the jazz audience

I go out to clubs to hear jazz --   our local artists, headliners from NYC, European jazz groups on tour.  I'm often at the Jazz Bakery, since I live a few blocks away, and I've recently been at Spazio's, Cafe 322, Steamers, the Crowne Plaza, in a word, the usual suspects.  Here's something I notice - a good part of the jazz audience consists of jazz musicians.  I usually run into players I know when I'm at concerts or clubs.  I also see musicians from other disciplines - classical players, film composers, what have you.  

As is often noted, the clubs are under-attended and it's difficult for jazz or any musical acts to fill a house.  

I hear sometimes hear musicians talk about audiences with an "us- and-them" mentality.   I'm going to float an idea here -- We're a big part of the audience -- "them" is largely ourselves.  if we musicians attend more clubs and concerts, we'll be supporting the venues, helping our colleagues get repeat bookings, and  even diagonally supporting our own musical endeavors by keeping the places open.  The clubs are often small to begin with and a few tables would make the difference between profit and loss for the night.

On an off-night, it's nice to stay home, get to bed early, rest the ears.  Go home and make pasta, see what's come in from Netflicks, rule despotically over our minions, that sort of thing.

YES, AND -- If we musician types extend ourselves a bit - push away from the table after the strudel, oof... and go see people's sets, look what awaits us:

We'll be able to dig a little jazz ourselves, crack wise with the band on their break, pester the club-owner with our CDs, have a drink, keep the club in business, have the gratitude of our colleagues whom we've come to see, guilt them into coming to hear us play...  Wotta great setup, itza perfect evening.  Really all that's required is finding the shoes, putting them on again, that's it... getting in the car and driving to a club.  Happy music-iarse, Louis

Web publicity for your music

I met publicist Lexi Kavanaugh (lexi@k2mgt.com) when I was playing in Chicago last November.  She was working with Lili Haydn, who I was performing with.  Lexi now lives in So Cal and she has had some easy and mostly free suggestions for promoting my trio that I wanted to share with the Jazz community...

1) Make html rather than flash websites because the text in them is not readable by search engines.  (I already had a flash site up, but all text in it is duplicated in an HTML site)

2) Whatever web presence you have, make sure the sites all link to each other, makes it easy for search engines to find them.

3) Write a wikipedia article on yourself, very easy to do.

4) Sell your music on http://cdbaby.com.  From there it will be picked up by itunes, napster and other music sites.  Also, their articles on marketing are really helpful.

5) If you don't have reviews of your music yet, get blurbs (short statements) from fans, musicians you play with, employers.  Put them up on your website.

6) Start a blog, let your listeners get to know you through writing.

7) Write thank-you notes to the people who come to your gigs or by your albums.

8)  Make a lens on http://squidoo.com about your music, create myspace and facebook pages.

9) Enlist the help of your audiences to get the word out about your music -- ask people at your gigs to blog about your group.

10) Update your work in http://allmusic.com, http://imdb.com, list your gigs in http://lajazz.com

11) Pianist Tamir Hendelman suggested Marty Khan's book on the business side of jazz called Straight Ahead. http://www.outwardvisions.com/straightahead.html

12) Create T-shirts and other merchandise your fans can order with http://www.cafepress.com

---None of these are bookings for your group.  They are all ways to expand your web presence and expand your fan base.  When you talk to a club about a booking, the booker will google you to find out more about who you are than your press package can tell him.  There will be more there for her to see.  The same when someone hires you as a sideman, considers taking lessons with you, decides whether to go out to a club and see you.

Four recording sessions

I played four sessions over a few days time.  At each session, the demands were a little different.  Here's what happened...

The first two were sessions for film composer Miriam Cutler.  She had scored a documentary about journalist Helen Thomas.  She had done a MIDI mockup of the score and was replacing the parts with acoustic instruments.  For the first session I brought a Roland VK-8 over to her house, an organ with drawbars that imitates a Hammond B3 well. 

