Don't believe us...watch this:

Here she plays a track that somehow didn't make it on our CD:

We think that in her next performance on Colbert she's going to cover our very own, "Biophilia."

The folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax was a prodigious collector of traditional music from all over the world and a tireless missionary for that cause. Long before the Internet existed, he envisioned a "global jukebox" to disseminate and analyze the material he had gathered during decades of fieldwork.

A decade after his death technology has finally caught up to Lomax's imagination. Just as he dreamed, his vast archive -- some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts, much of it tucked away in forgotten or inaccessible corners -- is being digitized so that the collection can be accessed online. About 17,000 music tracks will be available for free streaming by the end of February, and later some of that music may be for sale as CDs or digital downloads.

WOW!

Today, to commemorate what would have been Lomax's 97th birthday, the Global Jukebox label is releasing "The Alan Lomax Collection From the American Folklife Center," a digital download sampler of 16 field recordings from different locales and stages of Lomax's career.

And just in case you haven't heard of Alan Lomax, this should help:

Starting in the mid-1930s, when he made his first field recordings in the South, Lomax was the foremost music folklorist in the United States. He was the first to record Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie, and much of what Americans have learned about folk and traditional music stems from his efforts, which were also directly responsible for the folk music and skiffle booms in the United States and Britain that shaped the pop-music revolution of the 1960s and beyond.

Lomax worked both in academic and popular circles, and increased awareness of traditional music by doing radio and television programs, organizing concerts and festivals, and writing books, articles and essays prodigiously. At a time when there was a strict divide between high and low in American culture, and Afro-American and hillbilly music were especially scorned, Lomax argued that such vernacular styles were America's greatest contribution to music.

"It would be difficult to overstate the importance of what Alan Lomax did over the course of his extraordinary career," said the writer Tom Piazza, who has written an introductory essay for "The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax," a book of about 200 of Lomax's photographs that is to be published in the fall. "He was an epic figure in and of himself, with a musical appetite that was omnivorous and really awe inspiring, who used the new recording technology to go and document musical expression at its most local and least commercial."

And lest you think there's ill-gotten profits to be made on this project, hopefully this part of the project is not all hot air:

The Association for Cultural Equity also has what it calls a repatriation program, meant to make Lomax's work available to the communities where it was obtained and to pay royalties to the heirs of those whose music was recorded. On Friday, recordings, photographs, video and documents are to be donated to the public library in Como, Miss., where in September 1959 Lomax made the first recordings of the blues guitarist Fred McDowell, whose songs were later covered by the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Bonnie Raitt and Jack White of the White Stripes.

Yes, Alan Lomax was an amazing figure in America's cultural heritage. Amazing.

Here's a taste of what's to come:

Here's a video of the first song, Thelonious Monk's "Think of One."

Vinson Valega Quintet, appearing at Twins Jazz Club, Washington, DC:

Featuring:

Anton Denner - alto sax & flute
Chris Bacas - tenor & soprano saxophones
Harry Appelman - piano
James King - bass
Vinson Valega - drums

Stop by to hear the band as we celebrate the end of 2011!

Playing originals from our CDs: Biophilia, Awake, & Consilience, in addition to rearrangements of Standards.

Yummy Caribbean Cuisine.
Two sets: 8:00pm & 10:00pm
$10 cover.

Hope to see you there!

It's an instant classic, no doubt:

"His key is B-flat and his wife Be Ugly."

The disagreement between the union and club owners dates back to 2005, when union leaders joined the night clubs to lobby the State Legislature for a reduction in the sales tax on tickets because the extra revenue would be used to pay for pension and health benefits. In letters supporting the legislation, union officials maintained they had an informal agreement with several club owners to that effect. (A similar trade-off had been made in the 1960s to get pension benefits for Broadway musicians.)

