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4/10/07
The Ryan Cohan Quartet (Ryan Cohan, piano, Geof Bradfield, saxes, Kobie Watkins, Drums, Lorin Cohen, Bass) has been selected by Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center to tour internationally as part of the 2007-08 Rhythm Road Program! Stay tuned for more details, including tour dates and countries!
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The fall has been an eventful one. At the end of August I went into the studio to play on Ryan Cohan’s forthcoming sextet recording. Coming off a weekend of gigs at the Green Mill, we were all fired up going into Hinge. The group was killing it, with Bob Sheppard in from LA on woodwinds, along with Geof Bradfield, Tito Carillo, Kobie Watkins and Ryan on piano. Look for the record, “One Sky” coming soon.
In September I debuted a new Latin jazz trio I’m calling “Trio Descarga”. The instrumentation is really stripped down: bass, flute and percussion. For these gigs the group consisted of me, Willie Garcia on Flute and Tenor Sax and Jean Leroy on percussion. We did two gigs for the Lincoln Park Cultural Center and one for the nascent and promising non-profit arts organization Arts at Large (www.artsatlarge.net). I hope to take the group into the studio very soon.
September was also exciting because I got the chance to do three gigs with master saxophonist and Chicago treasure Von Freeman at his long time Tuesday night haunt at the New Apartment Lounge. He is a deep storyteller on his instrument, and it was an honor to share the bandstand with this icon of jazz history (Von has recorded with Bird, and has played with Billie Holliday and everyone else). I got to play for his 84th Birthday party gig-seeing Von still so inspired by music at 84 reinforced to me that music is a veritable fountain of youth, and we musicians are privileged to have that in our lives.
The first week of November I went out to Riverside, California to give a clinic and concert with guitarist Peter Curtis at Riverside Community College. Peter is a dear friend, and I really appreciate him bringing me out. This little college has some really talented students.
That’s it for now…
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