We’re just about to head into Two Sticks studio in Seattle to record our second album (our first, Just 4 U, came out in April of 09) with Don Gunn, our favorite engineer.  This one will be out in September on Origin Records, continuing my excellent relationship with them!

So, come out to Jimmy’s tomorrow night for this show if you’re in Portland, it’ll be a great one!  Reservations at 503-295-6542.

Anyway, the new Kora Band record is looking very promising: we’re going to be putting down (hopefully) definitive versions of some of our favorite tunes added to the book in the past year, including our hommage to Cuba, “Sinyaro,” our epic ancient tune, “Koulandjan,” and three (!) brand new compositions by me which exploit new possibilities in the band, particularly with kora tuning.  I’m just starting to explore the other scales available with the kora’s two standard tunings of F major (silaba) and F lydian (sauta), and Kane’s prowess on the instrument once again comes into play as I am able to write things like the new tune “Cascades” in C major / A minor, and he can pull it off with great ease and virtuosity! I’ve also come up with a new one featuring Mark on calabash, which we’ve been exploring more recently since our first “all-acoustic” (i.e. no drumset, percussion only) show at Empty Sea Studios earlier in the year, a great show which we hope to present over there again in the fall.  And, as I write this, I’ve just finished up one more new tune (Kora Tune #8) using a really freaky new kora tuning, an F lydian dominant scale (so, F lydian scale but with E-flats instead of E-naturals).  The sound is sort of creepy and really awesome, as you can hear from our rehearsal last week:

Andrew and Chad freak out at the new kora tuning (click to listen)

We’re going into the studio on May 9-10, just after our fund-raising concert in Seattle on May 8 (more on that here if you’re interested), and our show with Ben Darwish at Jimmy Mak’s in Portland on May 7 opening for his EP release.  Don Gunn, who is awesome, will be engineering, and we’re even going to have some special guests on this one, more on that soon.

Meanwhile, if anyone has suggestions for an album title, comment away! (or if you have anything else to say for that matter), and I’ll leave you for now with our recently recorded version of “Cascades”, which I discussed above, from March, and which we’ll be setting down a definitive version of on the new record.

The tune itself is pretty fun, I had been playing with Loveness Wesa and the Bantus Band for a bit when I wrote it, so there’s certainly some elements of the “Shona heartbeat” 4-on the floor, as it were.  I also wanted to explore A minor/C major on kora, which works well when tuned to the typically Malian “Sauta” tuning (basically F lydian).  And of course my interest in and love of the electric bass continues, despite the absolutist promises of my 12-year-old self, and Brady certainly slammed the weirdly difficult basslines I wrote him on this one.  Hope you enjoy!  Use the player below or click on the image to go directly to the Bandcamp page, where you can download it for free, or if you are so inclined, name your own price.

Oops, I digress.  Anyway, it was really a fantastic experience and I promise that the purpose of this post is not to make anyone jealous!  I do want to share some pictures and thoughts on the band and experience though.  Chad’s father is an avid collector of old signs and (get this) vintage gasoline pumps, and though the pictures we took don’t do it justice, check out this vintage Shell pump that adorns the living room! (Mark took this one while Kane was showing off his bizarrely awesome fusion drumming chops:)

Anyhow, besides the gas pump (or maybe including it), we had a nice little setup in the living room, where we found ourselves rehearsing up to five times a day (sometimes unwittingly: after dinner on Saturday night, we mysteriously started gravitating back towards our instruments.  “Are sitting at our instruments?” I found myself saying, and next thing we knew, we had come up with a great idea for our March 20 gig at Empty Sea Studios in Seattle, a great space focused on smaller acoustic groups.  We’re going to try something a bit different and do the whole show without drumset, in a more “intimate” and acoustic format.  Never fear, Mark will not be exiled, but will play only calabash and other percussion, and we’ll have Kane on kora and acoustic guitar, rather than electric.  It should be a cool evening, and a shift from our regular sound:

