Videos are shown in a collage of thumbnails as in the screenshot at right. It starts off with your favorite videos or a search term. Then if you click a video it will load more thumbnails on your screen, in particular: the favorite videos of the person who created that video.

To start, enter your youtube channel name to show your favorites, or enter a search term like “jazz”. Then click videos to load more thumbnails. You can hover your mouse over a video to read its title. Double click a video to load it in a popup player.

Once the player is open, you can click the link in the top right corner to watch the video on Youtube instead, where you can write comments below the video, “like” it, or add it to your favorites.

Here is a video where I explain how to use the site:

Why is this cool? For a number of reasons I think:

• Showing only thumbnails and no text allows the eye to quickly scan over hundreds, or even thousands of videos to pick out the ones that might be interesting to watch. We have a much better visual ability to pick out patterns and process large amounts of information from images rather than text. Also the fact that no text is used breaks down language barriers, especially for music videos.
• The Pop up player makes watching the first 5 seconds of a video really easy (the user can click away from the player and it will disappear, or click the X button in the popup to close it). This allows you to check out a video to determine if it is worth watching, and easily dismiss it, if it isn’t what you expect.
• When clicking a video, the favorites of the video’s creator are loaded below as thumbnails. This works really quickly to discover videos that will be interesting to you, on the principle that if you like a video, you’ll enjoy watching the videos that its creator likes too.

Since creating this site, I have spent many enjoyable leisure hours watching lots of videos and discovering some wonderful music from around the world. I really recommend trying it out, and please let me know what you think.

The site can be accessed for free at FindInteresting.com. Be sure to send comments or questions to geoff@gpeters.com – thanks!

Here’s the official report, with links to the songs that were played and how to listen to these songs if available. Hope you enjoy the music!

I performed solo piano on my upright acoustic Petrof piano. It’s available below or on Youtube.

Hope you enjoy it!

other links:

• Listen to different versions of this song at Grooveshark. I especially like the renditions by Sonny Rollins and Cedar Walton.
• My jazz band in Vancouver, the Geoff Peters Trio, has a new CD which is available for free listening on our website.

You can grab the Mp3′s we made here, or use the players below!

Minor Swing (folk music style swing tune with violin and piano)

Upbeat Evil Castle
(violin, synth (i)pad, synth bass, Latin drum samples)

Please note that Upbeat Evil Castle has been agreed on by the composers Gustavo and Geoff to allow Geoff to use the song in his videos on Geoffmobile.com and Youtube.com/geoffmobile.

Tetris Theme played on Violin with piano, and some Gypsy songs improvized.

Last night I recorded myself performing the jazz standard Giant Steps on the piano. In this video I give a 1 minute introduction to the song and then perform it. If you’re interested in the audio only, you can grab the MP3 from here or use the audio player above.

We made a video recording of one of our sets. To listen, please visit the Playlist on Youtube, or use the player below.

Here is a list of the songs we performed, (mostly jazz standards) with links to the videos:

• Ocean Apart – Geoff Peters
• Quiet Night – Geoff Peters
• Bemsha Swing – Thelonious Monk
• Killer Joe – Benny Golson
• Blue Bossa – Kenny Dorham
• Alice in Wonderland – Fain/Hilliard
• Blue Train – John Coltrane

We made a video of one of the songs, My Foolish Heart by Ned Washington and Victor Young. It’s available on Youtube or by using the player below. Hope you enjoy!

Benny Reid, 29, is an saxophonist, composer, teacher, and recording artist who studied at Indiana University and now resides in New York. (Find him on Twitter, All About Jazz, Myspace, or Youtube).

He recently released his second album, Escaping Shadows, on the Concord Jazz label.

It features Benny Reid (alto saxophone & keyboards), Richard Padron (acoustic and electric guitars), Pablo Vergara (piano, Fender Rhodes, keyboards), Daniel Loomis (bass and electric bass), Kenny Grohowski (drums), Jeff Taylor (vocals), and Ryan Fitch (percussion).

For a sample of the music on the CD, check out the video below (or on Youtube).

One of Benny Reid’s main influences is Pat Metheny, and many of his compositions have parallels in some of Pat Metheny’s earlier works. The title track, Escaping Shadows, reminds me of Metheny’s Minuano Six Eight.