The tax break was passed in 2006, but the union never hammered out a formal pact with the club owners. Five years later none of the clubs have entered negotiations with the union to sign collective bargaining agreements. Those agreements are legally required before the clubs can begin paying into Local 802's pension system.

When the legislation was passed, the union estimated the major jazz clubs each stood to gain about $67,000 a year from lifting the tax. In 2008 the state estimated it amounted to a tax loss of about $2.2 million a year.

It's that "informal" agreement mentioned above which has never been enforced, and really, the Union has no one to blame but themselves. But hopefully this new movement will change all that:

Two years ago, the union elected new leaders who have made pensions for jazz artists a priority.

Some club managers say the plan was flawed from the start. Repealing the tax saved the customers money but never produced extra revenue for the clubs, they say. The owners have balked at raising ticket prices to pay for the pension contributions, though some have suggested collecting donations from patrons.

Bernard Purdie, among many other musicians here, are pissed:

"They are collecting that money, and they are using it for whatever reason they feel like," said Bernard Purdie, a jazz drummer and bandleader, just before going on at Carnegie Hall with Galt MacDermot and the New Pulse Jazz Band. "They have been getting away with it for the last four or five years."

Support the movement to create pension funds for jazz musicians - America's only true art form!

Read more here from the Local 802 Musicians Union:

There was a time when the union would have sat down with the club owners in this city who benefited from the elimination of the entertainment tax that Local 802 worked so hard to achieve five years ago. We would have been willing to do whatever was necessary to find a way to divert the dollars that had once been paid as a tax into the pension fund for musicians who played the nightclubs. The nightclubs, every last one of them, made it clear they have no interest in talking to us. Letters and phone calls went unanswered. Even veteran jazz supporter and critic Nat Hentoff couldn’t get the time of day from club owners on this subject.

Is it time for something new?

Hell yes, it's time for something new! No organization or corporation ever gave up anything without a demand. It's time that the Union demanded from these jazz clubs that they start paying into the pension fund and live up to the agreement they made back in 2005.

Vinson Valega Quartet
featuring:
Justin Flynn (tenor & soprano saxophones)
Matthew Fries (piano)
Gary Wang (bass)
Vinson Valega (drums)

Playing music from our newest release, Biophilia.

The 55 Bar is located at 55 Christopher Street, just east of 7th Avenue, smack dab in the middle of The Village.

7-9pm.
No cover. Two drink minimum.

Hope to see you there!

He was, to be sure, an unrivaled performer ("A god for pianists" in Berlioz's words), a man of unusually catholic artistic interests and the 19th century's nearest approach to a Hollywood superstar. But although he is surely significant enough to celebrate, the question whether his music is actually any good has never really gone away.

It probably never will. Liszt, like his music, was constructed of paradoxes, as he well knew. "Half Gypsy, half Franciscan monk," he called himself; another contemporary called him "Mephistopheles disguised as a priest." But if his life was to some extent a touring soap opera played out publicly on various European stages, what the more prudish Mendelssohn described as a "constant oscillation between scandal and apotheosis," it was at least a drama with a sympathetic protagonist. And for all his worldly success, Liszt didn’t have a particularly easy ride.

This picture sure does capture his charismatic presence, doesn't it? Click on it to read the rest of this fascinating story:

We'll also be back at The 55 Bar on Tuesday, November 22nd, 7-9pm, with an all-new cast of characters in the band. Check our schedule page for the line-up.

Thanks for listening!

Day by Day into Kathlein Gray
["Day by Day" composed by Cahn/Stordahl/Weston & "Kathlein Gray" composed by Ornette Coleman]

Always followed by a new tune (untitled) by our bassist, Joe Fitzgerald. ["Always" composed by Irving Berlin]

Talk Time [composed by Chris Bacas]

Day Dream [composed by Billy Strayhorn]

Think of One [composed by Thelonious Monk]

Stay tuned for the next one!