We started by listening to some of the soundtrack of “Get Shorty”.  Green Onions was in the soundtrack and there were good greasy organ parts on other cues.  We used what we heard as a starting point for sounds. I decided to get sounds entirely by shifting drawbars, not using presets and a volume pedal because that way I could make the sound evolve during long notes or over the length of the cue.  I memorized a drawbar starting point for each cue so I could get back when I needed to.  It made the parts more expressive.

She had already recorded accordion, terrific playing by Nick Ariondo. My parts doubled his sometimes.  Everything else in the monitors were parts from her MIDI mockup.  The accordion spoke kind of slowly, the organ speaks quickly, so I was listening to the click and to his parts and estimating when to play.  When overdubbing I listen and try to remember the timing of as many of the attacks and releases as I can.  It’s like counting cards --  “these are right on the click; these hits are late; these two parts are flamming...

We had a good time doing it.  We started listening to dialogue as we recorded.  Miriam is a "sperienced" film composer, sensitive to dialogue and editing.  She's also a nice, bright, cultured type so it's always nice working with her.  Sometimes I was playing her written parts, sometimes she was having me get away from the score and it was a nice challenge to improvise parts yet stay suitable to dialogue.  As we listened, she had the accordion down and the organ up…I said, “why don’t you put it a little the opposite, have the accordion up and the organ behind?".  That ended up being a nice thing;  it made the music sound more human and greasy.  

•••••••

     The next morning, we met at Carl Sealove’s to record piano for the same documentary.  Carl has a Mason Hamlin – it’s a terrific instrument.  I struggle with the headphone mix there sometimes since they usually listen to the same monitor mix that I do.  At sessions, I hear a lot of piano acoustically since I'm sitting at it -- I usually want much less piano in the cans than anyone else does.

  There were a few kinds of cues, she was conservative with her themes.  There were triadic even parts - really simple and effective.  You really felt tension and release.  There was swinging, bluesy piano parts that went with the organ.  She used the same ideas in different cues but with different tempos, keys and scoring so it was a nice varied score.  I liked what was going down.  Again, I was playing with the accordion and sometimes with the organ that I played the night before, and since the accordion spoke a little slowly I would find myself playing later…playing behind the click to match the accordion.  When I finished, Carl was going to play bass on the cues, I hope it wasn't too hard to follow!

  Carl recorded in Digital Performer (which is what Miriam uses).  We went from cue to cue very quickly and Miriam would have me do several passes.  One where I would play the written part, then other passes where she would make requests like, “play something high and loopy”, “play something that fills up the middle”,  “just go nuts on this one in a Kurt Weill kind of way” -- it’s a nice way to work.  It must mean a lot of extra listening and editing for her when she’s done --  but we’ve done several scores like this and she seems like she enjoys every part of the process.  Again, these are smart, witty people.  It’s really a pleasure to be around them and work with them.  

••••••••

     That was Thursday night and Friday night…the following Monday night Matt Aschkynazo and I went to Stagg Street Studio in Van Nuys.  Gary Denton, the studio owner, engineered…  We had done some quartet recording before with Larry Steen playing acoustic bass and Chris Wabich playing drums.  We were coming back to replace a couple of guitar solos. Matt wanted me along to listen and to record a couple of duo tunes.  Stagg Street has a Yamaha C7, they’ve changed out the action and revoiced it.  It was sounding good.  

We got started around 9pm.  There had been a little leakage at the original session and it became clear that wherever he wanted to replace guitar, I’d have to replace piano.  We started with the duo tunes, I’m really curious to hear what went down on one of them.  It was a bluesy tune, a Scofield tune, "Heaven Hill".  We tried a “drunk and stoned” way of playing on one of the takes and made the time wobble all through the take.  We were both having fun.  I don’t know if it was a keeper but it was great fun playing that way...   We worked our way down our "list.  We got plenty done but I felt myself getting tired and snippy.  We'd only worked 3 hours but it was close to midnight and I was fading.  Recording when you're not alert or feeling well can be a real test.  Once I played a session after scratching my cornea.  The playing went well but I was in this weird kind of pain!   Matt suggested we come back another night and I was releaved. 

