Jason and I will again be playing a half hour of music preceding Placer Nature Center’s great 4th Friday Lecture series.  It’s tomorrow, 23 October, music starting at 7PM followed at 7:30 by a speaker from the California Environmental Legacy Project.

Our set will include our eclectic selection of tunes spanning rock (from Jean-Luc Ponty), jazz (Pat Metheny), and contemporary bluegrass (Ira Stein, Darol Anger), but also will be heavy on our own material.  We’ll play a duet version of Off the Path from my album of the same name, and engage Jason’s new looping system for some unusual time-shifted improvisation on Girl That Broke My Heart and other spontaneous melodies.

I’ll contribute a copy of Off the Path to the raffle, so with luck you can fulfill your aural, environmental, and charitable senses all at one place.  Join us!

I’ve volunteered to play some live music for the popular Loomis Art Loop, Sunday afternoon 10th May starting after noon sometime and continuing for a couple of hours.  A perfect time to bring a picnic, enjoy the music, acres of blooming iris gardens, and see some of the new work created by local artists (including new tapestries by Deanna Marsh and jewelry by Doug Horton).

Jason and I are again performing as the “opening act” for the Placer Nature Center’s 4th Friday lecture series this week.

This lecture is on ABC: Arthropods, Butterflies & Climate and will be presented by Dr. Arthur Shapiro Friday April 24th.  Music starts at 7PM, lecture at 7:30.  See you there! 

There’s a title for a new song, don’t you think?  Jason and I are performing as the “opening act” for the Placer Nature Center’s 4th Friday lecture series this week.

This lecture is on The Environmental Legacy of the Gold Rush and will be presented by Dr. William Murphy Friday Jan 23rd.  Music starts at 7PM, lecture at 7:30.  See you there! 

Tomorrow night, Dec 19th, at Pachamama’s, Jason and I will be playing again 6:30-9PM.  Improvisations of a little Christmas music mixed in with our usual fare.  Join us!

Jason and I will again be playing our eclectic improvisitory mix of jazz, new age, folk, and world music (violin and keyboards) for the opening of a new exhibit of figurative work at the Blue Line Gallery in Roseville.  Join us there on November 15th between 6:30 and 9:00PM.  I’ll be using this opportunity to start more actively promoting my Spontaneous Reflections podcast.  Come by if you can!

1) Project Auburn, a celebration of civic pride and elbow grease, in addition to renovating the classic State Theatre, has renovated the rear garden of OLAS, making it a great site for sculpture, relaxing, and entertainment.  I helped put the fence up and did some of the repainting a few weeks ago when hundreds of volunteers turned out to make Auburn a better place.  Kudos to the Rotary Club and other civic organizations for making our town a better place!

2) The Auburn Art Walk, a recurring evening of open studios and galleries, occurs every Second Thursday throughout the summer.

3) OLAS is celebrating the new landscaping, in conjunction with the Art Walk, with a show entitled From Earth To Sky, August 14th from 6:00 to 9:00 PM.

4) I acquired a new keyboard, a Yamaha CP300, at long last giving me some mobility to my music.  (And making it easier to get quality recordings, more about which later.)

The outcome of all these fortuitous circumstances?

Jason and I will be playing our usual eclectic mix of improvisatory world/new age/jazz/undefinable music for the event.

If you’re in the neighborhood, come on by!

Bro Jason and I again will improvise around a few sets at PachaMama’s Organic Cafe (map) this Friday, February 15 7:00 – 9:00 PM.  Drop in for a listen!

Work keeps me too busy to play much piano any more - regular playing at church and an occasional background music at an art opening is about it.  But brother Jason and I are going to do a simple gig at the local organic cafe on Nov. 16th (7-9PM).

Should be a fun and somewhat unusual mixture of new age, jazz, and ethnic and fiddle music.  If you’re in the area, drop in!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of accompanying Julia Wade singing a Peter Link composition based on the 193rd Psalm.  What a song, and what a voice!  Too bad I was on pipe organ.  I list the reasons I feel pipe organ has a (well deserved) diminishing place in our churches.  I played pipe organ for years, so I’m well qualified to throw a few darts!

1. The majority of the organ repertoire is either ancient (Bach or Telemann for instance), rather intellectual (Messiaen, Langlais), or just plain corny (the vast majority of 20th century church music).  None of it packs a significant emotional punch for contemporary audiences (unless that audience has be subject to decades of Pavlovian associations).  There is lots of contemporary keyboard music (ECM, Narada, Windham Hill labels) that is emotionally accessible to a broad age range.
2. Rhythm is an important component of contemporary music, and the organ is simply not a percussion instrument like piano.  For instance, any attempts at syncopation on a pipe organ just sound like mistakes.
3. It’s hard to beat a full-throated pipe organ accompanying a hymn sung by a hundred or two, but how many churches have that size congregation any more?  Piano or keyboard is simply more intimate, an important quality in this age of individualism in the search for spirituality.
4. I really feel this instrument is an anachronism.  It was originally developed to replace an orchestra (the original synthesizer) and technology has moved on significantly since then, especially with digital sampling technology.  We can now get a greater diversity of sound from a keyboard.
5. If that all isn’t compelling enough, the purchase and maintenance costs of a pipe organ compared with a piano or keyboard are simply incomparable.  Surely those funds could be spent more directly fulfilling a church’s mission.

The problem with many of the pipe organs in churches I have played is that they are simply too entrenched - they represent a significant investment and as high quality instruments generate a certain amount of pride.  That makes them hard to replace, even when there are alternatives that better serve the goals of the church.