Vos Virtual Network

Maybe you figured out that I love jazz. I enjoy many musical genres, and musical styles, but lately I’ve been really exploring jazz. In a recent article I described jazz as being full of  images, mirrors, and reflections.  Jazz is like a bridge — always going from someplace to another place. Jazz is always asking questions, bending notes, refactoring routines, revisiting and revising themes, and making analogies. Jazz energizes me with its innovative musical poetry of patterns, parallels and allegories.

Jazz Piano Art - found at Detroit River Days

Back in April, I started talking about creativity, innovation, improvisation … and how it relates to jazz and the blues… meditating on the mysteries of musical creativity  … compared to creativity , innovation, and risk taking in other domains (like art, architecture, design, entrepreneurship, computer programming, product design, web design, etc.) … pondering the amazing results that often happen when a skilled musician begins  to improvise with a good idea and the right attitude.

Surprising success and fantastic results can happen in your life (or your business) when you understand how it all works.  Innovation - It’s not a new idea, and I’m not the only one talking about this. I’m just improvising on a great theme.

Nick Sieger (no relation to the Detroit rocker Bob Seger) wrote a great article in July called Jazzers and Programmers. I found Nick’s article while researching some things about Ruby on Rails, and JRuby.  NIck describes the history and styles of jazz and compares it to the history and styles of programming. He talks about jazz fundamentals, and compares the rhythm section (piano, bass, and drums)  to programming libraries, frameworks, and patterns. He compares Bass-Drums-Piano to Model-View-Controller. It’s really great stuff — and even includes a musical score from one of the jazz standards, Blue Monk.

Nick spiced up the article with nifty quotes from famous jazz musicians like: “It’s taken me my whole life to know what not to play” - Dizzy Gillespie … “Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple” - Charles Mingus  …  I won’t steal anymore of Nick’s thunder. Go read the whole article.

Are you catching my drift? We’re not done with this jam session yet. I’m just taking a breather in between songs.

Tags: creative thinking, I love jazz, improv, improvisation, innovation, jazz, jazz musician, jazz standard, JRuby, Model View Controller, music, MVC, ruby on rails, scripting

Here’s a short video from Mr. Travelin Blues of Detroit.

I love Detroit. I love the people of Detroit… and I love Mr. Travelin Blues from Detroit … the other day we stood and talked for a while by the SMART bus stop near St. Andrews Hall.  A lot of days you can find him downtown (playing his guitar and singing the blues) in Greek Town, near Pegasus, the new Greek Town Hotel, or old St. Mary’s church.

Tags: blues, Detroit, guitar, I am Detroit, I Love Detroit, music, singing the blues, Travelin Blues, video

The 29th annual Detroit International Jazz Festival is happening now!

You know I love jazz.

The Detroit Free Press says it’s A New Jazz Age.  It’s a huge event with six stages, and hundreds of thousands of people attending, but this Monday it could get crazy if Obama stops by. So, if Obama visits Detroit to “rally the labor” and gather more “workers” for Uncle Sam’s Plantation, I won’t be attending the rally. Detroiter Angelica Brown feels the same way.

Tags: Detroit, jazz, music, Obama, Uncle Sams Plantation

Another recording of Blue Monk from Thelonious Monk — appears to be recorded at the Tokyo Jazz Festival. Features dualing pianos by Hiromi Uehara,  and Chick Corea, and Sadao Watanabe on the sax, along with “The Great Jazz Trio”.

Near the end of the song, two more piano players wander out on stage, and there are four people playing the dualing pianos. Not sure who everyone is, and don’t have much background on this recording, so please make some comments and help me fill in the blanks.

Tags: Chick Corea, jazz, jazz pianist, music, piano, Thelonious Monk, video

Here’s a fascinating video of Thelonious Monk playing one of his famous tunes, “Blue Monk”, which he originally recorded in 1954. In this video of “Blue Monk”, apparently recorded in Oslo, Norway in 1966, you can clearly see Thelonious Monk’s unusual and unorthodox style of hammering the piano, combined with “abrupt, dramatic use of silence and hesitations”; a style his wife Nellie dubbed “Melodious Thunk”. In some sections it appears that he’s lost — his improvisation was so far out on the edge — the cliff hanging drama of a live jazz recording.

This video features Monk on the piano,  Charlie Rouse on the tenor saxaphone, Larry Gales on the big string bass, and Ben Riley on the drums.

Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-1982) is one of the most important musicians in Jazz, and “Blue Monk” is considered a jazz standard. A jazz standard is a tune that’s widely known, performed, and recorded among jazz musicians as part of the standard jazz musical repertoire.

Monk appeared on the cover of Time magazine back in 1964, so perhaps that milestone in the 60’s marks the pinnacle of his career.

“Blue Monk” was Monk’s favorite composition as evidenced by the fact that he recorded it many times.  It has become one of his most enduring tunes, and it’s been played and recorded by many other jazz artists over the years.

Tags: jazz, jazz pianist, music, piano, Thelonious Monk, video

Here’s a video of Jean-Luc Ponty, playing a song called “Rhythms of Hope”, followed by another — simply called “Jig”.

My friend Mark Rehban (the Web 2.0 advertising genius) recommended that I check out Jean-Luc Ponty, since several of my children play violin, viola, and cello. So I found a few of Jean-Luc’s recordings and gave them a spin.

Ponty (born in France in 1942) is a virtuoso violinist and jazz composer. He studied violin under his father, and at the Paris Conservatory.

One can easily discern that Ponty studied classical music. However, by the mid-60s he had moved towards jazz. Influenced by Miles Davis’s and John Coltrane’s music, Ponty adopted the electric violin. Critic Joachim Berendt said “Since Ponty, the jazz violin has been a different instrument” and commends his “brilliance and fire”.

Ponty was among the first to combine the violin with MIDI, distortion boxes, and phase shifters. In 1967 he appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Ponty has worked with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa, and played on many other recordings. His symphonic style — drifting towards jazz fusion — made him a popular jazz fusion artist of the 1970’s.

Tags: electric violin, jazz, jazz fusion, MIDI, music, video, violin, violinist

Pappu on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Tags: bansuri, flute, music

Pappu on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Tags: bansuri, flute, jazz, music

This is funniest musical video about the FaceBook socio-technological revolution I have ever seen. (It’s also the only one I’ve ever seen.) So take a look… and I think you will get a few chuckles as you ponder the impact of FaceBook and YouTube.

Tags: facebook, music, video, youtube

Count Basie would have been 104 years old today.  William “Count” Basie was born on August 21st, 1904 and grew up in Red Bank, New Jersey. In this video, Count Basie plays a tune called “One O’Clock Jump”.

After leading various bands for over 50 years, recording dozens of great songs, and winning 9 Grammy awards, Count Basie died in 1984.

The U.S. Post Office issued a Count Basie 32 cents postage stamp in 1996.

In 2005, Count Basie’s song “One O’Clock Jump” (1937) was included in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.

Tags: jazz, music, video