August 2012
Summer just flies when it’s so beautiful out… I just back from a great trip in California playing with some wonderful musicians there. The Northern crew were Harvey Wainapel in trio with Randy Vincent and I up in the wine country at Healdsburg and then as a Quintet down in Oakland with the killing Adam Shulman, Peter Barshay and Jason Lewis. Whew, we had a ball and Harvey’s Bass Clarinet especially knocked me out! Great bands! Then I headed south to LA where my Indigo Moods collaborator, trumpeter Fred Jacobs and I teamed up with the amazing Theo Saunders first with Darek Oles and Steve Hass in Seal Beach and then with Pat Senatore and Kendall Kay at Vibrato’s in Bel Air. A few days later vocalist and educator Cathy Segal Garcia and I hosted a special fund-raiser along with another 8 talented singers supported by Theo and Kendall with Ryan McGillicuddy to honor the great Nancy King! We really grooved on lots of different styles of music and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing and playing with my West Coast cousins!
Heading back east to the homestead, or Villa Paradiso as we call it, I was thrilled that I came home to a very nice Review in DownBeat Magazine of my “Indigo Moods” CD and I took a breather for a few days to enjoy my gardens. Now I’m on my way to Denmark to work with some talented young people in a workshop setting for a week, along with The Fringe, Rebecca Martin and Larry Grenadier, Joe Lovano, Enrico Pieranunzi and others. Nice work if you can get it! Wishing you all a wonderful rest of the month… Stay in touch! And Stay in the music!
