An overdue link to American Music Center’s New Music Box. Wherein one reads Frank Oteri’s recent interview with Gunther Schuller, Molly Sheridan’s discussion with Cenk Ergün and Jason Treuting, and Counterstream Radio’s Make Your Own Rules: Notes on Composition from John Corigliano. These from among many valuable offerings.

Back in the day, musician Ian David Moss used to work up there. He’s now writing about arts and arts management (trust me, a more interesting topic in his hands than it sounds…) at Createquity. Here’s a link to a recent piece that’s stirring the waters:On Arts and Sustainability.

It’s worth a read, though this may give pause:

The Internet, by lowering the costs of distribution to negligible levels, has in fact democratized many aspects of participation in the arts as well as numerous other activities. But in opening up the gates to untold amateurs and semi-pros who had previously been shut out from public attention or supplemental income streams, it has simultaneously fostered an atmosphere of intense competition that makes it nearly impossible to succeed as a full-time professional.

Do you agree? And is that a good or a bad thing?

Last weekend Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT) was in full force: presenting a commissioned set of pieces by Nadje Noordhuis; offering 17 trumpeters free sessions with Laurie Frink; a free ensemble master class with John McNeil and his Quartet; and concerts by eight other hard-to-categorize brass players and performers. FONT has a newly configured site that will aggregate posts about new brass music (aw, shucks, they’re aggregatin’ my solo trumpet post right now) and feature recordings and video of the recent performances.

FONT was co-founded by Roy Campbell, Jr. and myself in 2003. It’s now a nonprofit (though still all-volunteer) organization dedicated to commissioning, presenting, and disseminating new and unusual brass music of all varieties. In October FONT will continue with a series of concerts at the Jazz Standard in NYC. Cornetist Bobby Bradford will be on hand for the occasion.

Maybe it’s a coincidence, but suddenly it feels like there’s wall-to-wall discussion of music, media, and digital information — how quickly it’s changing, how the change is making some professions obsolete, and how it’s opening new avenues of opportunity. If even the sports pages carry this story (What Did Shaq Just Tweet?), there must be transformation in the air.

We’re grateful for the independence we have at a company like Greenleaf Music. The freedom is fun. But we’re also aware of our interdependence. We couldn’t do what we do without the interest of you, the readers, customers, subscribers, bloggers, publishers, musicians, listeners. As we continue to grow, create, and support new music we become more aware that this is part of something larger than us. It’s independent of many of the pre-existing media structures. We’re thankful to be a part of it and we thank you for sharing it with us.

I’ve been hearing rumors galore about Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones collaboration — a rumor that I thought was more funny that realistic, even if Grohl mentioned it in a 2005 interview. But today I hear from Mog who heard from Antiquiet who heard from Queen’s of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme’s wife’s second cousin’s babysitter’s close friend’s sister-in-law:

Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters (we always feel we should state Nirvana too), Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin are currently jamming in a studio over in L.A. and apparently, they’re not leaving until a full-length has been made.

Not much else has been confirmed or revealed so far on the new project so keep checking back for more news as it happens.

All these dudes are solid at what they do even if you weren’t into the Zep, or the Foo, or the Queen’s. Say what you want, this is going to be incredible to hear. Can’t wait.

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Whenever I talk about Zeppelin — which seems like a lot lately — I am always reminded of the age old rock question, one that many feel defines a rocker, one that I discussed briefly with Luis at the Showcase this weekend. So I pose that question now:

Led Zeppelin or The Who?
(Page or Townsend? // Plant or Daltrey? // Jones or Entwistle? // Bonzo or Moon?)

Dave has a guest post on solo trumpet recordings at Destination : out.
Here’s a sample…

Solo Tubes : A guest post by Dave Douglas
June 30th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Dave Douglas, guest posts

We at D:O are incredibly honored to be able to present the following guest post from composer, trumpeter, blogger, label magnate, and all-around brass advocate Dave Douglas. If you like what you read and hear here, be sure to check out Dave’s own wonderful recent work. Enjoy.