•••••••

Wednesday morning I had a session to record a piece with a vocalist called, “O Sleep, Why Dost Thou Leave Me?” -- an art song by Handel.   The session was with a tenor who was using it as part of an audition reel.   Karen Swerdlow sent the project my way and she has a Kawai tall upright at her studio -- not the first choice for a classical music session but workable.    The vocalist had a sweet lyric tenor sound and sangthe song very well.

The morning of the session I spent an hour trying different ornamentation – trills and mordents and working out fingerings until I ended up with something that sounded good to me - and a little intricate.  When I got to the studio, I went straight to the piano and tried phrases, getting the right touch to evoke a clavichord... The tenor asked me if I would try a keyboard with a harpsichord sound for this? We tried  a Korg Triton…it sounded wa-a-y too cheesy.  I can’t remember ever hearing a keyboard harpsichord spatch sound good.  So we used the piano and it worked it out well.   

The vocalist was happy with the second take so we called it.  One of those questions we all wrestle with:  I felt like I had a better take in me, but the client said we were done.  I often wonder whether to say something or not.  (I did a session with Guitarist Jeff Golub once and he was not shy about asking for additional takes until he was happy, maybe I should be more assertive like that).   The vocalist sounded very good; I've lost his card or I'd mention him here.

a vocal and acting audition

I was contacted by the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England. They hired me to accompany auditions for prospective graduate students. I was charmed by the language of their advert for the auditions: “Any relevant proof of ability in composing, writing or choreography should be bought with you to the audition…”.  Initially they booked me for five hours. With successive emails the time became less - they obviously had fewer applicants than expected. I was told later that this was their first year of West Coast auditions for the school. I don’t know how many non-musical applicants they had; ultimately there was one person for me to accompany. A drama teacher and a voice (for stage, not singing) teacher had made the trip out to audition him.

I had a quick rehearsal with him to try out his music. He sang a haunting Kurt Weill ballad, Lonely House. He also sang the fast two-beat Bock and Harnick tune She Loves Me. They were fine choices; showing his vocal and dramatic range well. He was a talented singer.  He also brought a piece from The Light In The Piazza to play on piano for the judges. His vocal pieces were both tricky sight reading and I was glad to run them both twice before his audition. He sounded very good. There were minor cueing problems that we worked out.  His music audition went very well.  The drama teacher stopped him right away, had him do some relaxation and posture exercises, then had him start the song again. She said to me, “we don’t have any of our music faculty here today; would you give him direction?”. I asked if she meant do you want to see if he can take direction as part of his audition? “Yes, exactly.” So I had him sing part of the ballad with a couple of different rhythmic feels. I had him crescendo on a phrase that went from high to low, that is, against the tendency of his range. On a section he sang with accents he seemed very used to I had him remove the accents and sing at a constant dynamic.  On his solo piano piece I had him change fingering to get a better legato and cleaned up his pedaling.  He was in good spirits for all of this and didn't seem a bit flustered.  I stuck around to watch his acting audition. (An actor's preparation can be mysterious to me, so I like to watch rehearsals and auditions)

He had memorized two monologues that I think the school must have chosen.  They were both directed at another person listening. This made it possible for the acting teacher to silently play the other person. First, she did physical adjustments with him right after he started, then she talked over the circumstances of the scene with him. "where is the character you are addressing? Give me some of the back-story - have you been talking a long time? Is this news to her or not? What was happening just before? Are we outdoors?" He was doing Arthur Miller from All My Sons where a man was telling a woman about her fiance’s death. Then there was a David Mamet monologue, I believe, a man talking to a woman about the conventions of polite conversation. “We have to be polite - we have to go through the routine of meaningless phrases, otherwise we are not agreeing to communicate.”  It was a little harder for him to make acting adjustments than singing ones but he seemed to be delivering whatever she asked of him.  I've seen people be quite inflexible in auditions and be flustered by requests.

Although the directions she gave were all pretty basic, the teacher seemed excellent; very observant and focused.  I enjoyed watching them work.