You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Artists We're Thankful for This Year

Episode Date: November 28, 2019

Peter and Adam celebrate Thanksgiving this year by listing off seven artists that made 2019 a great year.7 Artists We're Thankful for This YearMelissa AldanaChristian McBride (check out his Open Studio course here: https://www.openstudiojazz.com/fundamentals-of-jazz-bass-and-beyond)Terence BlanchardBetty CarterGeoffrey Keezer (stay tuned for new courses coming from Geoffrey in 2020!)Michael McDonaldDOMiBONUSThis episode of You'll Hear It is sponsored by Anytune. If you want to improve your jazz playing and transcription skills, Anytune is the #1 tool you need. Just load any track you want into the app, and Anytune allows you to change the speed, loop sections, change the pitch to a different key, and so much more. For more information, go to https://anytune.us/youllhearit/Want every Open Studio course for free? That's right - over 300 hours and 1200 lessons can be yours with free lifetime access! All you have to do is enter Open Studio's 2019 Holiday Giveaway. Go to https://learn.openstudiojazz.com/giveaway/, or watch this video of Peter for more info: https://youtu.be/KsdhVXE5ovILike those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey. On a scale of one to vegan mania, how stuffed are you with Tofurky right now? Man, I ate more to Tofurky than I thought was even available in the greater St. Louis area. Thank you very much. Is that healthy? I don't think so. I'm Adam Maness.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the ULhear podcast. Daily Jazz Advice, coming at you. Coming at you today. We are thankful that you are with us. We are thankful to have this time to get. I'm thankful to be here. I'm thankful to be.

I'm thankful to our listeners. Thankful for our listeners. For tuning in today. Thankful for our sponsor, AnyTune. Yes. AnyTune is a professional tool to help serious musicians learn and transcribe music by ear, faster and easier. A serious app for serious musicians that helps bring more joy to the grind of becoming a great jazz musician. I love the way they put that.

It truly, it takes it from grind to joy, you know. That's true. And it really does, too. Yeah, it does because it's such a, it just, it's that kind of a, it just, it's that kind of technology that just gets out the way. I mean, amazing thing. Like, you're going to have one of your music library selections loaded up into this bad boy as soon as you download this app so quickly, your mind is going to be like,

and you're going to be, the only thing about it is it's so seamless and quick to get onboarded with IndyTune is that you've got to go into practice move right away. Yeah. You know, some people like to buy a tool. Like, they're doing a home project. They're like, I've got to have the perfect tool. Now I've got to get another. I got to get set up because they want to avoid the work.

this just loads up. It's quick. It's fast. It doesn't get in the way. So you're still going to have some work to do. But it's such a joy to work with. And it just gives you that ability to transcribe. You can record your own stuff in there, too. Did you know that? I did know that. You go right in there. Record yourself. Yeah. And slow it down and transcribe yourself. What about that? Be in there with the band. It's pretty awesome, man. I've used it for, I mean, months before they were even a sponsor. I just love it so much. And, I mean, look, the Berkeley School of Music has been providing any tune to all their students for five years. That tells you all you needed. That tells you a lot right there. So check that.

I'll go to anytune. dot us slash you'll hear it. That's right. And they got some special things for you, starting at free. How about free? Is that good for Thanksgiving? That's good. That's a very good place.

Speaking of special things, you know, today is, it's the national day of thanks. But it's also traditionally the start of the Black Friday shopping season. That's right. We do have things available for sale via our open studio jazz.com. Yes. Sight, so at the end of the show, we're going to give our Yule here at listeners. We're going to drop the coupon code that you can use to save big time. Yeah, and we're not even going to, we'll let you go explore.

You're going to be very satisfied when you see what you're going to save. But yeah, we'll drop it. We did a little hint with the number one yesterday. But we thank all you guys for your interest. We're looking forward to a really fun week. We've got the new piano access pass, which is everything's going to be available for discount. We'll put it in all there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we wanted to talk today about. I love that you came up with this title. We were kind of back and forth on different things. Of course, we wanted to be, you know, we're always given thanks, but we wanted today to be special. And so we are talking about seven artists that we, and I think it's the royal we, right? It's you and I, but I think it's the you'll hear a community.

Maybe it's the jazz community. But these are just artists, you know, not the seven greatest, not even seven favorite, just seven that sort of popped off this year that we were thankful for. And, I mean, we could have done 77, no problem. For sure. So we feel a little weird pushing it out. down to seven, but we always feel a little weird, yet we do it every week.