In the honor of this long-held tradition, we'd like to offer up a recording from a recent session that took place in my studio last month. Below is a recording of a Thelonious Monk composition, "Monk's Dream," as performed by:

Justin Flynn (tenor sax)
Mike Fahn (trombone)
Lee Metcalf (guitar)
Pete Brendler (bass)
Vinson Valega (drums)

We hope you enjoy our version of "Monk's Dream."

[note: the MP3 is rather large ---> 20mb]

They finally figured this out? ha-ha...:)

(OK, OK, this story is already 3 years old, but we were directed to it today by a fellow drummer friend...)

Drummers are better known for their beats than their brain power, but research has suggested that they might actually be natural intellectuals.

Scientists who asked volunteers to keep time with a drumstick before taking intelligence tests discovered that those with the best sense of rhythm also scored highest in the mental assessments.

Prof Frederic Ullen, from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, concluded that there was a link between intelligence, good timing and the part of the brain used for problem-solving.

He said: "The rhythmic accuracy in brain activity that is observed when a person maintains a steady beat is also important to the problem-solving capacities measured with the intelligence tests."

Power to the Beaters!!

Bennett Studios, the Englewood, NJ headquarters of GRAMMY-winning engineer Dae Bennett, has closed after a decade of music, media and post production.

A large-scale operation in a relatively small-town setting just minutes away from the George Washington Bridge, the converted 100-year-old Victorian railroad station housed two world-class rooms in the Neve VR60-equipped North Studio and SSL4080 South Studio.

Although the facility was often bustling with activity for elite artists including Trey Anastasio, Rob Thomas, Teddy Riley, k.d. lang, and -- of course -- Tony Bennett -- ultimately the one-two punch of escalating overhead and shrinking major label budgets proved too costly for Bennett Studios to overcome.

"I've been doing this for over thirty years, and I've been through many ups and downs," Dae Bennett said. "The economic downturn, combined with the collapse of the music industry, was a little more than I could get through. We managed to stay busy, but the industry itself isn't trending well.

"We tried to hold the rates as much as we could, but the costs keep increasing," Bennett continued. "The energy costs have literally doubled over the last three years. Without the record companies being interested in records anymore, the math doesn't add up."

R.I.P. Bennett Studios. We feel extremely lucky to have produced two great CDs from Dae's studio, and we wish him and all the others there the best of luck.

David Honeyboy Edwards, believed to have been the oldest surviving member of the first generation of Delta blues singers, died this past August at his home in Chicago.

Mr. Edwards's career spanned nearly the entire recorded history of the blues, from its early years in the Mississippi Delta to its migration to the nightclubs of Chicago and its emergence as an international phenomenon.

Over eight decades Mr. Edwards knew or played with virtually every major figure who worked in the idiom, including Charley Patton, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. He was probably best known, though, as the last living link to Robert Johnson, widely hailed as the King of the Delta Blues. The two traveled together, performing on street corners and at picnics, dances and fish fries during the 1930s.

Is it even possible that there was someone alive who not only knew Robert Johnson but played with him? That is just astonishing!

In an interview, Honeyboy says:

"We would walk through the country with our guitars on our shoulders, stop at people's houses, play a little music, walk on," Mr. Edwards said in an interview with the blues historian Robert Palmer, recalling his peripatetic years with Johnson. "We could hitchhike, transfer from truck to truck, or, if we couldn't catch one of them, we'd go to the train yard, 'cause the railroad was all through that part of the country then." He added, "Man, we played for a lot of peoples"

Honeyboy was a national treasure, playing up until the very end:

Mr. Edwards won a Grammy Award in 2008 for the album "Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas," a collaboration with Henry Townsend, Pinetop Perkins (who died in March) and Robert Lockwood Jr., and a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2010.

He was still playing as many as 100 shows a year when he stopped touring, in 2008, and he continued to perform occasionally until this year. His last appearance was at a blues festival in Clarksdale, Miss., in April.

R.I.P., Honeyboy.