The word on the street is that tonight at 7:30 PM at the Pasta Co. on Woodway (map) there will be some burning big band jazz with yours truly and my good friend Rene in the alto section, and the lovely Sarah Williams screaming with the trumpets. Last week was a blast and this week should be even better. I need to get a list of all the amazing people in the band together, because everyone is so talented they deserve individual mention. Come check it out and say hi to me if you do.

Update: Thanks to Josh, Elissa, Jesse, Eddie, Emily’s parents Denise and Bob, my parents, my cousins Norma and Megan, Kelly Dean, and everyone else for coming out.

At an ungodly hour Saturday morning I will be leaving hot Houston for very hot Las Vegas.

Why? Why does anyone go to Vegas? To play of course. I will be performing twice with a local union band for the American Federation of Musicians’ conference. I think the music is going to be pretty good so I’ll try to get a recording of it up on the site sometime (if I get one).

I’m looking forward to this a lot and I’m going to try not to get into too much trouble while I’m there. Wish me luck and if you’d like anything while I’m there get me an email quick.

I’m not sure if I’ll have any sort of internet access while I’m gone, so email responses may be even further delayed than normal. Updates probably won’t happen but I do plan to take a lot of pictures, so look for that when I get back. (Or when I find good WiFi.)

Speaking of pictures, Photo Matt.net has had its very first guest photographer, Elissa, whose photos are interspersed with photos from Tuesday (with Julie!). My plan is to eventually have them all in chronological order, but that’s proving to be quite a pain, so for now things are a little bouncy.

Several days ago Grenade—which I’m an official groupie of—recorded some tracks at the local PBS station to air twice on a “Best of Houston” show. I missed both, but never fear because the inimitable Kelly Dean, leader of the band, has posted the music with commentary. Go check it out, especially Stage Fright, for some killer grooves and great solos.

If you’re having a lazy Sunday I would highly recommend you go check out the two songs Derek has posted. I have to admit that before I clicked on the first one, my expectations were low. Not as any sort of statement on the musicianship of other web music I’ve heard before, but just that I am not a big fan of a genre sometimes described as urban acoustic pop, or guitar/vocal folk music. But something about Derek’s music really struck me, especially the lyrics on the first one. Enjoy.

I had a very artistic night, which I can only describe as spiritually refilling. It started at the first of two senior recitals of the night. It was by Joe Santa Maria and it was really great. The selection of tunes was very diverse (Beatrice was beautiful) and his tone sounded great. Directly following was Kyle Wilson’s recital which was just as excellent. He did a lot of technically challenging songs (Last Rites of Rock ’n Roll, Snake Charmer, What Goes Around) but played them with soul. Both will be online as soon as I get them and maybe it’ll motivate me to finally do something with SeniorRecital.com, which I haven’t touched in about a year now. (While it’s visually lacking, there’s some pretty neat stuff going on behind the scenes. All the song lists and extra files are generated dynamically from the filesystem, reading the metadata from the ID3 tags.)

The reception immediately followed, but I had promised Elissa-who-is-not-linked that I would check her art performance at the Contemporary Arts Museum. So I rushed over there and got there just in time to catch hers. It would be extremely difficult to describe, but it involved a wooden chair, a black dress, panty hose, and Elissa cutting her hair. We talked about it earlier and Elissa didn’t know how long it was going to be, she was just would cut it however long felt right. For a few excruciating seconds she paused before making the first cut, and I really thought she wasn’t going to do it, and I don’t think I could have. (And I don’t even have that much hair!) I didn’t have any idea what performance art was going in, but now I think I have a better sense of it. There were no words, but something about the situation and the way in which the action was carried out really spoke to me and affected me emotionally, just like a good piece of art. It’s something that has to be experienced, because it loses everything in the description.

The joint reception for the recitals was at Molina’s, a great Mexican restaurant. The food hit the spot and I got to socialize with a number of folks I hadn’t seen in a while, some as long as two years. Kyle, along with Chase Jordan and Marcos Varella whose recitals I attended earlier this week and were great, are going to be attending the New School, all on generous scholarships. Joe is going to join Rene at Berklee College of Music. So many great players are coming out of HSPVA, I think it’ll just be a few years before the jazz record scene starts to take notice.

After the reception I just couldn’t go home, perhaps because of the paper due tomorrow, so I headed over to the Rivendell to hear the Stan Killian Trio with Clayton Dyess and Maggie Grebowicz. Met some nice people and heard some swinging music, plus there was no cover, so it was a very enjoyable performance and I stayed to the very end. Definitely going to check them out again.

Once I got home I did what anyone would do after such an inspiring night: practice!

The best part about that gig was seeing the mayor of Houston, a decidedly unhip looking guy, singing along with the Temptations. (From his table, thankfully.) It was a very fun performance, but really too loud for the room and it seemed a tad long, though the audience seemed to love every minute of it.

Afterward I headed to Cezanne’s to check out the last set of David’s gig with pianist Andy Langham, Anthony Sapp on bass, and Joe Ferrira on drums. Andy and David are both amazing, and when they play together it’s something that affects you deeply. Hung around for a bit after the gig was over and chatted, met some new friends and some old acquaintances.