In addition to working up some of our old material in the more acoustic format, we learned a bunch of new songs, some of which we performed at our Hidmo gig on the 10th.  I’ve written a new tune (“Kora Tune #6″ for the time being) that I’m really proud of – I think it’s the best integration of my general musical aesthetic with some kora-specific material to date, and it really came to life in a sort of more epic way than I intended, which is always nice!  It’s been, and continues to be an interesting journey figuring out exactly what sort of things to do as a composer to work with the unique qualities of the kora.  On one hand, I don’t want to just sound like I’ve written some modern jazz and stuck a kora in it, but on the other hand I don’t want my own musical ideas to be completely overshadowed by the kora itself.  This tune feels like the right direction and I hope to have some more time to work on music during this brief hiatus (more on that in a minute).  We finally got the Rail Band’s tune “Maliyo” together, more or less – that’s one we’ve been trying to learn for 6 months but the deceptive beat placement continues to elude us!  One day we will rock it for sure.  Kane taught us a new tune “Amadou Sekou” by ear, which is always one of the best ways to learn anything of course, and the time afforded us on the retreat was great for that method of learning, which we usually don’t have time for, what with me living in Portland and the rest of the band in Seattle.  Chad brought in a tune by a German trumpeter, Volker Goetze, who has a great duo project with a Senegalese kora player, and of course, for good measure, we added another tune from the library of the great Franco, “Bolingo ya Moitie-Moitie.”  Watch for all of those tunes coming up in our spring gigs!

In addition to all that playing and eating, Kane brought his set of Mandinka drums and we worked on some traditional rhythms, which was really fun, though I felt a bit self-consciously white while doing so.  Nonetheless, I think it was really good for our general progression in hearing some complexities of African rhythms.  It was also very viscerally exciting, though quite loud (check out Chad and Brady in the background):

And, finally, we had some time to sit down and listen to some interesting recordings from West Africa, past and present (Kane brought a large portion of his unique CD collection, which was awesome).  I’ll leave you with a few more photos and a recording that I discovered on the retreat from Bembeya Jazz National, one of the foremost nationally sponsored bands of Guinea post-independence, which advertises the national airline, “Air Guinee”  Check out the awesome intro: “Security? Speed? Comfort? AIR GUINEE!!!” (click to listen)

Bembeya Jazz National – Air Guinee

And here’s Kane and I listening to it, in true African music nerd fashion:

(In doing further research on this, I discovered that Air Guinee lost their only jet plane (the others were all Russion turbo-props) in a botched takeoff in 2004 (long after this song was written, admittedly).  Fortunately no one was killed, but they just left the jet in the field where it crashed at Freetown airport in Sierra Leone, where it can be seen to this day!!)

In conclusion, we were very lucky to have the opportunity to go on our little retreat and we’re really excited for our upcoming gigs this year.  We hope to go into the studio in the late spring to record our second album and perhaps even embark on a short tour in the fall.  More on all that coming soon!  Meanwhile, here are some other classic moments from the weekend.  Chad and subsequently Brady are out of town until March, so we’ll be having a brief hiatus until then, but our spring is pretty full of gigs after that point.  One more note, I apologize for not having post-quality audio ready of any of the new material, but I will be sharing lots of that after we work it up a bit more in the spring.  Thanks for reading!

If you can’t tell, we’re really excited about the show this coming Thursday, so you should be too!  If you’re in Seattle, be sure to get your tickets in advance here, and we hope to see a lot of folks down there!

I’ve been writing a lot recently, including some new music for my sextet and kora band as well as for a new trio I’ve been playing with occasionally with Dan Duval and drummer Stephen Pancerev, as well as arranging some music for the Portland Jazz Orchestra‘s Christmas concert (specifically “The Christmas Song” a la Vince Guaraldi for their Peanuts-themed show, which should be a kick).  It’s nice as the weather deteriorates to focus more on composition, especially as no one seems to really want to leave their houses much (as evidenced by our annoyingly low turnout at the Kane/Andrew duo gig at Egan’s last week…)

Anyway, I’ll be posting PJCE and Sextet audio very soon for your enjoyment, meanwhile you can mark your calendars for the Kora Band’s big show Dec. 3 at the Columbia City Theater with the Seattle African All-Stars, and for the Sextet’s CD release at Jimmy Mak’s January 22!

