A Couple Trio Sets + Chord Four

It's been a bit since I've posted, so we'll get caught up here.

I have a couple trio gigs coming up, the first tomorrow morning (November 6th 10-11am) to open the Granada Hills Charter High School Community Festival, celebrating the school's 50th anniversary. Live music, entertainment, food all day Saturday and Sunday. Schedule, directions and details can be found HERE. The second gig will be for a new eclectic, acoustic music series called Ludes and Lullabies at the Garter in Venice, CA. It will take place around 11pm on Monday night, November 15th, more details to be posted soon. Both of these gigs will be with bassist Ben Shepherd and drummer Cameron Hicks, and we're excited to be playing some more as the album release gets closer and closer!

If you go to one event next week, make it Chord Four at the Industry Cafe and Jazz in Culver City. This is one of my all-time favorite bands, and I'm lucky to know them and have played with them all. Chord Four is kicking off an album release tour on Wednesday, November 10th at 7:30pm, and with their trumpeter Brandon Sherman now a New Jersey resident, opportunities to see them are to be taken advantage of. Industry Cafe boasts some amazing Ethiopian cuisine and a laid-back atmosphere, so come out for some enlightening music and grab a copy of what I anticipate will be an amazing album.

Aside from that, I've finished my first composition for my new octet, entitled "The People Who Raised Us", and I'm looking forward to our first rehearsal in a couple of weeks. I already feel the "stretch" writing for this group; this first piece was a unique challenge orchestrationally (getting used to this new instrumentation) as well as artistically, as I am taking particular care to address some personal aesthetics I'd like to manifest in the octet's music and group sound. I'm so excited to get this thing rolling, and the debut trio album (still unnamed) is slated for a January 2011 release --- a lot to look forward to.