Last week, vocalist Gio Escueta and I performed at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in downtown Vancouver BC Canada.

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!

I played piano at a wedding with my friend Julian N., a saxophonist and composer. Julian is a student at Humber College in Toronto. You can view his myspace page by clicking here.

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.

My talented globetrotting singer-songwriter friend, Angela Molineux, dropped by my place today for a visit, and we wrote and recorded a new song, called All I Want To Do.

We originally started working on this song 3 years ago when we were both living in Vancouver. Since then Angela has performed and lived in Italy, New York, and London, has studied opera at Julliard, and has had many other interesting musical adventures.

All I Want To Do is a seductive pop ballad that is full of emotion and desire. The simple, repetitive harmonic structures envelop the listener in a thick intoxicating cloud that can become almost trance-like. Most of the song is made up of the chord progression Ebm Gb Fm, and the second half of the chorus alternates between Ab and Gb.

Check back on this page for updates on when the song will go live on iTunes (expected date is the end of Feb. 2010).

My friend, singer songwriter Gio Escueta, dropped by my place today and we recorded a performance of the jazz standard Moonlight in Vermont. It’s a really beautiful and romantic jazz ballad. Hope you enjoy it!

Watch: On Youtube, on Blip.tv
Listen: Mp3
or use the video player below.

Check out Gio’s youtube channel for more music.

This is a beautiful duo performance by the master jazz pianist Chick Corea and the incredibly versatile virtuoso vocalist Bobby Mcferrin.

It’s one of my favorite jazz Youtube videos at the moment, because it’s an amazing example of rhythmic interplay, varied textures, use of time and space, jazz idioms, and synergy and flow in a performance. There are killer solos by Chick Corea and Bobby Mcferrin. I have watched this video like 20 times by now, and I still get new ideas every time I watch it. During the performance Mcferrin makes a joke about being “not quite sure of” the line about the sunburned hands – perhaps he or his special someone doesn’t get sun burns! 5 stars! [Via Youtube]