Blue Note cover art comes to life!

I'm a big fan of the Blue Note cover art work of Reid Miles with photos by Blue Note co-owner Francis Wolff. This video brings some of those classic album covers to life. Amazing!

Bill Frisell & The 858 Quartet

Really looking forward to seeing this band at The London Jazz Festival. Signs of Life is a kind of jazz/classical crossover inspired by the paintings of Gerhard Richter. Caught them at The Village Vanguard last year on a memorable Sunday evening. Interested in how they sound at The QEH. This video gives a wonderful flavour of the music and its background.

Peter Bernstein on listening at the start of tunes

At the recent Barry Harris gig at Pizza Express I was really struck by the way that Barry would start a tune, unannounced then look up to see if bass player Dave Green had got it and Dave and drummer Steve Brown would just slide seamlessly in.

It's just about listening.

In this clip Peter Bernstein talks about starting tunes with no words spoken. Just listening and following, or leading the other musicians in:

 If you can just learn to follow and say, "I hear what he's playing, I hear what key he's playing it in, and it's obvious what tempo he's playing it in (hopefully)," and go from there.

Jim Hall & Barney Kessell: You Stepped Out of a Dream

It's ages since I blogged. Mostly because I've been busy, but also because I haven't had a great deal to write about. Barry Harris at The Pizza Express was superb, but that was the only significant gig I've been too for a couple of months.

This is a superb video of Jim Hall and Barney Kessell playing at the top of their respective games in the early 60s. There's not too much say about this, just listen to 6 minutes of bliss.