http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUt43RtuIn4

Some sneaky person posted this brief but nice little clip of Don Thompson and me playing with the great Sheila Jordan at Chalkers Pub in Toronto!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3AA8H8jOPI

My fave Cole Porter song, Everything I Love...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSzd_s9otgw

Here's a bit more from my trio set at Humber College with Jim Vivian and Alyssa Falk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_LZ85hE9ss

...Oh, and also if you get a chance read Hazrat Inayat Khan's "The Mysticism of Sound and Music"- profound wisdom and knowledge from the great Indian Sufi master and musician. It should be required reading for anyone who feels that music is not just notes but a spiritual tool, a way to connect with our cosmic source and channel positive vibrations into the world around us, enhancing our own life condition and that of others who's lives we touch.
(As an aside, the couple of rather humorously disparaging remarks he makes about "jazz" should be taken in the context that he was writing in 1926!).

Hey folks,in the name of shameless self-promotion, if you get a chance check out the prospective theme I wrote for Hockey Night in Canada with my old pal and long-time collaborator Orville Heyn. Those of you that reside North of the Border will be aware that there is a competition on to create the new theme. There are 12,000 entries, so in order for ours to get noticed I need friends and fans to go to the website, comment and rate the theme. The first vote will happen October 4. You can listen to our theme at:

http://anthemchallenge.cbc.ca/mediadetail/324836?sort=upload+DESC+DESC&filetype=2%2C3&moderationstatus=1&offset=4028

In other news, just got back to Toronto after a great summer of hanging out with my very cool 8-year-old daughter in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (the fairybook place from the Anne of Green Gables books, for you non-Canucks!). I also played 6 nights a week on Victoria Row with PEI-born bassist Chris Budhan and a fabulous drummer from New York named Alyssa Falk (check her out at www.myspace.com/alyssafalk). I'm going to hopefully be bringing her to Canada in February (cruel, I know!) to do some gigs, so watch this space for updates! I've been writing some new music that I'm excited about performing and hopefully recording.

Meanwhile, I'm back to teaching at Humber College and University of Toronto, and looking forward to an amazing year!

Peace and love!

DR

P.S.- check out the Wayne Shorter album Etcetera- an underrated gem featuring Herbie Hancock, Cecil McBee, and one of the most beautiful and musical drummers ever, Joe Chambers.

With the recent passing of saxophonist Michael Brecker, many musicians and fans are paying tribute, and I wanted to throw in my 2 cents.

I've often thought of Brecker in the same breath as pianist Oscar Peterson, not because they are stylistically similar, but because both are technicians of the highest order on their respective instruments and both have been unfairly maligned for this, lazily accused in some circles of "empty virtuosity". Subjective preferences aside, how absurd is that? In the field of classical music, even a second-string soloist is expected to handle their instruments at this kind of level. As someone who responds to music from the standpoint of emotional connection, I wholeheartedly endorse the view that virtuosity must serve some greater purpose. I would also say that both Brecker and Peterson fit in this category, as they are two of the deepest, most soulful musicians to pass through this world.

The jazz that grabbed me first was the bebop of Gillespie, Parker and Bud Powell, and the post-bop of Mingus, Blakey, Adderly, Rollins, Clifford Brown, Donald Byrd, and others. I also tried to fill my head with everything that was remotely related to jazz, from Louis Armstrong to Cecil Taylor, ragtime, folk blues, and early R&B. Then I heard John Coltrane, and his pianist McCoy Tyner, and that was it for me! For a time I hardly wanted to hear anyone else!

We can't help, however, but be products of our generations, and my formative years as a young musician were the 1980's. At the time we thought that this was kind of a dead period for jazz, especially when compared with the startling evolution of the music between 1900 and 1970 or so. Hindsight being 20/20, however, when I look back on that period it was actually quite fertile- Wynton and Branford Marsalis made some landmark albums like Live at Blues Alley and Crazy People Music; Keith Jarrett got together with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette and launched 20 years of some of the most influential jazz piano trio music ever; artists like Woody Shaw and Dave Liebman continued to expand on what Coltrane started; the Blue Note label wheezed back to life and launched the careers of people like Kenny Garrett; free jazz as perpetrated by people like the Art Ensemble of Chicago was going strong; Dave Holland put his first great quintet together; the ECM label churned out great European jazz; later in the decade, Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, Cassandra Wilson, Geri Allen, and others formed the M-Base collective and made some mind-blowingly fresh, inspired music. And while much so-called "fusion" by this time had become watered down "fuzak" or chops-heavy "muscle-jazz", the Pat Metheny Group had not yet become formulized and Alan Holdsworth, John Scofield, Kevin Eubanks, Steps Ahead, and others made some wonderful recordings.

At the beginning of this much maligned decade, in the year 1980, a recording was released that has, among a segment of the music community, gained near-mythic status. It was Chick Corea's Three Quartets, featuring Mike Brecker, Eddie Gomez on bass, and Steve Gadd on drums. While the production, with its super-direct "rubber-band" bass sound, ultra-bright piano and boxy drums, is dated by today's standards, the music is timeless, Chick's brilliant and original writing brings out the best in all parties (and as an aside, my response to the age-old debate about whether or not Steve Gadd can swing- "Who cares?" No matter what musical setting he's in, he stands alongside Elvin Jones, John Bonham, Levon Helm, Joe Chambers, Claude Ranger, and Brian Blade as one of the most emotional and heartfelt of drummers). That record infuenced me as much as Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme, and in some ways more even than Chick's earlier masterpiece, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, as I didn't hear that 'til much later. It wasn't the first time I heard Brecker- that would be the dazzling Some Skunk Funk with the Brecker Brothers, from the Heavy Metal Bebop record, which inspired my first composition at age 15, Cap'n Crunch's Revenge.