More soon….

The show is downloadable for free, but if you enjoy it and want to / are able to contribute to the band, we’d greatly appreciate it – you can set your own price when you click on the download link, or type “0″ to download it for free.  You can also stream the whole thing right here, or on the BandCamp site (click on the album cover to get there).  Enjoy!

Earlier in the month, the Kora Band played a couple of very fun gigs in Portland and Seattle  We’re gearing up for our big shows at Jimmy Maks in Portland on Oct. 9 and Cafe Solstice in Seattle on Oct. 10.   After a great show at Mississippi Pizza on Saturday the 5th, we played at the Art in the Pearl World Music Stage on Sunday the 5th, but were plagued by freak fall winds which almost sent this seemingly sturdy tent crashing down upon our heads!

The following week, I headed up to Seattle and we played at Egan’s Ballard Jam House, which was the same venue where we debuted the band last June.  It’s a great listetning room, very very small, but always a pleasure to play.  We sold it out in with advance reservations (which is admittedly easy with a capacity of something like 50) but it still was a good feeling!

Anyway I’m really pleased with the way the band is coming together, Chad McCullough has really stepped up to the plate since he joined the band in May, and everyone has begun to memorize the book, a task we hope to have complete by the Oct. 9 gig!

Over at the Audio page, I’ve posted 3 tracks from each gig for your listening pleasure (and to generate excitement for our upcoming gigs!  Don’t forget to mark your calendars for Oct 9 in PDX and 10th in Seattle!).  There are 2 “electric” tracks, “Segu” and “Za Ayi Neyi”, the former of which features Mark on calabash gourd, which he’s becoming quite solid at, and the latter of which is a tricky Bikutsi-style number from Cameroonian pop stars Les Tetes Brulees that we’ve been trying to nail for a year and finally almost did!

Also of note, the “Mamadou Bitiki-Kaira” medley that I discussed in my Piano and Kora post a couple of weeks ago has now been adapted for the full band, and you can hear us performing it from the Egan’s show.  In addition to the feel and tune change, I also added a few more traditional vocal lines into the trumpet part which you can hear right after the transition to the faster tempo.  I think this is a much improved version than the original Kaira arrangment.  Although I rarely go back and change charts this significantly, I think it was the right decision in this case for sure!

And, to top it off, here’s a video from the Egan’s gig of “Jarabi”, a traditional Malian tune that Kane arranged, with a modern-style Malian groove leading into a racous section utilizing Sabar rhythms from Senegal.  It’s consistently one of our favorite songs to play, and we hope you enjoy it, even without multiple camera angles:

Next up is a continuation of the “Jazz Pioneers” series featuring James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, and Art Tatum!

Since I met Kane Mathis in 2007, I’ve been fascinated by the kora, a West African 21-string traditional harp.  Part of what attracted me to the instrument in the first place was also what attracted Kane to it – the unique relationship between rhythm and harmony in Mandinka music.  I have never been a harmony nut (though I am a jazz pianist) but have instead always been fascinated by the various polyrhythms possible on the piano that are not possible on other melodic instruments.  This, I think, accounts for both my early fascination with Scarlatti’s piano music, my long-standing interest in stride piano and the music of Jelly Roll Morton (more to come on that soon, I promise), and more recently my study of and interest in Mandinka music, specifically kora music.

