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The Blur Division
- Kings Park, NY
- United States
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Profile Information
- What is your profession?
- Musician
- What Instrument Do you Play?
- Bass, piano, drums
- Where Are you located?
- Kings Park, NY
- How did you find out about TGJN?
- Internet search
- About Me:
- Since 1996, The Blur Division has emerged as a strikingly resourceful and multi-faceted group of musicians merely by virtue of their willingness to disregard style or genre in their individual and collective pursuit of creative experimentation. The group has steadily gained prominence in the music community, recording their independently released CD, playing a wide variety of gigs, opening for such internationally prestigious jazz acts as Christian McBride and Larry Coryell, receiving regional radio play and national television exposure, and eliciting unanimous praise from the critics. Based on the strength of their live performances, the band's energetic and positive spirit has particularly allowed them to indulge their naturally exploratory approach to music-making, and likewise communicate effectively with each other and the audience.
James Bennett, the band's bassist has been playing and studying the bass since the age of sixteen. He was initially drawn to jazz because it presented a multitude of ways to further explore his instrument rhythmically, harmonically, and tonally. While formally educated, he has strived to keep in mind the origin and essence of jazz, which has always been more involved with feeling and innovation than any reliance on an overly reverential approach. The Blur Division has proved the perfect outlet to allow James to compose and perform music that has the potential to affect everyone in a meaningful way. This has helped to keep the never ending struggle to balance work, family, and music while keeping it all enjoyable.
Chris Cuvier- pianist, keyboardist, and composer- began his formal training which involved traditional classical repertoire, at the age of eight. Upon his exposure to jazz in his junior year of high school, his dedication to exploiting the full tonal and expressive range of the piano was immediately awakened. Having thoroughly immersed himself in the rich history of jazz piano and American popular song, after being inducted into The Blur Division and recognizing the limitless forum for personal expression and experimentation which it presented, his intense interest in composition was also sparked. To this day he has continued to investigate the boundaries if his own imagination and of the sonic palettes available by combining acoustic and synthesized instruments.
Chris Howard began his study of drumming at the age of seven under the tutelage of several influential mentors. After years of devoting himself to mastering the fundamentals of his instrument, his already enthusiastic commitment to music was further stimulated upon his introduction to jazz and the legion of legendary players, past and present, who have established such a commanding legacy in that genre. His developing interest in musics from around the world has been the inspiration for his fusing the drumset with various percussion instruments and effects, yielding an informed yet unpredictable rhythmic framework. Chris has also received endorsements from The Cooperman Company, Evans Drumheads, GMS Drum Company, Paiste Cymbals, and Vater Drumsticks.
Although the influences evident in the music of The Blur Division are wide reaching and diverse, their surface characteristics remain secondary to the most significant thread which ties it all together: the band members' mind set of inclusiveness which has enabled them to reconcile their own natural impulses with the vast wealth of information and technologies now instantly available to them. The band's ultimate goal has been to make stimulating discoveries concerning their own individual approach to the world of sound, and in the process make their singular contribution toward bridging the already narrowing gaps between the disparate segments of the global community. And of course, to enlighten and uplift their listeners while doing so.
www.theblurdivision.com
www.myspace.com/theblurdivision
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- http://www.theblurdivision.com
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About
MEMBER NOTES
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
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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Workout
December 3, 2009 from 9pm to 11pm – Casale Monferrato
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Luigi Ruberti Quintet
December 4, 2009 at 9pm to December 6, 2009 at 12pm – Naples
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Betty Blue Jazz Band
December 5, 2009 from 6pm to 9:30pm – The Crystal Lounge( near Brooklyn College area)
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ROME NEAL in Concert
December 5, 2009 at 9pm to December 6, 2009 at 1am – The Nuyorican Poets Cafe
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“Grazie”
December 17, 2009 from 6pm to 9pm – Ivrea
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Saturday JAZZ Nights at Chelsea Wine Bar
December 19, 2009 at 8:30pm to December 20, 2009 at 12:30am – Chelsea Wine Bar
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Tish Oney - The Peggy Lee Project
January 10, 2010 from 7pm to 8:15pm – The Triad
Birthdays
Birthdays Tomorrow
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