From the NY Times:

GENERAL SANTOS, the Philippines -- After a day of barbering, Rodolfo Gregorio went to his neighborhood karaoke bar still smelling of talcum powder. Putting aside his glass of Red Horse Extra Strong beer, he grasped a microphone with a habitue's self-assuredness and briefly stilled the room with the Platters' "My Prayer."

Next, he belted out crowd-pleasers by Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. But Mr. Gregorio, 63, a witness to countless fistfights and occasional stabbings erupting from disputes over karaoke singing, did not dare choose one beloved classic: Frank Sinatra's version of "My Way."

Why? What on earth could be wrong with that anthem of cool and confident Sinatra?

"I used to like 'My Way,' but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it," he said. "You can get killed."

Say whhaaaatt?

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling "My Way" in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the "My Way Killings."

Shocking...and yet somehow you'd think that ole Blue Eyes might have approved:

The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country's culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?

Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks. And the country's many Sinatra lovers, like Mr. Gregorio here in this city in the southernmost Philippines, are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.

But why? There must be a reason for such craziness, right?

"The trouble with 'My Way,' " said Mr. Gregorio, "is that everyone knows it and everyone has an opinion."

Others, noting that other equally popular tunes have not provoked killings, point to the song itself. The lyrics, written by Paul Anka for Mr. Sinatra as an unapologetic summing up of his career, are about a tough guy who "when there was doubt," simply "ate it up and spit it out." Butch Albarracin, the owner of Center for Pop, a Manila-based singing school that has propelled the careers of many famous singers, was partial to what he called the "existential explanation."

" 'I did it my way' -- it's so arrogant," Mr. Albarracin said. "The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you're somebody when you're really nobody. It covers up your failures. That's why it leads to fights."

There must be a Ph.D thesis buried in this story somewhere...

Chopin and Schumann, whose bicentenaries the classical music world celebrates this year, have long been linked as pioneers of Romanticism, in part because of the shared year of their births. Yet they were quite different creative artists who had little personal contact and moved mostly in separate circles.

Frederic Chopin, the son of a French immigrant to Poland and a Polish mother, studied music in Warsaw until, at 20, he set out to further his career elsewhere. He never returned to his native land. He spent most of the rest of his life in Paris, where he was one of many Polish expatriates. Robert Schumann, born in Zwickau, Germany, lived and worked mostly in German cities, especially Leipzig.

Chopin was a natural musician with such precocious talents as a pianist and improviser that he considered himself essentially self-taught. Schumann was a bookish young man raised in a literary household where music was a rewarding amateur endeavor. Initially drawn to literature as much as music, he likened musical composition to a poetic activity.

The story begins when both are just out of their teens:

To understand the contrasting backgrounds from which Chopin and Schumann emerged, consider what each was up to around the time of his 20th birthday. On graduating from music school, Chopin secured two important concerts in Vienna. At one he played his Variations for Piano and Orchestra on "La ci darem" from Mozart's "Don Giovanni." Writing home about his success, he said that "everyone clapped so loudly after each variation that I had difficulty hearing the orchestral tutti." From all reports he was an astonishing pianist. Yet sickly, retiring and prone to mood swings, Chopin was a reluctant concert artist who considered publicity an invasion of his privacy.

Schumann at 20, though aching to be a musician, was studying law in Leipzig and miserable about it. His father, a writer who made a good living translating Byron and Walter Scott into German, had died in 1826. His will stipulated that Robert would have to complete three years of university training to receive his inheritance. Though indifferent about his law lectures, Schumann was passionate about the piano lessons he was taking with the renowned teacher Friedrich Wieck. Still, he was plagued with insecurity. In a diary entry he assessed his talents in poetry and in music as "at the same level."

Schumann, who would write reviews of his fellow composers' music in a published journal, said of Chopin in 1831, "Hats off, gentleman, a genius!"

They finally met in 1836:

Schumann followed Chopin's progress closely, mostly from afar. But on Oct. 9, 1836, they spent an "unforgettable day" together, in Schumann's words, when Chopin passed through Leipzig. Schumann was enthralled with Chopin's new Ballade in G minor, finding it an original and ingenious work. Chopin may have tried out an early version of the Ballade in F major for Schumann, to whom he eventually dedicated it. Was Chopin already aware of Schumann's penchant for identifying multiple personalities within himself, now pensive, now wild and impetuous? The F major Ballade is Chopin's most bipolar piece: a tender pastoral theme keeps being interrupted by furious outbursts.

