As I write this, Dustin, Katie, and Andrew are all on the road on their way back to Chicago, full of coffee, leftover pizza, and love! We had an absolute blast at Jazz Central last night, the band sounded killing, and Vanessa Lopez made it out with tacos and cake that were FAN-*$%&ing-TASTIC. I bought four pieces of her cake just to take home with me, I think I’m addicted.

I want to thank everyone that came out to the show and made it a fantastic night, and if you haven’t already, please go check out and download some free tracks from the Laurenzi/Ernst/Green Trio website. They are, for lack of a better word, totally amazeballs. I’m sad that they had to leave, and may be experiencing some kind of weird empty-nest-syndrome-for-friends kind of thing. Not like what your parents go through, but maybe similar to the end of Summer camp when you leave your friends and you know you won’t see them for another 8 months.

I’d like to share a couple things with you briefly about my experience this week with this group of wonderful people. First is that I found myself being more productive being around a large group of people. As I’ve posted before, I have a tendency to fall into what you might call “introvert pits”. These are not bad things as the name might imply, but they can be if I don’t have people to help me out of them. Having Andrew, Katie, and Dustin stay with us for four days made a big impact on me in a lot of positive ways though, which I am very grateful for.

The other thing I wanted to share, and I hope that this will encourage you to go check out their website, is this group’s use of space in music. To put things in better context, check out this Dave Douglas post about practicing. It has to do with knowing not only how to attack the note you’re playing, but knowing when to release it. That, for me, is exemplified in the Laurenzi/Ernst/Green Trio. Each individual and the group as a whole use space as an effective musical tool, build beautiful harmonic concepts, and weave simple but haunting melodies. If you can’t tell, I’m very much a fan of this band.

More updates to come soon, and I promise I’ll get the music player on the website fixed in the next day or so. Still not sure what’s going on with that. Check back soon!

I’m gonna try a new thing where I put up a short posting every day. Hopefully in the morning to help brighten your day with a little humor and music.

Keeping in track with that, this post is gonna be short and sweet.

The Adam Meckler Orchestra is playing tonight at Jazz Central in NE Minneapolis, downbeat at 8:30pm! As always, I’m super excited to get to play with all these awesome musicians and read all of Adam’s beautiful charts.

The Laurenzi/Ernst/Green Trio KICKED ASS last night with Courageous Endeavors at the Icehouse, and you’ll get a chance to see them again tomorrow night at Jazz Central as well! Same time, but Vanessa Lopez will be there with tacos and cake! Seriously, BEST. CAKE. EVER.

Last but not least, I’ve made the decision to pursue my Masters in Jazz Guitar Performance from CalArts in LA. I’m really excited about all the new developments, and have a lot of experiences and music to share with all of you, so check back tomorrow morning!

In closing, here’s a video of Laurenzi/Ernst/Green in action. You’re welcome in advance.

AS-80/Victory’s Banter

Related show

• Artist: Adam Meckler Orchestra
• Date: Tuesday, April 30th 2013
• Time: 8:30pm
• City: Adam Meckler Orchestra in Minneapolis, MN
• Venue: Jazz Central
• Address: 407 Central Ave SE
• Country: United States
• Admission: Dontation
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

Hello folks.

Big news this week, my quintet will be making its first appearance since 2011, and we’ve got new tunes and tighter grooves. I’m very excited to have Park Evans, Jay Epstein, Matt Peterson, and Adam Meckler all joining me on Wednesday night for a great evening of music and witty banter.

If you’re curious what the group sounds like, feel free to check out this bandcamp page I started after our first gig back in 2010. It’s old, but the playing is still great and a lot of those tunes are still in our repertoire. The show this Wednesday will be at Jazz Central in Northeast Minneapolis, and we’ll be starting at 9pm with a $7 cover. I hope to see you all out!

In other news, I’ve been invited out to do live grad school auditions at University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado, and McNally Smith in St. Paul, which is pretty cool. So in addition to trying to write new tunes, arrange some new stuff for Lulu’s Playground, and book more gigs, I’ve also been trying to shed a bunch of Parker heads and Monk tunes to get ready for these auditions. I actually kind of miss being overloaded like this, it reminds me of my last days at Lawrence when I’d have to stay up for 3 days straight just to get the bare minimum done for my classes. I mean, I don’t miss that so much, but I loved having to push myself to always be doing more and better work. I haven’t had this many deadlines to hit in a while, and that always seems to push things forward.

I was also sick for almost two weeks recently, and just got over whatever the plague was that I had, so I’m even more keen to get back to work and stay healthy. To all my Minnesota friends I hope you’re staying warm and safe!

One last note, I’ll be playing with the Jana Nyberg Group at the Dakota February 21st, from 7-10:30pm! Come hang with us!

Hello all. Apologies for not posting more recently, but things (as always) have been quite insane.  Grad school applications, traveling out to California to see family, and having my current studio of students expand to almost 50.  Things are pretty crazypants.

What I’m most excited about at the moment though is that tonight and tomorrow (Friday and Saturday January 11th and 12th) Lulu’s Playground will be debuting out, uh, debut CD!  We’ll be performing at the Artists’ Quarter in St. Paul both nights from 9pm until 12:30 or so, depending on the crowd.  We have a lot of new music planned and will likely be playing different sets both nights, so come out to both if you can!  To help convince you, here are a couple really wonderful write-ups of the album from David Cazares of MPR and Andrea Canter from Jazz Police.

We also currently have the album available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and Bandcamp, so feel free to preview the material there.  Hope to see you all out!

Related show

• Artist: LuLu’s Playground
• Date: Friday, January 11th 2013
• Time: 9:00pm
• City: LuLu’s Playground in St. Paul
• Venue: Artists’ Quarter
• Country: United States
• Admission: $10
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Notes: CD Release! Both nights, Friday and Saturday January 11th and 12th at 9pm, 2 sets.
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

So, rather than try and do my own version of this, I’m just gonna send you folks over to Ethan Iverson’s blog Do the Math to check out Miles Okazaki’s corrections to one of Ethan’s transcriptions of a Charlie Christian solo.  Miles also includes a ton of historical and background information about Charlie Christian, and it’s truly a wonderful read.

I’d also encourage everybody to go check out Miles Okazaki’s website, as he’s got a ton of really cool research, diagrams, thoughts on the structure of the music system and in particular how it relates to guitar.  I’ve only made it through a portion of it so far, but I was so fascinated with it that I wanted to share it with all of you.

I hope you all are doing well, and especially to my Minnesota compatriots, good luck in the snow tonight.  Be safe!