Little updates

I've been spending a lot of time working on music for the string quartet album I'm planning. The line up is probably going to be two cellos, guitar and violin. I may replace one cello with either trombone or another violin. I think I'm going to title it Alone Is The New Together. Seems appropriate, not only because of the way the music is coming about, but also due to the "new" phenomenon of blogging, IM, etc. It'll be fun. And definitely interesting.

I've been listening to a lot of Tom Waits work lately. (Speaking of which, I should update the "Listening to..." section here) Marc Ribot's contributions to his work will probably stand out in my mind as some of the most inventive in popular music. There's an interview with him at the All About Jazz website where he gives a little insight to his compositional process. It was a very interesting read for me.

Other than this, I'm going to be working on some string arrangements for some other people. Hopefully I'll be able to post them here or at my site when they're done. I'll also be doing some duo work with Josh Harty in the near future. I've also been working through some transcriptions of Django Reinhardt solos and some Mingus tunes (especially, Weird Nightmare). I think it might be fun to do a gypsy jazz type band with more of the punk rock aesthetic. The Mingus charts are incredibly inspiring. You can see Ellington all over his work. Beautiful stuff.

And the winner is...

So my group The Dorothy Heralds were up for a number of Madison Area Music Awards last night. We were nominated in seven categories: Best Electronic Song for 'Beautiful', Best Unique Song for 'Now', Best Classical Song for 'Inverno Rosa', Best Overall Artist, Best Electronic Artist, Best Unique Artist, and Best Classical Artist. Whew, that's a lot of bests.

We were fortunate enough to win for Best Electronic Song and Best Classical Song. It was a complete surprise as the artists in each category are some of the best that Madison has to offer. I feel a little awkward writing about this as we thanked most everyone last night. But I'd still like to mention Robert Schoville, who performed the batucada section of 'Beautiful', Dave Adler, who arranged and produced the strings on 'Inverno Rosa', Biff Blumfumgange, who performed all of the violin parts, and Russ Pollard, who performed the cello parts. It was a real surprise and honor to win last night. Maybe I'll have more to say later...