These are just artists that stood out, you know, to me anyway, as people I'd seen over the year or I know that you have relationships with that made the year just a little bit better. Yeah. And like you said, there could be 70 of these people, but these are some standouts. And I just realized, yeah, we did kind of have personal, it's a little bit self-serving now that I'm looking at it, but not totally. Isn't this whole podcast a little bit self-serving? No, we're serving the people.

You want to start with number one? So number one is Melissa Aldana. Bam. Tenor saxophonist, young tenor saxophonist from Chile. Yes. And I saw her twice live this year. Actually, saw her a few times, but in two different settings. And both times it really just like renewed my spirit.

You know what I mean? It was one of those like life-affirming concerts. Both times I saw her just that she's really on another level right now. She's doing some super hip stuff. you could tell she's in a growth period. You know what I'm saying? Or she's pushing hard. You could just tell.

Yeah, she's getting confident. She's getting more and more confident. I saw her with her own band, with Tommy Crane and Sam Harrison. It was like so killing. Yep. And I just really appreciate her. Just a little Melissa Aldana appreciation thread right now.

Absolutely. The future jazz and great hands. And I'll just throw out a quick story too. I heard it several times as well. And also happened to be on the I at the Madeira Jazz Festival on the Loll. island off of Portugal there, the Portuguese island. And she was playing, I think the next night, and she came out to hear us play with Diane

Reeves, and, like, right before we went out and said, hey, gave her hug. And then I was like, you got your horn? She's like, yeah. I was like, you want to sit in? And she was like, oh, I'd love to. And, I mean, I can't remember what we played because it was something kind of a, that we had just been throwing together. But I was, I kind of had the feeling.

I was like, why don't you, I said, I'm going to see if Diane wants to call you up on whatever that last tune is, if it's cool. And I was like, I'm going to write down the four chords, but I said, we don't have a charter or anything. She's like, okay, no problem. Like, she was just fearless. We didn't rehearse it. And she came out and just killed it. Sure. She's the real deal. She is the real deal. She's a real deal. Yeah. Cool. Okay, number two, we have Christian McBride. Oh, yeah. Affectionately known as McBreezy and McBee. He has many names. But yeah, so Chris is like,

you know, I always appreciate Christian because he, you know, the bass playing, of course, the wonderful chorus he did for us. It's so inspirational. But he also is like doing all this other stuff and doing it at such a high level. Newport Jazz Festival. He's the music direct, no, artistic director. Artistic director.

Of the Newport Festival, taking over from George Ween. I mean, who's like had it since 1956 when Christian was not even a glint in his parents' eyes. That's right. So, you know, I'm so proud of him, but so appreciative of him. And he's such a giver to the jazz and music community. He's such a wonderful spirit and a real leader for us. That's why I was happy to see him on this list because he really has become the real deal thought leader in our genre.

Yep. Yeah. Number three, we have Terrence Blanchard, trumpeter, composer, amazing musician, amazing person. Playing around the corner. He's playing around the corner last week. He was here with his E-Collective, which is an incredible band. And, you know, I was lucky enough to play the premiere of his new opera here at Opera Theater, St. Louis. Fire shut up in my bones based off the memoir by Charles Blow.

And I'm just like, every time I'm around him, I'm a little pie-eyed, a little like in awe of his talent. And, you know, it opened to rave, beyond rave reviews here locally, you know, New York Times and Los Angeles Times and stuff. And it's just been picked up by the Metropolitan Opera to be featured, I think, next season. Hit me up. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Big shout out. Number three. We can push up to number one, Terrence. That's right. I was very proud to be involved with about 45 minutes of one of the rehearsals.

But that's a whole other story. I think we covered that one already. Great. Okay, number four, Betty Carter. Now, we, you know, Betty Carter is a legend, and she can always be on a list of, like, seven greatest anything related to music or jazz. But I put her out there because I kind of felt like, I mean, Betty Carter, we lost her quite a few years ago now. But I had a chance to play with it when I was very young and among many other great musicians that I'm so proud to be part of the lineage. Greg Hutchinson and Benny Green, Mulder Miller, Kenny Washington, you know, Jerry Allen. I mean, so many great musicians. Like, just being part of that, you know, that family is a wonderful thing.

But I got to kind of reconnect with it a little bit this year at the Kennedy Center. And I'm actually going to do it next year as well. The Jazz Ahead Educational Symposium that Betty Carter herself started some 20 years ago. How cool is that? Yeah, so a very intensive program for two weeks that I did in May with some other great instructors, really in the spirit of Betty. I mean, we were all, like, kind of just basking in the glow of Betty's wonderful concepts on music. We've talked about it before, and we will again. But thank you, Betty.

