I have been practicing a bit on Bye Bye Blackbird by Ray Henderson. I decided to make a little recording of a solo piano version of the song, on my new acoustic piano. Hope you enjoy it!

Bye Bye Blackbird
watch: Youtube (or use the player below)
listen: MP3

Please watch in HD for better sound!

This is simply amazing. Lithuanian conductor and composer Mindaugas Piečaitis found videos on Youtube of a very talented, musical cat, Nora the Piano Cat and decided to write a concerto for her.

The concerto, called CATcerto (web site) was first performed by Nora and the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra in Lithuania on June 5th 2009. The world premiere is available on Youtube (or by using the player below).

It is quite a musical feat to conduct an orchestra along with a cat! Piečaitis writes:

The problems of the performance of this atypical piece became clear during its first rehearsals. It is not very easy to guess what the cat is playing, so that the video material must be studied very closely and be oriented in the accompaniment not only by what the soloist is playing, but also by the movements she makes beforehand. This became a particular challenge for the orchestra.

Nor was it simple to rehearse the nearly minute-long prelude to the piece, in which the main themes of the piece are presented, with the soloist calmly sitting at the piano and »waiting« for her entrance cue. If I started the piece just 3–4 seconds too early or too late, it would be impossible to avoid a collapse. This risk truly raises your blood pressure.

Video material does not »breathe«, so that you cannot exchange a glance with the soloist and must unconditionally adapt to her.

Nora the Piano Cat writes in her artist’s statement:

I would like to thank Mr Piečaitis for giving me the opportunity to show the entire world that a cat concert pianist can indeed play beautiful music with an orchestra. It is the mission of every great artist like me to inspire others to create. If I have inspired even one person to write music, or learn an instrument, than I will have lived a meaningful life.

I love this video – it is musically interesting, beautiful, and very creative and inspiring.

Here is a video of young British jazz sensation Jamie Cullum performing the Cole Porter tune “Just One of Those Things” on July 7th 2009 at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Watch on Youtube or use the player below.

I really like his piano solo!

I made a video of myself performing the song Tune Up by Miles Davis.

Feel free to watch on Youtube by clicking here, or use the player below. It was the first take, and I think that some of the ideas I came up with are pretty interesting.

Also check out Daniel Muniz (guitar) performing Tune Up with Jacob Teichroew (tenor saxophone) and Petros Klampanis (bass) in this excellent Youtube video. (player also included below).

Two weeks ago, Gio Escueta and I made a video of us performing the jazz standard My Foolish Heart. Click here to view the video on Youtube, or feel free to use the player below.

If you’d like to download the MP3 of the performance, feel free to grab it here.

> My Foolish Heart (MP3 time 3:34) – as performed by Gio Escueta (vocals) and Geoff Peters (piano)

This tune is a popular jazz standard that has been recorded by many jazz greats. Wikipedia has more info (click here); here is a brief excerpt:

Gordon Jenkins’s recording of “My Foolish Heart” reached the top ten on the charts. However, Billy Eckstine’s version became a million seller, spending 19 weeks on the charts and peaking at #6. Later recordings were made of this standard by numerous artists, including Bill Evans, Joe Williams with George Shearing, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, Carmen McRae,Elkie Brooks. Astrud Gilberto and Mel Tormé. More recently, “My Foolish Heart” has been covered by pianists Liz Story and Keith Jarrett, guitarists John McLaughlin and John Abercrombie, Charlie Haden’s Quartet West, singers Kurt Elling, Al Jarreau, Jane Monheit and Ann Hampton Callaway, a capella quartet The Idea of North, and the Ska band “The Positive Downside.” In 1963, the song made the top 100 in a doo-wop version by the Demensions.

Here is a link to the Kurt Elling version, which is one of my favorite tracks at the moment. I’ve included an embedded player below:

I’m excited that Kurt Elling is coming to the Vancouver International Jazz Festival this year (which runs June 26th to July 5, 2009). Kurt Elling’s concert in Vancouver is on July 3rd 2009 at the Centre for Performing Arts (click here for concert details).

