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- What is your profession?
- Musician
- How did you find out about TGJN?
- About Me:
- Prominent NYC Pianist/Composer
- Website:
- http://www.jamesweidman.com
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James Weidman's Blog
Greetings!
3/21/08
Hi all. I am thrilled to be part of the Global Jazz Network. Some of you have already added me as your friends and of course I’ve been true friend of many of you for many years. Places like these are truly our new virtual watering holes. By staying connected to each other helps keeps the jazz spirit alive far into the future. If you are in the Baltimore area, March 29th, I’ll be bringing my group into “An Die Musik.” The group will consist of Jay Hoggard, renowned vibraphonist and bassis… Continue
Hi all. I am thrilled to be part of the Global Jazz Network. Some of you have already added me as your friends and of course I’ve been true friend of many of you for many years. Places like these are truly our new virtual watering holes. By staying connected to each other helps keeps the jazz spirit alive far into the future. If you are in the Baltimore area, March 29th, I’ll be bringing my group into “An Die Musik.” The group will consist of Jay Hoggard, renowned vibraphonist and bassis… Continue
Posted on March 21, 2008 at 12:30pm — 1 Comment
About
The thing that is making jazz healthy today is that people are coming out of other backgrounds - from rock, folk, from ethnic music. It's changing the music, and for the better.~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Billy Taylor
Dear Tamm E:
Just a note to tell you that it is nice to read about you!!!
You share so much great info about others and about the music, but nice to know that you are WAILIN' yourself and getting appreciation!!
Global Jazz Network is a really important way for all of us to keep hooked up and informed and to SLOWLY BUT SURELY SPREAD THE MESSAGE AND THE PHILOSOPHY of what Jazz is in its many different forms and what the styles are/is all about.
Just played for Paquito's honoring and received gold medal
John Faddis, save Brubeck, James moody and a bunch of KILLER YOUNG players and we all played and spoke about Paquito and jazz and all fine music
and Roberta Gamborini, who was excellent.
wish you had been there!
Through you, Donald Harrison hooked me up with Pittsburgh Jazz info and I feel like i am living there just reading about all the great happenings.
As Fall is here, I am back to my normal insane schedule, but wanted to write you back BEFORE The STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS goes into effect. I am my own secretary, so I am dedicated but SLOW!
And I can't fire myself as my own secretary or I might get hit with an Age Discrimination Lawsuit (in case I decided to sue myself for clerical incompetence).
As of this moment, a new documentary film is being made about me, to be released a few months after my 80th birthday, which is coming up next year Nov. 17, 2010. (12 months from now).
The film will end with the videoing of the big 80th birthday bash at Symphony Space in NYC and then have snippets of films from the past, with all kinds of fun stuff from the 50's thru today.
It will be called "David Amram: The First 80 Years"
Fortunately, I don't have to edit the hundreds of hours of footage or do new music the score, since the film maker, Larry Kraman is also the founder of Newport Classics recordings and knows all my symphonic as well as operatic, theater, film and jazz and world music work, so I am in good hands!!
The same people at Newport Classics Recordings are also making a Spoken Word series for I-Tunes, with me reading from my three books Vibrations, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.
And they are also recording some of my chamber music compositions and a new jazz record,
Next Spring my opera "12th Night", with libretto by Joe Papp (all words of Shakespeare), is having its eighth production and being FILMED!! Even most dead composers aren't that lucky!!!
This last five weeks I have appeared all over the country at concerts of my music, conducting and playing, doing spoken word with music, jazz, folk and world music festivals, film festivals and readings from my books.
Just the first week of October, I played Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival in Lowell Mass, then the at midnight , following my last concert there , drove all night to Lagaurda Airport to catch the early Sunday mornng flight for the annual Farm Aid Concert in St Louis, where i played with Willie Nelson's band. The next morning (Monday the 5th , I flew bck to NYC in tme for my monthly concert at Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.
