I’m fortunate to be able to make a number of announcements that I feel very proud of in a blog entry that is coming much sooner than my past patterns would predict.

Relocation to Brooklyn!

As of June 30, 2014, I am officially a resident of Brooklyn, NY. The neighborhood of Bushwick is now my home; if you search for it in Google Images, it suggests a search for “hipsters.” Not even kidding about that last part.

It has long been a dream of mine to live in New York City, a city tragically underserved by musicians, and where the demand for improvised music dramatically overshadows the supply. In seriousness, though, the last two weeks of seeing all kinds of music in all sorts of venues, meeting musicians, and reconnecting with tons of old musician friends have made it clear that this move was the best choice I could have made. I’m looking forward very much to all the wonderful music I’ll have the opportunity to make in this wonderful place.

It’s with great sadness that I’m saying goodbye to Indianapolis, for now — I’ll never forget all the amazing music that I’m saying goodbye to for now. I was very glad that I had the opportunity to play with the great Frank Glover two more times before I took off, as well as my awesome trio with Greg Artry (now of Chicago) and Nick Tucker. Thankfully, the CD we recorded this last Spring will make it necessary for us to play again.

American Pianists Association’s 2015 Cole Porter Jazz Fellowship!

I am extremely honored to be named one of the five finalists for the American Pianists Association’s 2015 Cole Porter Jazz Fellowship. I was a finalist back in 2011 as well, and as well as being an intense competition, it’s also a great opportunity to meet and learn from some really wonderful pianists and people. Congratulations to the other four as well, truly amazing pianists that I am completely honored to be on some kind of list with: Christian Sands, Sullivan Fortner, Emmet Cohen, and Kris Bowers.

We played a concert at the Rubin Museum that was broadcast on WBGO — we each played music inspired by a piece of art at the museum, as well as a piece by Cole Porter. Listen here! I play at about 25 minutes in, but do yourself a favor and listen to the whole thing! Everybody played very beautifully.

Skype Lessons

I’ve figured out how to finally get a great setup with webcam, piano, and microphone together to enable me to be able to teach lessons over Skype. This provides continued lessons for some of the students I am leaving behind in my move, but also has the unexpected side effect of providing access to students who want to study piano or improvisation and are too lazy to leave the comfort of their own home (and who can blame them). For all interested parties, please go to my contact page and send me a request; I look forward to working together!

It’s been a long time since May 2012 — it turns out that I don’t have the gift for regular blogging that I thought I possessed. In fact, I went exactly against my original mission laid out in my first post to provide regular, meaningful updates instead of a static, boring website. Well, I’m happy to return here to have some news actually worth reporting.

Debut Album
My trio has finally recorded its first album! We’ve recorded it at the beginning of February, and we haven’t finished mixing it yet, but I am extremely pleased with the results, and am looking forward to releasing a debut recording — a move that, like this post, is extremely overdue! It’s a trio recording with the wonderful bassist Nick Tucker and excellent drummer Greg Artry. We’ve been playing every Thursday night at the Chatterbox the past couple of years, developing a good rapport and developing a bunch of material. The album will largely feature my original music — mostly trio, with a couple of solo piano tracks — and a couple standards. More news will come as the album progresses!

Lone Prairie

I’ve also had the great opportunity to work with the guitarist Corey Christiansen. I played keyboards, piano, and even audio synthesis programs I wrote in SuperCollider, on his new album Lone Prairie, which came out on Origin Records July 2013. The album is composed of electric jazz covers of cowboy songs, which I think makes for a pretty standard jazz release. I got to play alongside musicians I very much admire — also playing keyboards on the album was Steve Allee, Jeremy Allen on bass, Michael Spiro on percussion, and Matt Jorgenson on drums. We basically made the jazz version of a Quentin Tarantino movie, but with fewer instances of gratuitous violence and references to Sonny Chiba movies. Getting to use SuperCollider was a blast as well — I never thought I’d use any of the stuff I do in my computer music experiments on a jazz album. On the album you can hear a pantheon of weird sounds I made, including recording the end of a burning cigarette and running it through a feedback delay line, which I believe may be the first time that that’s been done on a jazz album, at least intentionally. You can buy it on Origin’s Website, iTunes, Amazon, or anywhere else quality electric cowboy jazz is sold.

Lil BUB

Those who would like to get their playing out to the most people possible should look no further than hitching their wagon to an internet-famous cat. I am the pianist on internet-cat-phenomenon Lil BUB’s Big Show, where you can hear me play synthesizer on the theme song, as well as improvise on Lil BUB’s theme song in a variety of different styles, a different one featured in each episode with guests like Steve Albini and Whoopi Goldberg. I also am playing on her Animal Planet special. In fact, Andrew W.K. is miming my piano part, banged out on the semi-tuned piano in Bloomington’s Russian Recording.

Other Gigs

I’ve had the excellent fortune to play with a number of musicians touring through the Midwest the past two years — these include Wycliffe Gordon, Tessa Souter, Nicole Henry, Alexis Cole, and even ELZHI of Slum Village.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more news!