But just as great artists and composers of today are influenced by the masters, so were Chopin and Schumann by Beethoven:

By the time Chopin and Schumann came of age as young musicians, Beethoven, who died in 1827, loomed as an intimidating giant. Every subsequent composer had to come to terms with Beethoven, who took the symphony, the sonata and the string quartet into new realms. The architectural grandeur and sheer substance of Beethoven's works held most of the new generation in thrall. Schumann embraced the challenge of Beethoven. Chopin could not be bothered.

Who did Chopin turn to for inspiration and guidance for his artistry?

Bach and Mozart were Chopin's gods, though he also loved the bel canto opera composers of his day, especially Bellini. The symphonic imperative, the whole Beethoven thing, meant nothing to him. Composing nocturnes, mazurkas, waltzes, ballades and other novel works for the piano was what he did. He was not even that interested in the music of his contemporaries, though he was friendly with Berlioz, Liszt, Mendelssohn and others.

George Sand, the cigar-chomping woman he was with for nine years, had some special insight into his creativity:

The most intriguing description of Chopin's creative process came from the French novelist George Sand, who had a nine-year love affair with him. Sand was six years Chopin's senior, and there was an oddly maternal element to her love. "My third child," she sometimes called him. But no one knew Chopin better.

When he composed, according to Sand, ideas poured from him, almost as if he were improvising. Then came an agonizing process of working out the ideas amid torment, anger and weeping. There would be countless changes until, by the end, Chopin arrived back at something close to the initial inspiration.

The article goes on to describe in detail the music of each master, and then finishes with how they both ended their lives:

It is amazing that Chopin's enormous reputation as a pianist was based only on some 30 formal concerts that he gave during his lifetime. He was just too physically weak for concert life. From all reports his sound at the piano, with minute gradations of softness, was exquisite but small. He was most comfortable playing at salons and private homes.

He made his living from his published works and from teaching piano, for which he commanded exorbitant fees. He pushed the boundaries of what was possible technically by composing 24 formidable etudes, published in two books, which he began when he was 20. Though the etudes explore specific areas of technique, they are musically riveting works. And if you can play the Chopin etudes, you can play anything written for the piano.

By 1847 Chopin's relationship with Sand was over. He lived another two years, dying from tuberculosis in Paris at 39.

And Schumann?

Schumann's desire to combine the arts of poetry and music achieved a blissful synthesis when he turned to song in 1840, a burst of creativity that surrounded his marriage to Clara...who gave birth to eight children (and) also became one of the most celebrated pianists in Europe.

The marriage was tragically affected by Schumann's lifelong bouts of depression and mental instability. Whether his troubles, which in later years included delusions, hearing voices and fits of sobbing, were a psychotic disorder or resulted from syphilis has long been debated. In 1854, in a state of panic and worried that he might hurt Clara, Schumann left their home in Dusseldorf early one morning and leapt off a bridge into the Rhine. Rescued by fisherman, he was sent to an institution outside Bonn, where he died two years later. Clara was not allowed to see him until two days before his death.

Their lives are almost as interesting as their music is sublime and singular. Read the entire article and go see their music this year as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of their birthdays.

"It was fascinating to see the mix of fastidious and freewheeling penmanship in the variations. On the last page of the bound volume, among random musical sketches, there is a doodle, a drawing of a bewigged man in a coat with epaulets next to a monument with a missing statue. Surely this is Chopin's impish caricature of Mozart."

Frederic Chopin

Robert Schumann

Here he is in 1961 in Italy as part of that famous trio:

And to hear him on CDs, you can pick up "Night Train" or "Trio Live" to get the full effect of his swinging virtuosity, especially with the brushes, which was his specialty.

He lived in Copenhagen for the past 20+ years, and he will be sorely missed.

The Vinson Valega quartet will perform from 4:30-5:30pm, followed immediately by an interview with Chris Neidl, Advocacy Coordinator from Solar1.org (http://www.solar1.org).

Chris will present Solar One's mission of bringing a more sustainable, solar-powered future to residents of New York City through directed activism and individual energy conservation. In addition, Chris was over in Copenhagen last month for the big conference on Climate Change and will be reporting back on what that was like!

The Vinson Valega Quartet will be:
Chris Bacas (soprano & tenor saxophones)
Ed MacEachen (guitar)
Gary Wang (bass)
Vinson Valega (drums)

More information on the event can be found here...

Hope to see you there!

This CD was a few years in the making, with the original intention being to document the quartet of myself on drums, Chris Bacas (tenor & soprano), Anton Denner (alto), and Gary Wang. This quartet had played many, many gigs together since the start of the decade, and since I find it very important to record a band once it acquires a unique "band" sound, the idea for this recording was hatched along the way.

