A prime piece of studio real estate is for sale. EMI — who apparently is in need of some extra cash — put the famed Abbey Road Studios up on the market.

From Pitchfork…

…according to the Financial Times, the studios are becoming prohibitively expensive to use, and EMI is in desperate need of cash. It’s not clear yet whether EMI is selling the Abbey Road brand name along with the studio itself. The Financial Times quotes a media lawyer as saying, “the brand is worth more that the building.” So if you’re planning to buy Abbey Road, you might have to rename it Rabbey Oad or something.

Last week, we noticed Dave Holland launched a new site featuring the new Archival Series: Volume One. The album is killer as you might expect. Not only can you listen to it all the way through at his site, the limited-time offer to buy the MP3s for $1 or $3 for the lossless ends today (Monday, 15th). I suggest you get clicking. From the name “Volume One,” we can only hope for many more to come.

Thanks to Lars Gotrich at ABS for passing this on…

Sun Ra stars in Space Is The Place. Video streaming here.

A quick reminder…

February 11th, 2010 – 8:00PM
Dave Douglas Quintet
+
Young Artist Workshop Participants
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center
31-10 Thomson Ave
Queens, NY 11101
***Free to the Public***

more detailed post from earlier this week including details for the Friday performance…

Some amazing images by Marco Fusinato at ButDoesItFloat in a post titled Is there a connection between sound, vibrations and physical reality?

I have a new listening project. It’s a pretty mammoth undertaking. As you can assume from my job and past posts, I am an avid listener of music. I love vinyl. I love CDs. I love digital. All means to the same end: experiencing great music from jazz to rock, folk to metal, prog to lo-fi and everything in between.

The project? Listening to all the songs in my library in alphabetical order.

I started at the beginning yesterday: “¶ª” from the Trap Door International Psychedelic Mystery Mix (special characters are sorted first). I made it all the way through “Achilles Last Stand” by Led Zeppelin. Today, I started with “Acorda amor” from Joyce’s killer Passarinho Urbano album, and while I write, I went from “Adagio for Strings, Op 11″ to Springsteen’s “Adam Raised A Cain.” Next up: “Adam’s Apple.”

Given the diversity of my library, some of the transitions are pretty rough — the aforementioned Barber to Springsteen is a great example of that. But I am discovering and rediscovering some great tunes from people that have been lost in the massiveness of the library.

I pointed to an interview for the New Yorker awhile back in which Jonny Greenwood said:

SFJ: What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of the MP3 age?

JG: The downside is that people are encouraged to own far more music than they can ever give their full attention to. People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis’ record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row—there’s just too much to get through. You’re thinking, “I’ve got ‘Sketches of Spain and ‘Bitches Brew’—let’s zip through those while I’m finishing that e-mail.” That abundance can push any music into background music, furniture music.

Read more.

I will admit, I fall into that a lot. I own far more than I can digest. That’s one reason why I like vinyl. 20 minutes, switch, 20 minutes, done. That’s also one reason why I’m doing this. I want at least 1 legitimate play count on every tune, and I want to delete the things I don’t like. Not that play counts are proof I digested everything, but it’s a start in dealing with my library.

It will take me 88 days, 18 hours, 16 minutes, and 56 seconds to get through this. Wish me luck.

Creation Suite: New Compositions for Small Improvising Ensembles.

On Thursday there’s a FREE concert at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center [map] in which the Dave Douglas Quintet (with Donny McCaslin, Uri Caine, James Genus, and Clarence Penn) perform as well as the 11 participants in the Weill Music Institute Young Artists Workshop.

Friday at Zankel Hall [map] [tickets] is a concert dedicated to the Young Artist original works. Dave, Uri, Clarence will be hanging out and might play a little bit.

Young Artist Workshop participants and players:
Eden Bareket, Baritone Saxophone
Johannes Dickbauer, Violin
Philip Dizack, Trumpet
Sam Harris, Piano
Kristijan Krajncan, Drums
Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Saxophones
Hui-Chun Lin, Cello
Rizpah Lowe, Harp
Nadje Noordhuis, Trumpet
Linda Oh, Bass
Dan Peck, Tuba

In the artist’s own words:

In this concert, you will hear original music written and developed by the players.

In a way, this idea is part of our own tradition—musician-composer-performers coming together to create a program of new music that includes the improvised voices of each player. The jazz tradition is where this concept has most recently flourished, and all the musicians on this stage are certainly educated and influenced by the great jazz musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries. But influence is a slippery thing, and you’ll certainly hear shades of all sorts of music on this program. The inclusion of many sources is not approached as eclecticism; rather, it seems to be the natural way that young musicians react to the profusion of musical languages and to the challenges of making personal and powerful music in the current age.

Tradition can be defined as an established method or style. The tradition present in this concert is not so much in the sense of a style, but in the practices of certain kinds of musicians.

Player-composers who improvise tend to learn from one another: writing music for each other to play, learning each other’s practices, listening, exchanging feedback, thinking about what the music means to them and where they fit into it. This music is neither all improvised nor all composed. The amount of improvisation varies from moment to moment and is developed collaboratively by the musicians as part of a charged process that is both intuitive and well considered.

In presenting this original music, the musicians situate themselves in a tradition of creativity—of collaboration, personal investigation, and making the most engaging music in a human and interpersonal context.

Tradition can also be defined as the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation. With that transmission, ideas grow and change; new musical forms emerge with each generation. In preparation for this concert, the musicians shared their sense of musical custom and belief in the creation of a new body of work. We are thankful to the Weill Music Institute for giving us this opportunity to find out where tradition will take us next.

-Dave Douglas

I subscribe to a few tech blog feeds and a lot of my friends I’m linked to via Google Reader have similar interests. There’s an endless supply new devices, apps, and games announced almost daily. Such an exciting time for tech lovers. And specifically for musician tech lovers.

Here is new take on the Tetris model called Chime. This one uses not only a point reward system, but also a musical reward…

It’s exciting to see how people are shaping how consumers access and interact with music today. Gives me a lot of inspiration.

We are very excited to announce that Dave’s big band will be playing this years Hollywood Bowl on July 28 performing music from A Single Sky and Dave’s big band work Delighted States with very special guest Jim McNeely.

Click here to listen to A Single Sky.
Click here for the full scores to all 7 tunes.

The night is a triple bill with Dave Holland Big Band and Count Basie Orchestra. Tickets and subscription packages for the Hollywood Bowl are available now.