Duo Chronicles

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Well, we made it.  52 weeks later, we've put up a new video every single Tuesday.  Every week, a new arrangement, a new recording, a new video, and most of the time, a new composition altogether...

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For the past couple of weeks, I've been at Portland Center Stage (http://www.pcs.org/) as part of the orchestra for a production of the "25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (http://www.pcs.org/spellingbee/)."  The show is a musical comedy, following...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CJHI32P5l8

This week continues my trend of writing pieces that were influenced by specific writers or compositions.  "Another Noon" was heavily influenced by a piece called "Hi Noon" by Justin Morell, a guitarist that I've been playing with in the Damian Erskine P...

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This week's video was shot at the home of a friend who has a very nice Steinway piano and some colorful artwork. Location recording can be more tricky logistically, but having done this for a few weeks now everything went surprisingly smoothly...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdPy9xxdbbY

When I was thinking of possible titles for this piece of music, flow is a word that kept coming to mind. Flow, in how it relates to water and also the flow of information or knowledge. By definition the word cascade fits perfectly. One of the definitions...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6jlIPVL7MQ

This week's video is once again the product of some recent inspirations that have been working their way into both my writing and my playing -- everything from playing Terry Riley with Third Angle to playing Damian Erskine's music for his upcoming CD rel...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srH3sPRcM1Q

This piece is different than what we've done before.

As I mentioned in Week 28 (http://duochronicles.com/2010/03/09/week-28-off-kilter/), some of the performances from Norwegian groups at the Portland Jazz Festival (http://pdxjazz.com) inspired me to exp...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAyECzvROzA

The initial idea for "Common Ground" came pretty quickly and then details like form and instrumentation came together more slowly. A few things come to mind about this tune. One, is how ideas come about in the composing process. I have tried off and on t...

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QaI2Be0wh0

This week's Duo Chronicles video is a departure from what we've done before. Instead of doing a live recording of the tune, we chose to record a basic track of just piano and saxophone, and then layer more parts on top of it.  The whole process took qui...