The next night (Tuesday the 6th) the memorial at Symphony Space for Frank Mccourt, and the next day Wednesday the 7th) the celebration of the new authorized biography of Thelonious Monk with members of his family and musicians I have known since I first arrived in NYC in 1955!!
The 11th i flew off to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates,( i got at least get a few hours sleep) and tried to catch up on over 200 e-mails during the 13 hour flight, before arriving there and performing a concert of global music in conjunction with the score I composed for Teri McLuhan's new documentary feature film The Frontier Ghandi.
Then back in the USA in time to do programs centered around a performance of my Saxophone concerto Ode to Lord Buckley, in Loudoun Virginia ..
Then I went off to Toronto Nov 1st for a concert and appearance at the Diaspora Film Festival .
Now i am back at home hiding out composing and writing!
I am starting my fourth book "David Amram: The First 80 Years", (the same name as the new doc film being made about me), which will be finished at the end of next year and will end, like the film, with the monstro birthday bash concert for my Big 80... 12 months from now....(Nov 17 2010) in New York.
And every day, still finding time to continue composing a new orchestral work, having been doing it while on the run, and now every minute when I can hide out at the Farm in between travels.
And performing whenever possible with my three kids, each of whom have their own bands.
So as the BIG 80 approaches twelve months from now, (2010) while I may be still shy, I am not yet the retiring type.
Most of my ever-changing my schedule info. when i can get my elderly secretary (unfortunately myself) to type it up, is posted on my web page www.davidamram.com under Upcoming Events.
And my e-mail amramdavid@aol.com is always the best way to reach me as I carry my laptop with me everywhere, and Facebook, MySpace, etc., is hard to deal with and not always reliable!
You might find it fun to access an old performance of my 1971 Rondo a la Turca on the Internet for FREE!!!
The person who is conducting the Chicago Symphony and playing the middle eastern flute (who looks like my grandson) is actually a much younger looking me in 1977, recording for a PBS network TV show about my music. Pepper Adams and Jerry Dodgion are also playing.
In 1977, most of members of the Chicago Symphony who appear on the recording of this performance had never heard, much less ever played, very much music from the Middle East, and since I write everything out on paper accurately to indicate the way it should be played, that's what they were playing, and they actually began to sound like the Radio Beirut Orchestra, and suddenly as the piece went on, they started feeling something different than they had ever felt before, as they played.
It is really fun to watch their faces as they started getting ingo the old time magical groove that Middle eastern music creates and takes you into.
During the first few minutes of the piece, you can see the musicians all playing up a storm but looking as if they were thinking that I was an alien from another planet in outer space, and had brought some extra terrestrial music with me for them to play.
And then as the piece progresses, you can see, as well as hear, that by the end of the piece, the idiom of this music got them excited enough to be actually enjoying playing it!!
And playing it really well!
That's what music, like film, novels, poetry, painting, dance, language and good HOME COOKING does for all of us.
It takes you to that place from where it comes, and makes you feel that you now have a new home in a new part of the world.
I send cheers from that endless road and wish you joy and energy for all you do
David
I was just saying that you knocked this out of the park with TGJN. We have needed something like this for so long and I am telling my friends about this. I said that it is sort of like a myspace for jazz but it is actually so much more. This is real. The people here truly love jazz and we know people like that are not your average people.
I have felt for a long time that straight-ahead jazz has been slipping away from us. I have hope now that there will be a resurgence (or shall I say an insurgency:-) to bring this baby back full force!
You just knocked it out of the park. Thanks again.
xoxo,
Janie
Music
Events
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Mel Brown Quartet
March 25, 2009 at 8pm to March 27, 2013 at 11pm – Jimmy Mak's
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New CD release
December 14, 2009 at 1pm to January 1, 2010 at 1pm – My Website
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Lezlie Harrison and Saul Rubin Two-gether
December 28, 2009 from 12pm to 9pm – The Zinc Bar
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THE LADIES SOCIAL CLUB-New Year's Eve Party!
