I saw Rebirth Brass Band in Chicago recently (10/9/2010). What a night! RBB’s brass wailed with abandon within the framework of the Keith Frazier/ Derrick Tabb tight backline.Before tonight I’d never witnessed a New Orleans rhythm backline doing its thing at a club. Every single person in the place secured their own little bubble of space to stomp and dance.
Last weekend we ran into band-members Teenage Fanclub at a rest stops in Northwest Ohio (near Sandusky) on our trek from Erie, Pennsylvania to Chicago.
You are here. Here you are.
Tour Wheels
The band is on a North American tour making their way from gig to gig in a cool black Sprinter Minibus.
The quintet is from Glasgow, Scotland. (Glaswegian?) We were fourth in line behind them at a truck stop Starbucks and the surly barista was having A LOT of trouble understanding their brogue. Things snowballed into comedy when Norman (vocals, guitar) pointed to an unclaimed cup on the counter and asked if that was the Cappuccino he had ordered. Exasperated and not understanding one word, the barista shot back with a mouthful of Clevelandeeze “CappuCHEE-Noe is cawfee and steeeeemed milk and NOTHING on top.”
Obviously used to this kind of communication breakdown, the guys just smiled and nodded graciously. We struck up a conversation with them at the milk and sugar DIY counter. Their manager (who looked just like the actor David Tennant) invited us to either of their two Chicago shows. LA-indie rockmates Radar Brothers were to open for them. Unexpected live indie music on a Tuesday night? You bet.
Not surprisingly, Teenage Fanclub’s latest album Shadows was sold out by the time we found the sales table at Lincoln Hall. Amazon.com should be delivering the goods shortly.
Driving west on I90 on the way to Chicago, we bumped into members of the band Teenage Fanclub at a rest stop in Amherst. I went to the travel plaza’s gadget store to buy an FM transmitter and returned to find Erin waiting in line with the band at Starbucks, where the barista was telling them loudly “Cappuccino is cawfee and steeeeemed milk and NOTHING on top.”
They’re performing at Chicago’s Lincoln Hall the next two nights – we’re definitely going!
Sunday I went to the New York Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science. It’s the perfect Opportunity for adults to be a kids again. Full of stuff, freethinking, technology, music, and stuff. Ah…. Heaven.
In this photo I am standing in front of a select group of the finest musicians second only to the Ohio State Marching Band. You can tell my daughter is admiring the refined music.
A couple of weeks ago Erin sent me this article in the New Yorker about a Marsalis CD in production. I was delighted to see some familiar names mentioned, and that Andy Farber was conducting the music on the CD. I have to admit though that I only l i g h t l y skimmed the article the first and on the second times around I saw Andy Farber’s name. Long story short, a phone call to Maestro Farber pointed me in the direction of ticketmaster.com. It was only after I had decided to buy tickets that I discovered we had GREAT seats to see not just a jazz concert, but a new silent film accompanied by Wynton Marsalis, pianist Cecile Licad and a 10-piece all-star jazz ensemble at New York’s famous Apollo Theater. Fantastic! Shot by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Deliverance & The Deer Hunter) ’Louis’ is a semi-fictionalized account of a young Louis Armstrong and his first cornet. It stars a wonderful young actor named Anthony Coleman, who was in the audience that night. (more…)
Thursday night (June 6, 2010) was the “Lineup of A Lifetime” concert - a tribute to 30 years of composing and arranging by Moshe Laufer. To those of you who aren’t familiar with Jewish music, Moshe Laufer is one of the three people (together with Mona Rosenblum and Israel Lamm) who shaped Jewish music in the past 40 years. These days Jewish music sounds more like pop/rock rather than Klezmer, and Moshe wrote hundreds of tunes. The night was a night to remember as the biggest names in Jewish music from near and afar were on stage to honor him. Photographer Baruch Ezagui , shlager.net and thejewishinsights.com provided these snazzy pictures!
With at least 50 #1 hits under his belt, Ken is great at getting the sound he is looking for, and he needed an extremely fast turnaround time and lots of options. Trumpeter Tony Gorruso accompanied me to Ken’s home studio and the three of us arranged the tracks at top speed, aiming for a deep monster brass sound.
This shot looks north-ish from a rooftop at 39th and 9th right across from the New Yorker Hotel. I was up there playing around with my camera which is a no-big-deal S570 Nikon point and shoot. I found a panorama setting, and this quintessential ‘New Yorky’ skyline photo was the result.
Yeah it’s a cliché, but I’m going to say it anyway: I ♥ New York.
So we were walking down 42st. street a few weeks ago (OK – lots of weeks ago… note hat). While passing Times Square, the person I was with said – “Hey that girl is the same one on the poster”. I was like “nah…”, but then – lo and behold it WAS! So i decided to get one too. I now have a picture of the “Grand Theft Auto” girl even before she became (becomes?) famous. She was with dude that was taking pics with his point and shoot.