Bed car. That was her nickname. Amazing. Number five is Jeffrey Kiser. Who? Our own Jeffrey Kieser, artists, extraordinary with open studio, two-handed pianists. I mean, he is, he's amazing every year. And he's incredible to listen to and watch play.

But this year, we got to spend a lot more time of Keys. And he was around here. He made a course for us, Advanced Jazz Piano Concepts that was released early this year. And I've been working with him closely on a new course and arranging a composition chorus and an album, a corresponding album that he's making. We just recorded up at the bunker in Brooklyn.

Shout out to Aaron and everybody out there. Yep. And it's going to pop off sometime in early 2020. and watching him write this album, watching him arrange it, watching him work the session. One day session, by the way, seven tunes, one day, lots of moving parts and didn't get frazzled once. I mean, and then, you know, it's producing everything

and then goes in and just plays piano better than almost anybody could ever. You know what I mean? It's like, it's so high level. So when Art Blake, he asked him to play in his band when he was like 18 years old, that was a smart idea. I think it was good on Art's part. He was saying something. Art knew what he was talking about.

But just shout out to Keyes are much appreciation for all you do. Keys. Just had a birthday. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, number six, we have Michael McDonald. Keith, Fogoodin. Yeah.

Michael McDonald's St. Louis' own. Ferguson's own, you know, might seem a little bit odd on this list. But we got a chance together, or we were kind of, well, we were on separate tunes. He's out of place. Yeah. On this list. Minute by minute. We're going to get dinged and kicked off YouTube now.

He's number six. He's number six and, you know, just the consummate artist. I've always loved his music. I didn't know him at all. We got to do play with him on a concert that was really honoring him. It was kind of a homecoming thing at the Two Hill, beautiful big concert here on St. Louis. And he just killed it. And it just reminds you of no matter what style of music you're playing, how wonderful it is to bask in just the excellence and professionalism of somebody that is so good, but it's so authentic.

You know, like we were kind of looking at each other like, you know, with wide eyes everybody. There was a bunch of great musicians there. As soon as he started in the rehearsal, and it's like, it sounds like, I was like, man, that guy sings like Michael McDowell. I was like, did they turn on the radio? Because it sounds like, I mean,

is it hit being made up in him? But no, to that point, he was, he was perfect the entire. I mean, it was so solid and sounds like him and has such an original voice. And not like perfect, like, oh, he's playing it safe and he brought the keys out. No, no, no. He was killing, he was going for it, playing keys,

and he's legit. He's legit and super humble and nice cad, just really generous with his time. And that hair. And, yeah, Silver Fox. He's like the silver cougar, man. All right, so good stuff. Michael McDonald's.

So that's number six. Give us our number seven. Oh, you know what? We're going to go bonus. We're going to go bonus. Because this Thanksgiving. We want to give the people. So we're going to do seven.

Then we're going to talk a little bit. Then we're going to go bonus next level. Number seven is a very young French keys player named Domi. Now, Domi is a complete monster on the keys. She is one of the most incredible technical. keyboardist I've ever seen ever talk about a two-handed pianist. She can do... She's like a seven-handed piano. She's like a seven-handed pianist.

If you haven't checked out Domi, go to like Instagram especially, she's very active on that. You know, she's like... She's probably on Snapchat, TikTok, all that. And she's like bouncing around and she's, you know, brightly dressed. How old is she? I mean, she's 18 or 19 or something. And she plays with this drummer, this like 15 or 16-year-old drummer from Texas named J.D. Beck. They have the little duos or whatever. And they're both such little monsters that it's just so much fun.

I got caught up. in some domy fever this year. You got domi-ed. I'm just appreciative for the excitement. Domi-a-a-gratto, Mr. Rabat. That's what you were singing.