I’m a big fan of Pat Metheny so Benny Reid’s compositions immediately appealed to me. His work is similar in style and interpretation to Bob Curnow’s (who did a recording of Metheny’s earlier works in a big band style). Benny Reid’s arrangements make use of the smaller ensemble well and move between a contemporary, abstract style and an almost smooth-jazz sound for some of the melody lines and musical effects.

I especially enjoy Kenny Grohowski’s sensitive, nuanced, and very active drumming (which tends on the busy side but is very musical).

Benny Reid has a great sound on the alto sax – a very clear, expressive and pure tone. He avoids repeating the often quoted licks of bebop and instead forges his own way, with easily recalled and infectious melodies that seem almost derivative in their simplicity, but taken in the context of the band and compositions are obviously original.

Escaping Shadows is available as a Mp3 download or a physical disk from Concord Music Group.

Kurt Elling, jazz vocalist (photo credit: Christian Lantry)

One of my all time favorite jazz vocalists is the inimitable Kurt Elling. He has been voted Male Vocalist of the Year for 10 years in a row by critics in Downbeat magazine and for 5 years by the Downbeat readers’ choice awards.

Kurt Elling has done some really incredible recordings, and I am definitely going to go out and try to complete my collection and get all 8 of his albums.

The current JazzPianoCafe song of the week is Kurt Elling’s recording of his very romantic original song, Where I Belong. It’s from his 1998 album This Time It’s Love. Here are the lyrics, courtesy of Kurt Elling’s website:

I hear the woman like a song / dancing down a long corridor
Reminding me I belong where I am

I see the singing in the rain/ the rhythm at my windowpane
Reminding me I belong where I am

There is a light in the silence of loving things
And when I look in my baby’s hopeful eyes
It’s like the sound just before ever morning horizon
Light comes to life

It’s like a magnet of loving sound / turning me rightside down
Keeping my two feet firmly planted on the ground
Reminding me I belong where I am.

You can listen to the song on iTunes for 99 cents, or listen for free on imeem (free account registration required). You can also purchase the CD or MP3′s online from Amazon.

This recording of Where I Belong features the following stellar musicians: Kurt Elling voice, Laurence Hobgood piano, Rob Amster bass, Michael Raynor percussion, Dave Oderdonk guitar, Paul Wertico drums, and Brad Wheeler soprano saxophone.

The track opens with burst of warm sound. A simple riff on the soprano sax is echoed by the piano, accompanied by drums, acoustic bass and guitar. The riff is repeated once and then Kurt Elling enters with his sparkling and luscious baritone. A hypnotizing bossa nova ensues, with an exciting and tasteful soprano sax solo well shaped to a gentle climax before the final vocal melody restatement. The outro is a vamp on the original intro riff, ending with a bit of Kurt Elling’s whistling on the fade out.

Highly recommended! Hope you enjoy this song and check back again next week for another JazzPianoCafe “Song of the Week”.

-Geoff Peters (Birds in the House Productions)

Here is a track listing with links to the individual videos:

• Stella by Starlight (Victor Young)
• Blue Bossa (Kenny Dorham)
• Out of Nowhere (Johnny Green)
• Recordame by Joe Henderson
• Donna Lee (Charlie Parker)
• Blues in Bb
• Summertime (George Gershwin)
• It Could Happen To You (Jimmy Van Heusen)
• Footprints (Wayne Shorter)

If you’d like to download MP3′s of the concert (free) you can get them from here.

With Julian’s permission I used my minidisc unit to record the audio from our performance. There is quite a bit of background noise from the wedding guests’ conversation, but in the recordings you can hear both of us quite clearly.

I also set up my Sony Camcorder in the corner and video-taped our performance too. There was very low light, so you can barely make us out in the video, but it gives more context to the audio to be able to see us perform too.

At this wedding, we performed a selection of mainstream jazz standards in a duo style. Probably my biggest inspiration for the saxophone-piano duo format is the legendary combination of Stan Getz (saxophone) and Kenny Barron (piano). Another inspiration for rhythmic ideas has been the mighty pianist Chick Corea and his duets with the one and only voice artist Bobby Mcferrin (such as their killer performance of Autumn Leaves).

So without further ado, here’s our complete performance (except for the last song we played, Confirmation by Charlie Parker, where we got interrupted by some DJ music).

Hope you enjoy! I hope that these performances will give you some ideas or inspiration for your own journeys in jazz and music in general.

Further listening: I performed one of Julian’s original compositions with the college band at the Phil Dwyer Academy of Music and Culinary Arts (PDAMCA) last August.