End of an Era

So I"m moving over to Tumblr. I'll leave a link up on here. Follow me to a new fantastic place of media integration.

http://costumegiggey.tumblr.com/

Boy of Summer

So I've been away from the blog. I've been trying to come up with some bloggerific way to say goodbye to Orlando, express my fountain of emotions from my visit with Marley, and throw in some nerdy/artsy thing. I'm failing, so this is what everyone gets...

Orlando. 2 years of hard work, fun, and Disney. I met some amazing people and made some awesome friends. I could spout off a million reasons why I couldn't stay, but I could also spout off a million why I should. I'm just ready to move forward with my life and career. Orlando Shakes is an amazing theatre company full of good hard working people. It's just time for a change for me.

Visit with Marley. Best 31/2 weeks of my life. I'm ready to make us being in the same city permanent. I love her with ever fiber of my being. We went on a day trip to Elon, had a cattle call in DC, saw shows, and she graduated from college! Yay Marley!

So now some artsy/nerdy for ya. Some of you may not appreciate this part of the post, but this is what I got. Glee. I know, I know. But Phill, I thought you had taste, I thought you had intelligence. I do(mostly) and the thing about Glee that I like is certainly not the in depth characterization of shallow characters. Its the music. It hit me on the Lady Gaga episode. The arrangements for the music are sometimes brilliant. While the duet of Poker Face was pretty much crap, the group number, Bad Romance, was expertly put together with harmonies. I love the use of the stereotypical gay boy as the roll call for the piece, then the switch of solos and and group harmonizing until the stereotypical slut does an auto-tuned belt. Although the show itself is not overly inventive in its plot and writing, the music at times can be interesting and arranged in a way that provokes a new or different meaning to a song.

P.S.- Red head in Glee gets the show a 2 thumbs up.

Modern Jazz Trumpet

If you asked me or any other educated jazz listener their top 5 albums via trumpet/flugelhorn, most, if not all, would have been recorded 20+ years ago. Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue" almost always is mentioned, but the album was recorded in 1959. I loves Jazz, especially on trumpet, but there has got to be something new out there. Now I know Arturo Sandoval is still making recordings and Chris Botti is out there selling his soul to get big names to sing with him, but it's not the same. It's original composition I crave. An evolution from what has been the standard to a new one. I've been listening to this new cat, Christian Scott, and I'm impressed. New Orleans born, he composes new music about pain and heartbreak, while still continuing a long standing tradition of great Jazz performance from that city. He plays with a haunting tonality with spurts of anger. A cover of Radiohead's "Eraser", translated the alternative rock flow into a bluesy jazz riff without losing sight of the message. He brings a new voice to a scene of heavy hitters like Wynton Marsalis and makes a bold statement. Stop the rehashing. How many ways is "My Funny Valentine" or "Salt Peanuts" going to be played. Everyone knows Dizzy played Bebop best, why are you going to bring your "new" approach to it and play nothing more than an hommage to him?Also, a new thing is taking classical music and applying Jazz concepts. Wynton Marsalis is the forefront of this, having taken over "Jazz at Lincoln Center", and tirelessly replays Mozart and Beethoven. I want new music, not a new sound. No wonder people think jazz is dead. Jazz is not dead; as long as there are musicians like Christian Scott out there. Composing instead of reciting. Knowing your history is important, but so is creating your future.