I mean, I'm just looking forward to years to come from her. Yeah, and I was going to say, you know, it's easy for people to say, like, she's the young female Jacob Collier, but might as I say, Jacob Collier's the older,

no, okay. I mean, no, she's her own thing. She is her own person, for sure. Yep. She doesn't sound like almost anybody. I mean, it's great. And, like, another young artist here just like Melissa Aldano, that you can hear,

you can track her progress, and it's exciting because you can hear the work. Yeah, Melissa's kind of next level already. For sure. Yeah, I think, so for this list, just as you can see, we really, this is a random, it's not random in terms of like we're very thankful and we, you know, we love all these artists,

but we're not trying to say Michael McDonald, you know, Domi's on the level of Michael. It's not about that. These are all artists at different stages of the journey. These are just people that, you know, we're appreciative of this year. But it's fun and it's a great reminder, and I'm so glad that you put Domi in that. I wouldn't even thought of her. But, you know, it's so fun. Like this art, this music, jazz, improvisation, just great art and people trying to pursue that. Like, that brings, truly brings. This sounds corny, but it's Thanksgiving. That brings people together. You know what I'm saying? And it is exciting to see a young player and an older player and in the middle of the journey, because they're all pursuing that excellence and that same thing. And that's really what brings it all together. And at the Michael McDonald concert, remember we had Brian Owen's young son got up and sang out and sang.

for a quick minute with, I mean, it was, it was a love fest, as it should be. So there you go. That's seven artists we are thankful for. Bam. Bam. Now, are we saving the bonus? We're going to save the bonus. We're going to do a little bit of, um, since it's Thanksgiving, as we mentioned, boom, boom, boom.

Oh, let's give out the coupon code now. Number one. Listen. That's it. So it's listen. It's listen. Is it number one listen? No, it's just listen.

Oh, just listen. Got it. Not just listen. No. L-I-S-T-E-N. Boy confusing everything. Yeah. Listen.

Caps, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Listen, that's the coupon code. You're going to get, you know, because we're still a little in advance, I don't really. It's just put it in. You're going to be happy.

You'll get the biggest discount of anybody getting any discounts. So don't, like, spread it all around. You know what I'm saying? This is for you guys. This is a little bit of love for them. Oh, no. Spread it around. Oh, spread it around.

Okay, fine. Tell everybody. So, and you can still sign up for the giveaway. Yep. You do not have to make a purchase. You do not. You do not. make a purchase you get extra entries which is fun you get a bunch of entries um so check that out that's at

open studio jazz.com and everything is on sale i mean that's like we we're gonna hold back some stuff we're like now it's all available so we hope you enjoy that um we all have a couple of days now i'm actually going to dig into uh the keezer's second course i didn't even tell you about this um because we're always running and stuff and we now we have a few days off a little bit of a holiday i'm looking forward to jumping into some of that because i've seen it i mean i was here when we i just never practiced it i never have time oh dude it's good i'm really looking forward to that it's good So let's do What else do we got?

I think that's it. Piano Access Pass. That's going to be part of that big day. That's actually, so the discount we're giving on all this for the All Access Pass and the Piano Access Pass, which is brand new, all of our piano courses, just the piano courses.

This is such an amazing deal on the yearly. You're going to want to jump on that because it will not be, we're never going to be able to offer it for this low. No, we don't discount the membership. No, we just don't do that. So just for these next couple of days. So check that out. And then what's our number?

what's our bonus? Well, we had someone on there who would have been a great choice, but I just something occurred to me that happened this year that I think needs attention. Yeah. Artists that I know we're both

extremely thankful for that we lost this year. Well, it was actually last year, but it was within the last year. It was within the last year, yeah, yeah. It's Roy Hargrove. And just, you know, the last 12 months without him is felt.

Absolutely. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And I think, you know, being thankful, you know, the legacy that he leaves with his, not only his music, but the, the generations of trumpeter, the generation of trumpeters that has come along and the outpouring that I, you know, we hear personally, locally and internationally. I mean, I forget, just because I knew him for so long and we were so young when we met and we were the same age, I forget, like, what an impact in these two short number of years, he didn't even make it to 50. but the impact that he made I'm very thankful for that

I would have loved for him to still be here but the fact that he left the the compositional and the recorded legacy but he inspired a whole I mean Sean Jones

I was talking with him and Sean was starting to cry talking about Roy he's like man he inspired me in a way you know and I was think of like that same generation but Roy was a leader a quiet leader

not quiet with the trumpet but quiet you know in terms of like speaking and you should do that he led by example and still does. For trumpet players and for all of us. For all of us. I mean, inspiration to me, inspiration to everyone I know essentially. And a serious, serious, joyful and serious musician in a way that really brings out the best of jazz.

You know, we know other people like that, but none did it better than him. So thank you, Roy and RIP. And thanks to all you guys. Have a happy holiday wherever you are in the world. And we will see you tomorrow right here at the You'll Hear a podcast. And until tomorrow. You'll hear it.