I’m sitting in Sea-Tac airport on a five hour layover on my way to Copenhagen, so I thought I’d get caught up with y’all…
…it’s been an interesting winter so far. I’ve spent a fair bit of time at home with my family, doing some skiing and relaxing. The trio and I did spend a week performing in London at the “new improved” Pizza on the Park. It seemed a lot like the old one, but we had some lovely audiences and it was interesting spending some time in Knightsbridge, rather than Soho (where the other jazz club is…). I think we prefer Soho! The food’s cheaper and it’s little less posh. We’re not posh… Nice hotel, though. The Millennium in Sloane Street. Give it a try.
Then we spent a few nights at the Blue Note in Milan. It’s a really gorgeous, big club. Great food, surprisingly responsive audiences. Because of the language barrier, I expected them to go more for the swingers and up-tempo numbers. Instead they went for the ballads, the more romantic the better. It was a gas… a very nice return to Italy after being away for over a decade.
Then home for Christmas and New Years. Did a lot of skiing and went to a lot of holiday parties. I’m still hung over…
On January 13 we played a set in NYC at the International Association of Jazz Educators' annual conference. It’s basically THE yearly jazz music biz convention in the world. It’s always a lot of fun. We all saw some old friends, made some new ones, and heard a lot of music, nearly all of it good. And we had a nice show of our own. The fine jazz singer and all-around good felluh (and saxophonist!) Kevin Mahogany introduced us, which was a nice surprise and honor. Thanks Kevin. He’ll be out on the road soon with Red Holloway, and he’ll be playing sax again, after years of leaving it at home. While in New York we headed up to Albany for a concert at WAMC, who will broadcast the concert soon. Check out their website for details: http://www.wamc.org…
Now, Keith Hall (drums) is touring Eastern Europe and Russia (keithhallmusic.com), and Matthew Fries (piano) and Phil Palombi (bass) are playing regular (and irregular!) gigs around NYC… (matthewfries.com & philpalombi.com)
Next up: Copenhagen for a televised tribute concert to the late Danish bass genius Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. I’ll sing one of his compositions and host the show. Some amazing musicians will be along for the ride, including Tootie Heath, Ed Thigpen, Tania Maria, Tain Watts, Chris Potter and Minh Doky and many more. It will air in Denmark in February.
Then, I’m off to London for most of February to appear on a BBC TV series called Just The Two Of Us… Stay tuned for more info about that. It should be a laugh, hopefully not at my expense…
Until next time…
Curtis
OK, I'm finally going to start this thing up... I've been meaning to do it for ages but the rigors of being on the road, managing a career and being a dad has kept me busy. Excuses excuses...
So begins Notes From The Road...
Well... I'm in Denmark. With my band. The band: pianist Matthew Fries, drummer Keith Hall and bassist Phil Palombi. We've been playing together for a long time, a few years at least, and Denmark rates up there pretty high in our esteem and admiration. We had a terrific show at Musikhuset in Arhus on Saturday (Nov 12). We played the smaller hall (300-ish) and it was lovely. Great crowd, sold out. That's always nice. Nothing like a full house. Afterward, we signed CDs and said hello in the lobby. Met some folks, saw some old friends. Arhus is a very very very fine hus... afer the show our friend Ilsa, the promoter, took us out for some BBQ, Arhus-style. Nothing like a big steak right before bed... We also re-established our love affair with Danish Christmas Beer. It's a national tradition/specialty. Many of the breweries roll out a special beer just for the month or two leading up to the holidays. We've been drinking a lot of the Tuborg, we have...
The next morning we walked with our bags to the train station and piled onto a train headed for dear old Copenhagen. Copenhagen is a beautiful town with friendly good-looking people and lively intelligent audiences. This city has always been great to me. I started coming here to play in 1992. Through the years I've played here with the Doky Brothers and Randy Brecker, with Hanne Boel and George Whitty and Clarence Penn. In the last couple years I've made a home at The Jazz House. This place is fantastic, one of the finest jazz clubs in the world. I've seen some amazing concerts at Jazz House, including a mindblowing evening back in the late nineties with Kenny Garrett, Pat Metheny, Brian Blade etc... it was in July during the Copenhagen Jazz Festival... and at the end of the night, George Benson sat in and sang and played the crowd into a froth! Very memorable... This past summer the Jazz House produced my concert at the new Copenhagen Opera House, a huge, lovely, very modern theater on the Harbor, just across from the Amelienborg, the palace. It was a sold out show and one the high points of my career. Madeleine Peyroux opened the show (...soon after she went missing and her UK record company hired a private detective to find her... She was back in New York, apparently didn't want to do any more promotion in Europe. Sounds like a publicity stunt to me... but who am I to say? You didn't expect controversy in my first edition, did you?)
We just played our second of three nights at Jazz House (Nov 13-14-15) and again the shows have been sold out. Amazing audiences with a good sense of humor. The guys have really been playing great. It seems we're settling into the music from the latest album finally. It's feeling like it ours and it's growing nicely. Looking forward to the 3rd night. We've been eating well here too... Morten from the Jazz House is our good-time guru and he always treats us right. Christmas beer again. Ho Ho Ho, baby!!! Tomorrow we head to Odense for a night at Dexter (Nov 16), a jazz club I've never played. Looking forward to it... Back on the train! Then Keith and Phil head back home to the US and Matthew and I go on to Belfast for a TV show called the Kelly Show. I've appeared on the show a couple times before. It's sort of like the Tonight Show of Ireland and Gerry Kelly is a good fellow, smart and funny and I always have a good experience. Usually there's a nice little drink-up afterward... Ah, the Irish, always so civilized...
Then home for a couple weeks for Thanksgiving and hopefully some skiing and then London and Milan in December.
More about that later... until then,
Cheers
Curtis