Simply Jazz

After 7 years, Simply Jazz is ending our regular Saturday night gig at Chantilly restaurant.  It’s been a great run, but it’s time to spend a few Saturday nights at home or out on the town.  It might even be time to focus more on different styles of music and do some more writing and recording.  In any event, the music at Chantilly Restaurant will now be in the extremely capable hands of Denny Berthiaume, playing solo piano.  If you haven’t heard him play, I would highly recommend it!

The title is “Ten Years On”.  It’s now been almost 12 years since Ron and I got together for the first time, tho it was only 10 when we first started working on this CD.  But, better late than never.  The cost of recording and producing the CD was very low since we used Bret Harte Studios (which my wife refers to as ‘the guest bedroom’), but it includes some pretty fancy gear and software.  So we are happy with the sound.  The featured soloists (see the Musicians page) were paid in gigs and I expanded my limited Photoshop chops for the artwork and graphics.  Incidently, the first person identifying the musical quote, circa 1905, will be awarded dinner for 4 at the Grill or dinner for 2 at Chantilly.  Simply Jazzbos and their families not eligible to win.

You may notice that we are playing in two places at once on Valentines Day.  At a subatomic level that is indeed one of many possibilities, but here  in our macro reality, it means that Ron will play with one group at The Grill while I will play with another at Chantilly.  Come up on Feb 14  at either venue and request any song except ‘My Funny Valentine’ (which we will play anyway) and recieve a free CD. 

One New Years Eve we played the Grill on a Monday, finished at nine and drove to Chantilly and played there from 9:30 till after midnight.  Do we ever get tired of playing jazz? (click play button below for answer)

They call Austin the live music capital of the world, and it’s true that you can hear some great bands just walking down 6th street and looking in the windows.  But Austin is a big city and much of the music it features is in the rock, blues, roots, western vein. 

With a population of only 50K, Santa Fe NM has more live music on a given night than any city 10 times it’s size.  And the music is eclectic and all concentrated within a 5 square block area.  Last Saturday night Laurel and I ate there at La Casa Sena and we could hear the cabaret next door doing Broadway show tunes.  We then walked a couple blocks to our favorite venue, El Meson, (where I lamely/gamely sat in with an NY jazz trio last year) and they were featuring a flamenco troupe: fabulous guitarist, female vocalsist, cajon drummer and two dancers.  Mesmerizing. 

We then walked to the the La Fonda (no relation to Napoleon) Hotel, where a retro roots rock trio was tearing it up to a packed dance floor.  A block away we passed an upstairs blues club blaring out into the plaza (been there, done that).  Half a block later in a doorway was a three piece indy group doing a pretty fair electric celtic rock (tip the street musicians).  The end of that block brought us to Evangelo’s, where a couple of scenes from Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges were recently filmed.  They have dixieland in the afternoon but this evening were featuring a rockabilly/hard rock sound. 

Two blocks later we were back at our hotel, the El Dorado.  In the lobby was a positively smokin’ 10 piece Salsa band and at least 150 people dancing.  Oh, and did I mention that on the way to dinner there was a guy in the plaza in a motorized wheelchair playing a huge antique harp that was amplified by the wheelchair battery?  Turns out the guy isn’t handicapped, that’s just the way he gets his harp around.  But he was getting a heck of a lot of tips while sitting there.

Anyway, if you know of a better music scene than Santa Fe, let me know, I want to check it out.

Simply Jazz was in the middle of a set when the Giants clinched the pennant (at Chantilly), and again when they won the World Series (at the Los Altos Grill).  Both times the audience erupted into cheers and we broke into “I Left My Heart in SF”.  The Giant’s playoff season has been exciting.  We’ve become expert at checking iPhone apps between songs to keep track of the games.  Also, there seems to be more applause for our solos, although some have intimated that it has more to do with the end of a solo coinciding with a Cody Ross home run.

dressed in black, silver buttons all down her back
hi ho, tippy toe, she got big honkin’ alto flute to blow

Ron’s recent trip to Ireland was great, but there was a paucity of opportunities to perform or even play the pianos there, since all the hotel pianos were locked.  He was finally able to entertain his tour group on a piano that he said hadn’t been tuned in a looooong time.  But for those of you who play an instrument and know what it’s like to go for a couple of weeks without, playing something is better than nothing.

Marty and Ginger are both currently on vacation.  Ginger will be back in the rotation after Labor Day and Marty not until October.