Kora music is quite complex but can be broken down into several major parts, the most important of which are the concepts of kumbengo (accompaniment patterns) and birimitingo (solo lines).  I will briefly quote from Eric Charry’s excellent book Mande Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000):

[...] this kind of playing consists of one cycle of a piece that would be played over and over during a performance, usually with variations.  Kora players refer to each of these accompaniment patterns as a kumbengo [...] Accompaniment-type playing involves an ensemble relationship between the fingers [...] in which African aesthetics of polyrhythm find full expression.  Accompaniment patterns are often interrupted with another type of playing consisting of fast descending melodic flourishes, often highly ornamented [...].  Kora players call this kind of playing bnirimitingo (rolling). [...] Mande instrumental music is driven by a mix of variations woven within a single accompaniment pattern, movement among different accompaniment patterns, and give and take between accompaniment-pattern playing and linear melodic-solo playing.  An instrumental performance of a piece consists of maintaining the melodic or harmonic cycle while weaving in and out of these different kinds of playing.

Last fall, I bought a kora from Kane and began to learn to play it in a traditional style in order to better understand what was going on and to increase my ability to write for it in the context of my Kora Band.  This eventually led to Kane and I beginning to perform as a duo, and in me attempting to transfer some of what I learned on kora to a “Mandinka-ized” piano style.  Although I have only been working on it for a while, the results have been very interesting.  At our last duo gig, Kane and I had an interesting conversation about the idea of kumbengo.  He mentioned that in playing duo with other instrumentalists in the past, he has encountered the problem of the result being too busy due to the other musicians’ concerns that he was “stepping on their feet”, as it were, by always playing these repeated patterns.  This was a problem I also encountered early on in the kora band, but as I have attempted to better understand the idea of a kumbengo and its variations and relationship with solo lines, I feel that our playing together has improved a great deal and no longer sounds as frantic as it did at first.  The kumbengo really functions as a sort of base, but its melodic nature can draw the ear to it very strongly, sometimes confusing its role.  In our duo, there is still quite a bit of ground to cover, as always, particularly in the area of how much “jazz” I should be adding into the mix.

Angelica Sanchez, a great pianist who was on faculty at Banff this year, presented an exercise in a piano workshop  in which she played a repeating ostinato pattern in her left hand and played constant quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, etc in her right hand (without rests) as a way of forcing herself into unfamiliar territory.  Recently I have been trying to use the idea of kumbengo to create such patterns, and to utilize them in the duo setting.  It’s been very interesting and really helps the duo to sound more filled out.  It’s also gotten me thinking about ways to apply the concept of independent melodic patterns creating harmony (rather than stacking chords, I suppose this is sort of in a baroque sense too), and how to apply that to other, more jazzy settings, or conversely, how to apply it to arrangments in the kora band.

Anyhow, I thought I would put up a couple examples of what I’m talking about, and hope that this has all been thought-provoking, or at least educational!  Overall I have been very happy with the piano-kora combination, much to my surprise, and am looking forward to continuing to explore its possibilities.  Please post questions, etc if you have them, and I will post more about this in the future if I have any exciting revelations!

[Note: I apologize for the mediocre sound quality of many of these recordings, and the fact that I am playing keyboard on them, but logistics sometimes prevail over asethetics, unfortunately.  Click on the song titles to listen.]

Konkoba Bassline – This is a bassline Kane created for the traditional tune “Konkoba.”  I aspire to one day be able to play this and solo at the same time!  Recorded at a rehearsal.

Mamadou Bitiki Balafon Line – This is a kumbengo from a traditional tune “Mamadou Bitiki” that was originally created on balafon.  This is one of the first kumbengos that I have tried to use as a more constant ostinato pattern in my left hand, rather than resorting to more comfortable bassline territory.  Also recorded at a rehearsal.

Mamadou Bitiki-Kaira – Kane and I perform a version of Mamadou Bitiki and segue into another traditional tune, Kaira.  Recorded at an outdoor private party.

Serefu Sidi

Tabara

These final 2 tracks are live performances Kane and I did on KEXP’s The Best Ambiance program.  You can hear the alternation between kumbengo and birimitingo as well as some interesting kumbengo variations and my attempts to reharmonize some of the vamps as well.