Well, as one year led to the next (since my last recording, "Awake," in 2005), this project had babies! Growing from a simple quartet CD into this sextet recording, "Biophilia" follows the same structure as "Awake," in that all band members were invited to record an original song. There are a few vignettes interspersed throughout the CD, too, and a few songs which feature only the chordless quartet (the original goal of "Biophilia").

We will be performing throughout 2010 in support of this project, so make sure to check out our schedule (or sign-up for our monthly emailing we send out detailing gigs and news from the website - see the sign-up form at the bottom of this page). In fact, you can get a head start by coming to see this band performing at The 55 Bar in Greenwich Village on Monday, December 28th, from 7-9pm! We will also be performing at Smalls Jazz Club on February 26th, from 7:30-9:00pm.

Thanks for listening and hopefully picking up a copy (they make great stocking stuffers, of course!). We sell them here at our site, and also through CDBaby (where you can buy the CD or download MP3s) and Amazon. The CD will be distributed on iTunes and eMusic in the next month or so, as well.

Happy Holiday Jazz Listening! ...and Buying! ...;)

Vinson Valega

Music Saves Mountains brings together country legends like Emmylou Harris and Randy Travis with pop-rock crossovers like Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow. Says laid-back country artist Big Kenny: "The beauty of the Appalachian Mountains has inspired countless songs in country, bluegrass, gospel and folk music, and we must do everything possible to protect them."

They've got decent funding from the National Resources Defense Council and the Gibson Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Gibson Guitar. They've included a link for emailing Congresspeople to end the practice of mountaintop removal mining -- "a form of coal mining that requires blasting mountaintops and has left a terrible environmental legacy. More than a million acres of Appalachia across Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia have been leveled, and over 1,000 miles of streams have been polluted or destroyed."

The NRDC has a site devoted to this issue, and a trailer from "Coal Country," can be viewed here. A review of "Coal Country" can be viewed here, as well.

Consilience Concert Awareness Concert Series -- Mentorship: Hip-Hop meets Physics!

Where: VoxPop Cafe, Ditmas Park, Brooklyn - 1022 Cortelyou Road
When: Sunday, November 15th, 5:00-7:30pm
How to get there: Take the Q train to the Cortelyou Road subway stop, turn left out of the station and walk 5 short blocks west.

WHY?

This event will couple jazz with activism. The Vinson Valega Quartet will perform from 5:00-6:00pm, after which follows the panel discussion, where Sam Hillmer, community organizer and founder of music production company, Representing NYC! will compare and contrast mentorship models with physicist and educator, Weldon MacDonald.

Mentorship has always been essential to developing young minds in the arts and sciences. Come hear about Sam's success in nurturing young Hip-Hop artists from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn (Fly Girlz on TheTripWire.com and WNYC.org and Nine 11 Thesaurus at The New Museum) and the similarities that exist between his approach and Weldon's experience mentoring young high school scientists in the New York metropolitan area.

And by all means, make sure you stick around 'till the end when Sam's kids kick off a raucous Hip-Hop performance to end the event!

More information on the band here.

In the meantime, check out this funny story from the blog, BigDrumThump, about drums on the alter:

"It must have been a set of DWs that made a 47-year-old man break into a church to play the drums. According to the police report, Michael Smith was driving by the Holy Ghost Deliverance Church when he spotted a drum set through its window. And just like a truly devoted skinsman should, he busted right into God's house, where officers later found him "in a spirited solo."

We hope that they at least let the dude finish before hauling him off to the clink."

Praise the Lord!

From 1953 to 1959, while working in Detroit and hosting a late-night television comedy show, "Soupy's On," he made Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite" his theme song. He took advantage of all the jazz musicians stopping through town to play local clubs like the Rouge Lounge and the Blue Bird Inn and the Crystal Show Bar. His guests included Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Milt Jackson, Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown; the 1956 film, below, of Brown playing "Lady Be Good" and "Memories of You" on Mr. Sales's show is the only surviving video of one of the greatest performers in the music's history.

The video is simply stunning, since the great trumpeter tragically died at young age of 25, leaving behind a legacy for every trumpet player since to explore. He was loved by all of his fellow musicians and was one of the few jazz men of his era not touched by the heroin epidemic at the time.

As for Soupy's show and the rest of the musicians he showcased,

According to the Detroit Free-Press's jazz critic, Mark Stryker -- who interviewed Mr. Sales about his jazz connections in 1996 -- the live programs were not archived on tape. Almost none of the show is known to survive except for parts of three episodes, saved on kinescope. One of them includes Brown; the other two include the pianists Eddie Heywood and Errol Garner, but those videos haven’t yet surfaced online.