* * *

It’s an unusual breed, the solo trumpet recording. Surprisingly, the music is not really for specialists (not that there are many specialists anyway). More to the point, so much of the music goes beyond specifically instrumental interests. Though it is extremely demanding physically, the challenge is really compositional

READ THE REST HERE….

Tracks by Lester Bowie, Toshinori Kondo, Kenneth Gaburo, Arve Hendriksen, Bill Dixon, Nate Wooley, Greg Kelley, Rob Mazurek, Baikida Carroll are discussed.

In wandering around in cyberspace, I came across this great interview with Tim Berne at Ethan Iverson’s blog.  It’s incredibly candid and delves into several stories that relate to his artistic process.   Tim’s story about how he started playing the saxophone and started his first band is great too…..

Thanks to our friends in Ottawa for a great visit! Much, much warmer than the last time….

Festival of New Trumpet Music opens the first of its new thrice-yearly mini-festivals this evening in New York. New Trumpet Underground 2009 begins at 9pm at Cornelia Street Cafe with Greg Bobulinski, Josh Berman (who I guess won’t be at the Jazz Showcase tonight), and Leron Thomas. Three great trumpeters… Tomorrow Nadje Noordhuis will perform her new commissioned work at the festival.

Here’s a link to the full schedule at FONT’s new site.

Press keeps rolling in, as the band rolls around the US.

Brass Ecstasy starts their 3-night, 7-show run at Chicago’s Jazz Showcase tonight. Come by, say hi, hear some great music. Click here to get to the Jazz Showcase’s website for contact info.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Perhaps the only thing that isn’t surprising about “Spirit Moves,” the new album from Dave Douglas and Brass Ecstasy, is that it’s full of tasty surprises.

Some photos from the Ottawa concert courtesy of blurasis at Flickr.

From TimeOut Chicago’s concert preview:

A veritable jazz journeyman, trumpeter Dave Douglas has mastered both the West Coast school of cool with the SFJAZZ Collective and the downtown NYC urgency of John Zorn’s frantic free-jazz troupe Masada.

And lastly, from Chicago Reader’s Peter Margasak:

…there’s plenty of dazzling foreground-to-background movement, their devotion to a group sound is what really resonates.

Our 2nd Winner has been announced. Congratulations to Patrick Boyle.

One winner left. Submit your mixtape now to win. Click here to submit.

A few last words about Banff from friends:

Adam Benjamin’s thoughts (merely an excerpt below…) and request for comment:

…the three years I’ve been at Banff, it’s hard to think of any faculty or participants that I’ve spoken with who didn’t feel that their time in the mountains was an inspiring period of musical growth. Surely the crisp Canadian air and high-quality catering cannot fully explain this phenomenon. What makes the Banff program so successful?

Diverse, Rotating Faculty. Faculty that Works. Emphasis on Performance. Emphasis on Self-Direction. Excellent Facilities. Engaged Administration. Talented, Open-minded, Diverse Students.

Jazz Educators, Students and Administrators: Which of these aspects of the Banff workshop can be applied to your school situation? Which cannot, or should not, and why? Comment below.

Also, Curtis MacDonald enters the matrix:

Envision this: half the musicians interacting live to another team of musicians simultaneously across seriously fast network lines, we used the CAnet4 network, that’s uncompressed audio traveling about 70% the speed of light yielding incredibly low latency. In fact, the latency was so minimal that at a medium tempo, the lag was barely noticeable, it even felt as if it were part of the swing of things:

I know what you’re thinking, you’ve heard of this sorta thing before – it’s true, remote tele-conferencing has been around for awhile, but this is different than protocols like ISDN and SourceConnect, it’s way more simple, not to mention free & open source. It really was unlike any other long distance studio connection I’ve worked with before. Professor Chris Chafe from Stanford University is paving the way for this new new technology, and if you want to try it out with your friends, you can! Give it a shot - it’s called JackTrip and can be easily found on Google Code. A huge shot out to the team at CCRMA and the SoundWire group for getting it as stable as it is today!

To read the whole post and hear the music click the link above.
Thanks, guys!