Update: May 2nd 2009: I found a great Youtube video of Kurt Elling performing My Foolish Heart live in Paris (click here to view or use the player below).

Last weekend I wrote a new song, it’s called I Spy, and it starts off with a “haunting minor” mysterious opening, builds some tension, and then has a cool major-7 bridge section which I really like.

I made a recording of it which you can view in the Youtube video player below or view on Youtube directly by clicking here. At the end of the video I pick up the microphone and give a short musical discussion about the melody and chords.

If you’d like a free MP3 of the recording feel free to download it from here.

My friend Gio Escueta wrote an emotional pop song called Lonely Days and we recorded a performance of it in a Youtube video last night. (I’m playing piano in the video and Gio is singing).

Please click here to view on Youtube or feel free to use the player below.

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]

A bunch of updates relating to music and the web… hope you enjoy!

SearchMe.com – legal loophole opens door to amazing music search engine

I came across SearchMe, a really neat free/legal music search engine that lets you listen to full versions of the songs. I don’t know how it’s possible for this site to exist, but apparently they get their music through Imeem widgets, and Imeem has a licensing agreement with four major record labels, and there is some kind of loophole in their licensing agreement which allows a site like SearchMe to exist.

To access the site, go to www.searchme.com and click on Music. I was able to find really rare stuff on there, such as the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack by Yoko Kanno, Ahmad Jamal’s 2008 album entitled It’s Magic, some Kenny Barron albums, some Roy Hargrove live tracks – it’s pretty much endless! It also lets you share the songs. For example, click here to listen to one of my favorite Ahmad Jamal jazz piano trio tracks, a song called Arabesque from his album It’s Magic.

Henry Hey and Sarah Palin – jazz piano brilliance mixed with politics

In other news, I discovered the music of New York jazz pianist Henry Hey. I was browsing the web and saw a link to a YouTube video about Sarah Palin singing along with a jazz piano accompianist (click here), and was intrigued. It turns out that pianist Henry Hey took a video of a Palin interview and added piano behind her words, in perfect time with her vocal rhythm and intonation. I thought to myself, “this is where Jazz Piano meets political activism” – from a musical and political standpoint this video is pure genius.

So the result of all this Youtubing is that I went over to Henry Hey’s record label Nineteen Eight records (click here) and bought his 2008 piano trio album entitled Watershed. It costs $9 USD for the whole album as a digital download, and is available in non-DRM MP3 format (which let you freely copy to any of your devices or computers to enjoy the music wherever you are: but of course instead of copying to friends you should encourage them to buy their own copy from the web site to support the artist).

If you’d like to listen to some of Henry Hey’s music, check out his myspace page (click here).

Youtube video of myself performing Chick Corea tune

Also, in the past few weeks I have been working on learning the wonderful Chick Corea tune, entitled “Windows”. I mostly know it from his incredible 1988 album Now He Sings Now He Sobs.

Last weekend I made a Youtube video of myself performing my own improvised arrangement of Windows (click here to view), and the comments I have been getting are really encouraging.

dugin27 writes:

I don’t know how much money you’re going to make playing piano but I know enough to say that you’re goning to have one hell of a fine time with that instrument for the rest of your life. Bravo and best of luck. Bud

drmhouse writes:

Very nice playing… you love to just play and it’s fun as hell to watch.

I’m really enjoying this whole Internet thing, to be able to share my music with people around the world, and learn from other talented people by watching their music too, it’s the greatest thing! Many interesting years ahead!!

Geof just emailed me a link to an amazing Flash animation that goes along with Coltrane’s famous Giant Steps solo (click here).

When I was playing saxophone I attempted to transcribe that entire famous solo and play it note-for-note, but I only managed to transcribe the first 30 seconds of it (that took several weeks) before I moved on to other things (and piano). It’s kind of like a “holy grail” for saxophone players, and many professionals learn and memorize that complete solo, and use it to keep their fingers in shape. It’s even more amazing to think that Coltrane was improvising it. And the chord structure for Giant Steps is one of the most difficult ones to master.

I tried to learn that song on piano, and do my own improvising on it, and you can listen to my version on my musical sketchbook (click here).