Ah..back in the day when you could hear high-quality music like this performance by Clifford on prime time television. America's true art form used to be known by more Americans thanks to the efforts of those like the late, great Soupy Sales.

I hoped that the Pakistanis might somehow rescue us. Instead, I watched in dismay as Badruddin got out of the truck and calmly stood on the side of the road. As trucks full of heavily armed government soldiers rolled by, he smiled and waved at them.

After the convoy disappeared, Badruddin seemed amused.

"Do you know who that was?" he asked me.

"No," I said, trying to play dumb.

"That was the Pakistani Army," he said.

He explained that under a cease-fire agreement between the Taliban and the army, all civilians were required to get out of their cars when an army convoy approached. For Taliban vehicles, though, only the driver had to get out. The practice, I realized, allowed the Taliban to hide kidnapping victims and foreign militants from the Pakistani Army.

This is the third of a five part series detailing his seven months of captivity. This section ends with him discussing the songs that he and his captors would sing together. Who would know that The Taliban loves The Beatles so much?

On other nights, at my guards' urging, I switched to American tunes. In a halting, off-key voice, I sang Frank Sinatra's version of "New York, New York" and described it as the story of a villager who tries to succeed in the city and support his family. I sang Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" and described it as a portrayal of the struggles of average Americans.

I intentionally avoided American love songs, trying to dispel their belief that all Americans were hedonists. Despite my efforts, romantic songs -- whatever their language -- were the guards' favorites.

The Beatles song "She Loves You," which popped into my head soon after I received my wife's letter from the Red Cross, was the most popular.

For reasons that baffled me, the guards relished singing it with me. I began by singing its first verse. My three Taliban guards, along with Tahir and Asad, then joined me in the chorus.

"She loves you -- yeah, yeah, yeah," we sang, with Kalashnikovs lying on the floor around us.

How surreal is that?

He pretty much comes from royalty, as his father is jazz legend, Roy Haynes, who is still as swinging and vibrant now as he was 50+ years playing with Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong!

Here's a sampling of the first few questions:

What are the average jazz musician's favorite highs? -- The joint is jumpin'.

What are the jazz musician's favorite resources for learning how to improvise?

When you solo, what percentage of your solo is pure improvisation, and what percentage is planned, or mapped out?
-- peter

Of course, you can always just send us an email and we'll answer any questions you might have about the NYC jazz scene...:)

If you're driving alone through the plains of Nebraska and need a little company, you can't do better than the nationally syndicated maestros of political talk radio. Hour after hour, rant after rant, it is a feast of words and feverish emotion, interrupted only by regular commercials and the occasional call from the awe-struck fan. But as soon as you dig beneath the surface, the similarities between talk radio and gangsta rap are nothing short of uncanny.

Yes, there are actual parallels between Jay-Z and Rush Limbaugh!

Examples abound:

EGO Extolling your greatness is nearly as crucial to rap as it is to talk radio. One consistent theme of Jay-Z's lyrics is the genius of Jay-Z's lyrics. He claims a charisma that is almost mystical and skills on the mic that make him the "Mike Jordan of recording," "the Bruce Wayne of the game," a "god."

Rush Limbaugh peppers his show with self-adulating incantations that would seem right at home on a Snoop Dogg track, calling himself "Chief Waga-Waga El Rushbo of the El Conservo Tribe," "doctor of democracy," and "a weapon of mass instruction." Both he and Jay-Z have referred to themselves as "a living legend."

HATERS You're nobody in hip-hop until you claim to have hordes of detractors. The paradox, of course, is that the artists who regularly denounce their haters have a huge and adoring audience. How does Lil Wayne complain in song about the legions who seek his ruin even as he dominates the charts? Ask Michael Savage, who is forever describing himself as an underdog, marginalized by the media -- on the more than 300 stations that carry his show.

FEUDS 50 Cent vs. Ja Rule. Lil' Kim vs. Foxy Brown. Jay-Z vs. Nas. Every couple of years, one rapper will pick a fight with another and battle it out with the winner typically determined by sales. This will sound familiar to anyone who has followed, say, Bill O'Reilly's broadsides at Mr. Limbaugh ("Walk away from these right-wing liars!" Mr. O'Reilly said of an unnamed rival, described as someone who smokes a cigar and owns a private jet) or Mark Levin's attack on Mr. O'Reilly. ("He has a fledgling radio show, that has no ratings," Mr. Levin said in 2008, "and he'll be off radio soon because he's a failure." Levin's predication came true in January of this year.) Liberal ranters can partake, too, as MSNBC host and fulminator par excellence Keith Olbermann has proven with his long running O'Reilly spat.

