More Details on This Site

It has been a fair amount of work setting this site up - mostly because of the time required to get the audio clips digitized & cleaned up. I am not an audio engineer so the tools I used were pretty crude. However even someone with some studio chops would have been limited by the quality of the source material: garbage in, garbage out. Good audio quality would be nice, but in the end it's about diggin' the music in whatever form available.

This site was put together using a neat little content management system (cms) called Etomite which is a data driven website management system written in php. There is a great site where you can preview all the open source cms applications here: http://www.opensourcecms.com/.

Now a little about me. I'm was born in the late 60's, grew up in a musical family - Dad plays a mean piano & brother Marty ended up playing serious jazz. I also studied piano & listened to alot of jazz growing up. But I wasted my youth pursuing foolish & unproductive things as some youth is wont to do & missed my window to get serious about music.

I did start to take jazz more seriously in my early 20's & I continue to expand my knowledge mostly by playing trio gigs with Marty and doing tons of listening. But my foundation is really poor so I am forever condemned to a life of musical mediocrity punctuated by the odd moment of pseudo-transcendance.

Here's a clip from a local TV show I, Marty and my drummer friend Goat did not long after I finished this site. I was really thinking about Claude - funny how someone you've never met might affect you - and the show required original material, so I wrote a tune called ClaudeHoppin - a head for a minor blues with some 5 beat & 3 beat rhythmic patterns (which I manage to mangle on the out head).

ClaudeHoppin 3m.41 >>> Not the best or the worst of my playing. For an unschooled, country-fried wanabe, I guess it's not so bad. I keep hoping I'll wake up one morning and sound like Herbie - better keep practicing :-( At one point I think my solo is finished only to hear the band play on; jazz is quite a democracy. Given that I've only written a few things in my life, I am kinda proud of the tune. As a musical homage to Claude, it's about the best I can do...

Since there are only about 2 venues in town with a decent piano - neither of which would let me touch it - I play most gigs on the good ole Fender Rhodes. Every 3rd gig some piece falls off & I end up having to play without D4 or worse: the other night C4 became C# which made for some pretty neat stuff. I never sounded so good.

Litha 9m.21 >>>[edited for length] A decent clip from a recent concert in a nice room with a good piano - recording is OK although the piano is low in the mix & has that transistor radioish quality to it. I love Litha - somehow we ended up playing the 3/4 section in 4 with a latin undergroove - works ok though...

Silence 5m.32 >>>[edited for length] I fell in love with this haunting ballad when I heard it on the similarly titled Charlie Haden record with Enrico Pieranunzi, Chet and Billy Higgins. A great record done toward the end of Chet's career.

Solar 13m.00 >>> Guilty of a little musical masturbation here with the tune kind of going on way beyond it's rightful lifespan - felt ok at the time though. There is a nice section here in the middle where it gets quiet and delicate - I drop a beat there as well - before falling into a kind of bluesy shoobaloo shuffle. The ending is pilfered from the great Richie Beirach tribute Elegy for Bill - a must have trio record.

Dolphin Dance 9m.42>>> Great Herbie tune. Joey Calderazzo rips this tune apart on his great disk The Traveller.

Allthethings 9m.11>>> like the 8 bar segue between choruses in this... not played it with much conviction here though - next time...

UMustBelieveInSpring 7m.41>>>[edited for length] Michel Legrand tune made popular by Bill Evans - hearing alot of people play this recently - Alan Pasqua does an incredible intro to this on his recent trio disk - check it out. This tune is beyond my skill level and I struggle a little here with the changes: Ah well - practice practice practice. Marty takes a nice solo though...

I ain't complaining about my musical inadequacies - I am not trained and don't work as a professional, so it's a dream come true for me to be able to play with Marty & my buddy Goat on a semiregular basis. Plus I have a beautiful family & run an e-commerce business from home which gives me time to work on projects like this. So life is good.

Besides the guys you can't help but love [herbie,bill,chick,mccoy,& keith], here are some of the pianists I dig:

Dave Kikoski - check out the astounding stride piano break he takes in Giant Steps off his self titled CD from the early 90's

Frank Avitabile - a euro who plays some serious keys

Florian Ross - mature way beyond his years. has 2 fantastic concept albums with some great writing for large ensemble. one of them features dave liebman

Jean Michel Pilc - has the new sensation Ari Hoenig on drums - a little on the avant-garde side for my tastes but interesting stuff

Jon Ballantyne - our man in NYC. Saw him on the Bravo thing - pianists in the key of eh. sounded fantastic. a real heavyweight who is sadly under-recorded...

Joey Calderazzo - a great modern jazz pianist - plays up a storm on Branford's new Love Supreme concert dvd - I like his 90's trio disc called The Traveller

Enrico Pieranunzi - check out Deep Down with j. baron & m. johnson - one of the best trio records I've ever heard - a real magical session from the late 80's

Jason Rebello - this cat can really play but he only has one serious record out: very hard to find - before his death, Kenny Kirkland told Sting this guy was the only cat playing piano in the UK

Antonio Farao - mister chops - great time & very hip harmonically too

Uri Caine - a musical chameleon who's got his hands in every genre you can think of - check his trio live at the Vanguard release with Ben Perowsky & Drew Gress

Alan Pasqua - played keyboards with rock'n'rollers like Eddy Money during the 80's. check out Live at Rocco with d. carpenter & p. erskine. some fantastic trio music

John Taylor - this guy is so musical it is scary - really an awesome musician who uses the full scope of the piano like Bill Evans did. check out Kirk Macdonald's Pure & Simple & see what JT does with the time on the great Kenny Wheeler tune 3/4 pm. JT is incredible in challenging formats like duets & solo piano where a pianists weaknesses can really show. This guy is without a doubt one of the best pianists alive.

Kenny Kirkland - so heavy - I go to Black Codes & Crazy People Music for a regular dosage of Kenny's fire. His comping is so hip with all these oddly timed groupings. Also recorded a great live concert at Baltica in Germany when Kenny Garrett was touring in the late 90's. Jeff Watts plays up a storm.

Brad Mehldau - trio vol4 is still my favorite. that version of All the Things really opened the flood gates for playing in odd meters. nobody plays it straight anymore...

Because I work at my computer all day, I get to listen to alot of music. I'd love to write record reviews - anyone got a gig for me :-)

Cheers,

Armand Melanson