I’ve tried.  Seven ways to Sunday and back.  But I keep coming back to the same issues, some of which I wonder are ethical issues, which is of course where it gets sticky.  

*First appeared on APME blog: https://apmepopblog.wordpress.com/

About a month I found out that the way I organize my professional life and career has a name.

It’s called a Portfolio Career. A portfolio career is exactly what it sounds like – your career looks like a constantly changing, moving, and growing portfolio. It encompasses all the things you hear about musicians doing – writing, teaching, playing, touring, putting out albums, business meetings, website design, mixing, mastering, recording, bookings…ect. – each opportunity and experience adds to the breadth and depth of the portfolio. Pretty sweet, huh?

From the perspective of many people working traditional ‘jobs’ where they do the same thing, go to the same place and interact with mostly the same people every day, portfolio careers can look really messy and perhaps even stressful. But for the creative (one who creates) it’s exciting, exhilarating, fun, engaging, challenging, and always changing. Just like their art.

I recently took a course in Community Music. For some of you reading this, you are familiar with this term, but for many of you, including myself three months ago, I only had a vague idea about what community music was. I thought it was community groups that form in some church basement and play music for fun with their friends. And it is. But it’s also SO much more than that. In his book on Community Music, Lee Higgins (community musician, rock guitarist, scholar, professor, and now president of ISME) explores and explains community musicianship. He defines community music as (1) of a community, (2) communal music making, and (3) an active intervention between a music leader or facilitator and participants.

I had the opportunity to attend a Masterclass with a venerable jazz artist. The opening discussion was focused on what the students, most of whom were jazz majors, thought about music and jazz today. The conversation weaved back and forth between artist and students and at one point, a student said that they loved jazz because the music that is being created today is nothing but Paper Plate Music.