December 31, 2009 at 7:30pm to January 1, 2010 at 1:30am – Clarion Hotel
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BACK ALLEY PLAYERS@NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
January 2, 2010 from 9pm to 11pm – NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
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BACK ALLEY PLAYERS@NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
January 2, 2010 from 9pm to 11pm – NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
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Tish Oney - The Peggy Lee Project
January 8, 2010 from 9:45pm to 11pm – The Metropolitan Room
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Tish Oney
January 9, 2010 from 7:15pm to 7:30pm – Hilton Hotel - New York Suite
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Tish Oney - The Peggy Lee Project
January 9, 2010 from 10pm to 10:15pm – Hilton Hotel - Beekman Suite
Birthdays
JAPAN JAZZ NETWORK
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Sheryl Crow crashed onto the music scene in 1993 with her debut CD, Tuesday Night Music Club. By the next summer it had gone viral, and in 1995 it won three Grammy awards. Now the album has been re-released as a deluxe edition, and Crow looks back on her career with host Scott Simon.Rosanne Cash Runs Down Her Father's 'List'
When Cash was 18, her father (you know him as Johnny) gave her a list of 100 essential country songs to help the budding singer-songwriter understand the music that came before her. After holding on to it for decades, Rosanne Cash has turned that gift into an album. This interview first aired on Oct. 5, 2009.© 2009 Created by THE GLOBAL JAZZ NETWORK on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
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Hope you are well. I ran into your dad and sister recently. Let me know when you are coming home.
Thanks,
Kent
I guess I have to go on the internet to see you now!
I hope you are well and hope to see you soon (in person)!
Ciao, Richie Vitale
S'been awhile. How's life been? Nelson Harrison turned me on to this site. Just visited Kim Clark's page and there you were. Here's my e-mail address deniro@optonline.net ...When you have a minute drop me a line with your phone number.
Regards,
Ron Aprea
I will definite suport. Henry Wong is a grood friend.
See you there. Haven't seen Beldon or Jay in years.
Nice to reconnect.
Joy & Peace!
Tamm E
Great to see you here. I enjoyed meeting you in Pittsburgh back in 1998 I think it was at Ramseys II Lounge with Ralph Lalama and Ernie Andrews.
peace,
-G
Host: Kim Clarke, Jimmy Wormworth Sr.Stanley Banks, Jitu Weusi
Location: FORT GREENE SENIOR CENTER AKA 966 CLUB
966 FULTON STREET, BROOKLYN, NY
(FULTON BETWEEN PUTNAM AVE .AND CAMBRIDGE PL.)
When: Monday, March 24, 7:00pm ( the day after Easter)
Phone: 718 429 3681
NOTHING BUT LOVE AND SUPPORT FOR ONE OF OUR OWN JAZZ FAMILY Vocalist MARY , daughter of Drummer JIMMY WORMWORTH ,WHO IS HAVING HEALTH AND OTHER ISSUES AT PRESENT
...YOU KNOW HOW WE DO!♥☺☻☼
OUR SISTER NEEDS A BIT OF HELP SO PLEASE COME JOIN US.IF YOU WANT TO PERFORM OR HELP WITH PLANNING PLEASE CALL THE NUMBER ABOVE. THERE WILL BE A DOOR FEE TBA
SO FAR THESE KIND MUSICIANS AND FRIENDS ARE LENDING THEIR SERVICES TO THE CAUSE:
966 CLUB
VINNYS MUSIC SERVICES
PIANISTS:BERTHA HOPE
BASSISTS:STANLEY BANKS
CHULO GATEWOOD
CHRIS SULLIVAN
SULEIMAN WRIGHT
KIM CLARKE
SAXOPHONISTS: GEORGE BRAITH
DAVID LEE JONES
KIT MC CLURE
VIBRAPHONIST:BRYAN CARROTT
CELLIST:AKUA DIXON
DRUMMERS:COOKE BROADNAX
WADE BARNES, BERNICE BROOKS
FENIX RIVERA
GUITAR: JANE GETTER,
DEBBIE KNAPPER
ANDRE LASSALLE
TRUMPET: AJAX
VOCALISTS: LOUISE BETHUNE AND…