“I basically sampled some of your samples (lol) and made brass ‘hits’ of my own” is how engineer Carole Wolf described incorporating the New York Brass free sample library into her recent work.
Carole did the pre-production at home, and the rest of it was polished and tweaked at The Loft recording studio in Columbus, Georgia. She thoughtfully emailed us a completed track.
What you are hearing is the swooning Neo-Soul vocals of Nesrin Asli along with MC Cyryus, Kevin Lamar on drums and acoustic guitar by Marshall Ruffin. Oh – and brass comes from here – which Carole has layered-in with utmost delicate subtly.
I love how Nesrin’s electrified voice climbs up and down the easy the walking beat. We are please to have contributed to this fabulous sound.
Don Downs, Tony Gorruso and Your Truly recorded for Israel Lamm and Nochi Krohn on Friday aboard the USS Nimitz. Ha-ha. No really, it’s just my studio. We’re sitting in front of two personal mixers which are part of the studio’s really cool personal monitoring system that I’ll blog about in the near future.
We look a little self-conscious here. Maybe it’s because none of us are wearing earphones as we would during an actual recording. I forgot to take a picture until we were nearly done, and said “look natural” on the ten-second dash back to my chair.
Trumpeter Kenny Rampton (and his friends) posted on Facebook a great list of descriptive Mingus composition titles … I thought they were cool and so pasted them here.
(That is Kenny leading the Mingus Band band trumpet section at the Jazz Standard. They usually play 2 sets Monday Nights. Sorry about quality, blame my Cellphone [or as my grandma says CelleryPhone])
* The Shoes of The Fisherman’s Wife are Some Jive Ass Slippers
* All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother (based on All The Things You Are)
* Wham Bam, Thank You Ma’am! (based on What Is This Thing Called Love).
* Passions Of A Woman Loved
*”If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats” (aka Gunslingin’ Birds) (also name of a popular blog)
If you have ever wanted to MacGyver your own trombone at home out of some scrap copper, shoe laces and a box of thumb tacks, this is your opportunity. I found this Discovery Channel documentary that is specially tuned so all you DIYers out there can participate.
R&B recording artist Steph Newton incorporated samples from our totally awesome free sample collection in a recent song “Outta My Depth.” You can find this track on her new EP ‘Everything You Need’. Sounds great!
Have you used any NewYorkBrass.com free samples in songs? Tell us about it!
It’s worth listening to the whole clip from beginning to end. Also listen to how deep and clear the drums sound, this is in part due to the incredible hardware and software design.
All these drum grooves are taken from actual songs that Gal recorded, the sound is not mixed, and is “straight from the board…”
Song Index: 00:00 – 00:21 - medium slow rock groove – tempo 70 00:21 – 00:33 - medium slow rock groove with a flam on the X stick – tempo 81 00:33 – 00:53 - medium slow rock groove with shuffle feel- tempo 78 00:53 – 01:17 - medium streigh a head rock – tempo 127 01:17 – 02:08 - half time slow rock with a shuffle feel turns into double time – tempo 120 02:09 – 02:34 – light rock with 16 feel ghost notes on the snare – tempo 104 02:35 – 03:15 – medium slow rock groove – tempo 86
Just a quick post to say that our new business card arrived. :)
When I started the design, I knew I wanted something that I could give out containing all the contact information people need, but I also wanted it to complement the website theme. Version #1 had emails and telephones. Version #2 had also “NewYorkBrass.com brass, strings, woodwinds, rhythm sections and kichen sinks”
Then it hit me, and this is what I came up with:
Simple! It allows our musicians to give out the cards and write on the back their personal or other information.
Zubin Mehta recently endorsed and collaborated on a really cool interactive classical music children’s book, which is in the final stages of production and QA and will be available in stores across the globe starting in July.
About a year ago we have been approached to help arrange music for an interactive classical music children’s book, by Amit Sopher of Classikids.com, who produces interactive books for children. Amit developed a very interesting electronic platform that plays 10 minutes of high quality mp3 on a surprisingly good speaker.
To kick off the project, I contacted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s personnel manager - Mr. Stewart Taylor. Mr. Taylor is my teacher, mentor, and close friend, and was played principal trombone for many years. He suggested talking to another friend – Mr. Yaacov Mishori. Mishori, now retired, served as principal horn player of the IPO, as IPO spokesman and was a member of the management. Mishori has written other books and today teaches at the Buchmann-Mehta High School and presents a weekly radio program.
About a year ago my (then) two year old daughter Maya came to the studio and decided to try out the trombone, sorry trumpet (“No Maya, It’s a trumpet” “yes trumpet”) .
I was shure she wont get any sound out of this, I was wrong, she has a natural talent for waking up the neighbors and reducing the real estate prices in the neighborhood. Apparantly, in the video, she suddenly decided to betray the family-business, and try the flute… to my great chagrin…
I videod it with my phone and forgot about it. Last week my memory card in my phone got filled up, and during the cleaning-up process, I found this cute clip:
