A couple months ago I was at a barbecue with a lot of interesting characters, one of whom was fairly high up in the hierarchy of a major defense contractor (I think it was Raytheon?).

Hello from Johannesburg, South Africa!  After 30 years on tour, I finally made it to the continent of Africa, and am totally enjoying the experience.  Last week, clinics for Yamaha on their incredible new keyboard, the Montage, then back to LA for 5 days, now to Johannesburg with a great band fronted by Bill Champlin (from Chicago, wrote a bunch of hits including "Hard Habit to Break" and "Turn Your Love Around"), Brenda Russell (who wrote "Piano In The Dark" and "Get Her (If You Can)), and Deniece Williams ("Too Much Too Little Too Late", "Gonna Take A Miracle", "Let's Hear It For The Boy").  Whirlwind rehearsals, much jet lag, and many tracks to do from the hotel room for various projects!  

Below is my "hotel rig":  MacBook Pro, Bose noise-cancelling headphones, the iRig Pro 37 keyboard and, just entering my rig, a replacement breath controller that I just integrated today.  And of course, the all-essential pot of coffee!  

Time for another lick of the month to add to your vocabulary!  This one is set over an F7 chord and is kind of a unique example of a very specific thing, something we talk about in our lessons if you've gotten that far.  Here's the lick;  play it over an F in the root (or add in our F7 guide tones, A and Eb) and have a listen.  Pretty convoluted ine, with a lot of notes that are outside of an F7 scale.  See if you can figure out what's going on with it;  sounds more or less like classic bebop, no?:

For anyone who's ever wondered "What is Jazz?", this short, hilarious video from 1957 explains everything you might ever need to know.  And dig, it was made by the "Gleemonex Chemical Corp";  one has to wonder what sort of "chemicals" Gleemonex made!

One topic that seems to come up fairly often in my messages and video exchanges here at ArtistWorks is our good old friend STAGE FRIGHT. It's a bit of a theme in the video exchanges, particularly, so I'm going to take a few minutes and discuss my experience with it and how I got rid of it.

One fine summer day in 1992, I had my first rehearsal with the Brecker Brothers.  I'd helped them produce "Return Of The Brecker Brothers" earlier that year, and to my incredible delight, they asked me to join the band for the tour.  But to my knowledge neither Mike nor Randy had heard me take a solo;  I think they'd heard I could blow, but hadn't heard me much in person other than doodling around on the recording sessions.  So, on this day, we set about rehearsing "Above and Below", a fast Latin burner.  And we played the head, Mike Stern took an extended smoking solo, Randy took an extended smoking solo, Mike Brecker took a VERY extended smoking solo, and then everybody looked at me.

Citizens of the Jazz Piano School!  We're going to start a new feature here, Lick Of The Month, which will be a quick look at a nice chunk of music to add to your vocabulary, useable instantly!  This month's lick is a classic blues run that's been part of jazz for a LONG TIME;  great little riff that you can hear from hundreds of artists from Oscar Peterson to Earl Hines, Billy Preston to Billy Payne, in every genre of jazz, blues, R&B or rock music.  Let's take a quick look!:

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Hey, everybody!  A little update on where I’m going to be and what I’m going to be up to in the next little while here, starting with a cool piece of news that makes it hard to get to sleep:  I will once again be working on a CD with Herbie Hancock, doing my virtual orchestra and probably some additional noises on his forthcoming CD.  This is always a BIG HUGE BUZZ for me, as someone who really cut his teeth on all Herbie’s discs from 8th grade on, it is a thrill to work with him.  This one’s being produced by Kendrick Lamar’s producer Terrace Martin, so should be huge fun!  

One day in about 1998, I got a call from someone asking if I was available to do some recording with Carlos Santana. Rodney Holmes, who was then playing drums with Carlos, had recommended me. They were recording at Electric Lady in Manhattan, and of course I was available to record with Carlos Santana - as a true believer I was thrilled to get called. That was right around a time, also, where I had become quite obsessed with Woodstock (the original, of course!), making various pilgrimages up to the site, reading several books, grooving on the excellent documentary almost nightly.  And of course Carlos really lit that festival on fire.