VERBAL SKILLS Without them, you can't rap and you'll never make it as a talk radio opinion-machine. Free-style rap requires precisely the facility with words that it takes to free-associate for two or three hours a day. Forget, for a moment, what the Fox TV and radio gabber Glenn Beck is saying and marvel for a moment at how long he can say it -- and how sharp and funny he can be. In a recent and genuinely hilarious bit, he lampooned the sleepiness of NPR talk shows by affecting a plummy British accent and repeatedly urging a caller -- a member of his coterie in actual fact -- to "please use your indoor voice," though the caller was talking at a perfectly reasonable volume.

The comparison goes on and on:

Even beyond simple matters of style, rap and conservative talk radio share some DNA. Once you subtract gangsta rap's enthusiasm for lawlessness -- a major subtraction, to be sure -- rap is among the most conservative genres of pop music. It exalts capitalism and entrepreneurship with a brio that is typically considered Republican. (Admiring references to Bill Gates are common in hip-hop.)

Rappers tend to be fans of the Second Amendment, though they rarely frame their affection for guns in constitutional terms. And rap has an opinion about human nature that is deeply conservative -- namely, that criminals cannot be reformed. The difference is that gangsta rappers often identify themselves as the criminals, and are proud of their unreformability.

Finally, rappers and conservative talkers both speak for a demographic that believes its interests and problems have been slighted and both offer stories that have allegedly been ignored.

It's actually quite amazing when you start comparing the two worlds, although the author left out one big, big difference: right-wing talk show hosts influence how millions of citizens vote...which ends up deciding how the pile of tax-payers' money sent to Washington is ultimately split up.

The rap artists? Their audience consists of kids who don't vote.

Finally, the answer to our quiz (found in the article): Jay-Z is to Rush Limbaugh as Eminem is to ...Michael Savage!

Both deaths made the baroness an immediate target of tabloid headlines and a long-term subject for scurrilous gossip. Almost no one, though, beyond the insular jazz world, could possibly know her whole story: how, until her death in 1988, she championed jazz as both a friend and a generous, if rather unlikely, benefactor.

A Rothschild heiress, she offered her home to countless jazzmen as a place to work and even live, while quietly paying their bills when they couldn't find work. She chauffeured them to gigs around New York, toured with them as a kind of racial chaperon, and was even known to confront anyone she felt was taking advantage of her friends because they were black.

"I always likened her to the great royal patrons of Mozart or Wagner's day," the saxophonist Sonny Rollins said in a telephone interview. "Yet she never put the spotlight on herself. I try not to talk publicly about people I knew in jazz. But I have to say something about the baroness. She really loved our music."

Yes she did, indeed.

The baroness first materialized in New York jazz clubs in the early 1950s like some film noir siren, right down to the raven hair and long cigarette holder. She seduced the music's greatest figures with her friendship, the revolutionists of the bebop era: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and many others. Her illustrious family has long refused to discuss her. But now a new book, "Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats" (Abrams Image), offers a window into her personal life, providing details even her jazz intimates were probably unaware of.

Read on, oh lover of jazz....

Such a multiplicity of effects suggests music may be an emergent property of the brain, cobbled together from bits of pre-existing machinery and then, as it were, fine-tuned. So, ironically, everyone may be righ --, at least partly right. Dr Pinker may be right that music was originally an accident and Dr Patel may be right that it transforms people's perceptions of the world without necessarily being a proper biological phenomenon. But Dr Miller and Dr Dunbar may be right that even if it originally was an accident, it has subsequently been exploited by evolution and made functional.

The truth, of course, is that nobody yet knows why people respond to music. But, when the carol singers come calling, whether the emotion they induce is joy or pain, you may rest assured that science is trying to work out why.

Read on, inquisitive reader...it's a fascinating article, indeed.

International fame came to him before national fame. In due course he was acknowledged in America as one of its foremost artists, but for a time his work was known here only in specialist dance, art and music circles. Not so in London, Paris and other cities. There he was widely celebrated as the creator of a new classicism, as Diaghilev's successor, as one of the most remarkable theater artists of his day.

Yet he was always a creature of New York. Close to the founding members of the so-called New York Schools of Music, Painting and Poetry, Mr. Cunningham himself, along with Jerome Robbins and the younger Paul Taylor, led the way to founding what can retrospectively be called the New York School of Dance.

The world has lost a great artist.