Brecker had spent much of the 1970's in recording studios, playing on a dazzling array of pop, rock, funk and R&B albums with everyone from James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon to Steely Dan, James Brown and Parliament/Funkadelic. He did make jazz records during this time, including some late-70's faves like Hal Galper's Speak With a Single Voice (recently re-released as Children of the Night on Aebersold music) and Kenny Wheeler's brilliant, underrated Double Double-You, as well as some great funk-jazz with the Brecker Brothers. But somehow Three Quartets was symbolic of a gradual shift in his musical persona, from studio musician who could bust some jazz when required, to jazz musician who, by the way, also made pop records from time to time. If Three Quartets and Pat Metheny's 80-81 got the ball rolling then his self-titled debut solo disc from a few years later, which featured one of my heroes, Kenny Kirkland, on piano, as well as Metheny, Charlie Haden, and Jack DeJohnette and compositions by Brecker, Don Grolnick, and Mike Stern cemented it. To me, it still stands up as one of the three or four best jazz recordings of the decade, and every so often I simply have to hear Michael's anthemic ode to New York's incomparable pizza, Original Rays. I saw Brecker at the Diamond Club in Toronto on the tour that supported that record, with Joey Calderazzo, Stern, Jeff Andrews and Adam Nussbaum. While problems with Brecker's EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) marred the performance, it was a thrilling band to see live nonetheless.

One of the most amazing things about Brecker to me, and something that truly makes him a product of his generation, was his ability to play chorus after chorus of endlessly inventive jazz improvisation, and then turn around and play the most succinct, beautiful, perfect 8-bar solo on a pop tune. Still Crazy After All These Years with Paul Simon is a famous example, and one of my favorites, Maxine from Donald Fagen's album The Nightfly.

And on and on it went for the next two decades- more great jazz records, many under his name like Tales From the Hudson and some great collaborations with Herbie Hancock. Right now I'm listening to him soar over the London Symphony Orchestra, pushed to greater heights by the firey drumming of Peter Erskine, on Vince Mendoza's gorgeous Epihany CD. Aside from his great orchestral writing, Mendoza, like Duke Ellington, knows how to write in a way that brings out the best in his individual jazz soloists, who here include Kenny Wheeler, Joe Lovano, Johns Taylor and Abercrombie, as well as MB.

There are always leaders and followers in music, and Michael Brecker was definitely the former, a deeply commited artist with a completely original, instantly identifiable voice that, like Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Coltrane and Sonny Rollins in their respective eras, spawned a generation of imitators (Charles Mingus said that the full title of his composition Gunslingin' Bird was "If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats"- certainly, the same could be said of Brecker!), not to mention, getting back to that technique thing, arguably the greatest virtuoso the saxophone has ever seen. As such, history will surely place him alongside the above artists, not to mention Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson, and Ornette Coleman as one of the giants of the music and the saxophone. He gave us a lot and I already miss him.

May he rest in peace.

DR

If you haven't seen the Joni Mitchell bio-doc.Woman of Heart and Mind (originally produced, I believe, for CBC, now available on DVD), run and find a copy! It's easily one of the most profoundly moving pieces of music documentary I've seen. Lots of interviews with Graham Nash, David Crosby, James Taylor, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter (who has a hipper rolodex than that?) and the lady herself, who is full of wisdom and insight. Also amazing performance footage from the 60's right up to the 2000's. I found myself close to tears through the whole thing, each song taking me closer to the edge!

In other news, I just got my new CD off to the manufacturer- should be ready for indy release by early November. It features ERA (the easily restive atom), my Nova-Scotia based trio which includes drummer Mark Adam, my old buddy, originally from Calgary via Toronto, now based near Wolfville, NS where he teaches at Acadia University, where the recording was done, a live concert from the school's Denton Theatre. The third member is a great and as yet largely unheralded (that's going to change soon!) bassist named Tom Easley, of the popular east coast group Hot Toddy. Bassist Jordan O'Connor and I produced it, and he mixed and mastered it at his TheBreath studio. The trio's chemistry is magical, and the recording sounds great so needless to say I'm excited about sharing it with everyone! We play an Alanis Morisette tune and a couple of standards, as well as some challenging originals by myself and Tom.

Finally, I'd like to just say that WAYNE SHORTER, if not actually God, is certainly a messenger from another realm...that quartet he has with Danillo Perez, John Pattitucci, and the ever-lovely Brian Blade is making the deepest music I've ever heard, blurring the lines between freedom and form, time and timelessness, like Einstein's theories translated into music...(I'm sure Wayne, science/sci fi buff/Buddhist that he is, would enjoy that comment!) it's like everything he's done, from Blakey through Miles, Weather Report, etc. has been leading up to this highly realized stuff he's doing now. Amazing how we need a guy in his 70's to remind us what the essence of musical expression and pushing envelopes/breaking down boundaries is all about!

-DR