Hey. I haven't done this in a while. Not consistently like I should be, anyways.
Over Thanksgiving break I saw my family, which was really nice. My brother Max forgot my name only once and Todd got out of doing work only once, which is pretty unusual for the both of them. I got to do a lot of cool things, eat a lot of good food, and return with clean laundry and groceries. Hooray!
But now that I'm back, it's really crunch time. After my bad lesson on Monday, I had to make sure I wouldn't have another one. So I practiced for two hours Sunday and at least two more today and got things more solid, and it paid off. He said he saw drastic improvement, which is always nice to hear, but I still have quite a ways to go. So we'll see how things go.
Today in Jazz Records we talked about awesome jazz singers, which was pretty sweet. We've covered Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter, Billy Eckstein, Diana Krall, Natalie Cole, Patti Austin, Diane Schuur, and Joe Williams. They're all pretty great, and you should listen to all of them, but especially these three:
My teacher told us today that Nature Boy was written by some homeless man that lived underneath the Hollywood sign. He would go down to Capitol Records every day and try to hand his lead sheet out to people to see if they would record it, but no one did until Nat King Cole came along. Since he could sing and play piano, he could arrange it and make something of it, and so he did, and everyone loved it.
Nat and the homeless guy were flown out to New York once for a show, and they put them in the Ritz-Carlton. But the homeless guy just slept in Central Park, just because he wanted to.
That's a tasty combo of my favorite a cappella jazz group with a pretty awesome singer. She has a record with the WDR Big Band, I think I talked about them, right? They're the ones who get payed to rehearse and rehearse, and they don't have to play shows, so they can just rehearse all the time. They're from Germany. Germany isn't in a trillion dollar deficit and can afford to sponsor music programs in their country. Just saying, America.
Anyways, look up "For Ella", Patti Austin with the WDR Big Band. It's very nice.
Squirrel Nut Zippers is definitely my favorite band of the week. It's kind of depressing that I'm discovering them now, now that they're on like their third wind. But they still rock, a whole lot.
I had a very good day. I hope you did too.
Also, check out that map --------------> I'm digging this sudden wave of foreign attention. ...haha.
M
No comments:
Post a Comment