Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation, published by O’Reilly (ISBN:978-0-596-52705-1), talks about some key ideas from his book in this 2 minute introductory preview.
Tags: creative thinking, creativity, ideas, innovation, invention, Scott Berkun, video
Hotel Rwanda is a 2004 film starring Don Cheadle, portraying events from the true-life story of Paul Rusesabagina, a man “who fought impossible odds to save everyone he could and created a place where hope survived.”
Tags: darkness, evil, genocide, hope, movie, refugee camp, rescue, Rwanda, safe place, safe zone, safety, video
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
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.
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.
Here’s another great video featuring Andy McKee, playing a very pleasant melody called “For My Father”.
There are several musical themes that keep recurring in the song, and it’s the type of melody that grows more beautiful after listening several times. In this song, Andy displays a colorful picking style, bubbling with subtle syncopation. He is apparently using an alternate tuning (ECDGAD perhaps?), with capo on 3rd.
Do you see happy memories of your father as you listen? The song evokes happy memories of time spent with my father, too.
In other videos we’ve featured here, you can see Andy’s mastery of guitar harmonics (in a piece called Heather’s Song), or the now famous, fantastic finger hammering technique (in Guitar Drifting) that drove Mr. McKee into the international spotlight, and recognition as one of the top fingerstyle guitarists.
Tags: Andy McKee, fingerstyle, guitar, music, video
Jordan Clarke explores the phenomenon of the “jam session” — with the original sound track silenced. Jordan wanted to capture and express the energy level, emotions, movement, social interactions, and “vibe” of the musicians involved in the jam fest. He spliced these film clips together and added his own soundtrack called Jungle Jam
Jordan said:
I was in this room at folk fest working on my computer when all these musicians started coming in and out of the room jamming then leaving then jamming more. I had my camera with me so i started filming. The sound quality turned out unusable so i thought i’d make my own song up and instead of highlighting the music, i would focus on the way people groove while making music and the energy that comes from a spur of the moment jam session.
Tags: guitar, jam session, music, video