Finally the night wouldn’t be complete without some 24-hour Mexican food, so that’s how everything ended. Now I’m looking at the clock and I just realized that I have a rehearsal at 10 tomorrow morning. I better go catch some sleep while I can.

(There have been some good comments lately, check it out.)

Just got in from is one of the longest and latest rehearsals I’ve ever been in. Look at the timestamp. I would like to take this brief oppurtunity before I collapse from exhaustion to advise you of some upcoming performances.

Tomorrow (Friday) at 8 I’m going to be playing at the Intercontinental Hotel for the National Conference of Black Mayors. I was up at the hotel tonight and, man, those guys know how to party; the gig should be a lot of fun. The music is Mo-Town, complete with singing and dancing and me in the back tooting my sax. It’s impossible not to nod your head and tap your foot. Technically it’s a private gig but if you wanted to crash the party I’m don’t know if anyone would notice since there are just so many people there. Plus I’ll be wearing a tux.

This coming Monday and Wednesday are more casual gigs with the downbeat at 7:30 PM on the Kemah Boardwalk. The music is big band to the bones, and should be interesting. In between sets I’ll be doing a smaller combo that will do some straight-ahead jazz. If you’re in the area come check it out. Now if only I had time for the two papers and a test I have on Monday.

I know I’m too tired when I visit a page with terrible graphics and cheesy MIDI music playing in the background and think, “this is sort of nice.” To be completely honest, whatever the music is it’s mesmerizing, and quite relaxing. Maybe PhotoMatt could use some good relaxing background music… (Or maybe just video game music.)

There was once a post here, it’ll come back later.

Today’s gig was painful in a way only a very special combination of lost music and missing people can make it. If it was a bad group I wouldn’t be so disappointed, but the group usually sounds a lot better than we did today. On the upside, there was free food afterward that was quite good, and I was asked to participate in a much nicer group starting next year when they have an opening in the sax section, and I’m very excited about that. That in addition to being in the UH jazz band should fill the musical void that’s been in my life this year. Time to shed!

I’m going to be playing a big band gig on the Kemah Boardwalk tomorrow, Sunday, at 2 PM. Okay the gig is actually at University of Houston Downtown, and it’s going to be with the amazing pianist who won the Great American Piano Competition last year, Deanna Witkowski. There is more information here. I’m going to be playing lead alto and I have a couple of solos and we might do one of my features this week. I’m performing a lot less this year, but next year my schedule will be as such to allow me to participate in more groups with hopefully more performances like this.

Jay-Z’s new CD is in record stores today. I’m going to check it out and post my thoughts here.

Yesterday I finally got my first check from the Musicians Performance Trust Fund, even though I should have been getting checks from them for almost three years now. The MPTF is a union thing that sends out the checks for “green sheet” gigs where the money comes through the union. I play with a group called Young Sounds which is a union band and I’ve been signing the green sheet for years. What I think precpitated this first check is that before, for whatever reason, I had never given them my social security number, because I’m hestitant to give that out very often, and I think that’s why they had never sent a check before. Of course the money has to be somewhere, I should probably check to see if any of it is still there. Chris said I should frame this, and I think I will. Here’s a picture for its full glory:

Well the gig was rained out today, but if you want to hear some more really good music check out “Lager Rhythms” at Anderson Fair tonight at nine. More details here at Mike’s site. Please excuse any typos, I’m on a QWERTY keyboard. (yuck!)

For those of you who may be interesting, I’m playing a big band gig today at 2:00 PM at Saint Christopher Episcopal Church at 1656 Blalock. I think it’s some sort of festival or something, so it should be fun. We’re doing an interesting alto feature called “Harlem Nocturne” which yours truly will be playing. Sorry for the short notice though! I hope everyone has a wonderful Saturday.

Hey Ma by Cam’ron featuring Juelz Santana is the song of the day:

Now I was downtown clubbin’, ladies night
Seen shorty she was crazy right
And I approached baby like
“Ma, what’s your age and type?”
She looked at me and said “You’s a baby right”
I told her,
I’m 18 and live a crazy life
Plus I’ll tell you what the ’80s like
And i know what the ladies like
Need a man that’s polite,
listens, and takes advice
I can be all three . . .

Buy the CD, PressPlay it, listen to the radio for five minutes (they’re playing it all the time), or whatever.

Yep, I went back out. I had talked to David previously about checking his gig out, it was late so I knew they wouldn’t charge cover, and (on David’s request) I had told Kenny Garrett about the gig at Cezanne’s and he said he might check it out. He didn’t, but I can’t really blame him though because he was staying on the other side of town and was probably dog-tired from the gig. David was burning though, and there were a couple of musicians who went there right after the Roy Haynes concert who said that the music was just as good, which is a pretty amazing compliment considering how good the Wortham concert was. I just realized I have to reinstall Photoshop to fix up all the photos before I upload them, so I better get to that. First though I think I’m going to install Service Pack I again, so wish me luck . . .