On Monday, February 2nd, we played a concert in Durham, NH at the University of NH. The band featured Dave Liebman on soprano, tenor and indian flute, Matt Wilson on drums, David Clark on acoustic bass and myself on vibes, marimba and piano. We performed music from Depth of Emotion as well as some new originals a few standards.

It was a treat to create music on the stage along with Lieb, Matt and David. They all played with so much focus, intensity and listening. There was a lot of interaction and support from everyone. It was one long musical conversation throughout the two sets of music. A treat for me was playing a duet version of "Black Orpheus" with Lieb starting out on indian flute. Another highlight was Lieb playing some burning choruses on "Along Together" on tenor along with beautiful support from Matt and David.

All in all, it was a wonderful night. Fortunately, the night was recorded and videotaped.

My signature mallet from Vic Firth is now available. It took us well over a year to design and fine tune the details, but I'm happy with the outcome. The goal was to try to get a mallet that sounded fat and round, projected a big sound and yet had clarity even at a soft volume level. The priority for me is clarity and a clean articulation while retaining fullness. Judging from the feedback so far, I think we accomplished that.

I think the key is to maintain a wide dynamic level and trying to avoid playing too loud where one loses the dynamics and nuance of the instrument. For amplification, I generally use two microphones suspended above the vibes. I'm not a big fan of the pickups on the bars. I continue to work on trying to incorporate the use all 4 mallets. Many times, the right hand inside mallet and left hand outside mallet are underused.

I've also been working on trying to get more varied articulation out of the instrument. I've been experimenting with using more deadstrokes lately especially in the left hand accompaniment. It seems to really help the clarity of the parts and makes for more interesting sounds.

To me, I enjoy playing the vibes as if I’m playing a classical piece (i.e. The Bach Sonatas and Partitas) in my office at Berklee (with a light touch, a wide dynamic range and varied articulation). If we lose the nuance, articulation and dynamics, we lose a great deal. We don’t have many of the expressive techniques of a sax, trumpet, violin, etc. Consequently, we can’t afford to lose dynamics and the subtle nuances of the instrument.

I enjoy playing and listening to music that is devoid of licks and seems to evolve with a focus on interaction and spontaneity. I think the joy in improvising is in letting the music develop from a simple idea or motive as opposed to playing licks and clichés. I listen for melodic clarity in the line, the development of motives and the spontaneity and unpredictability of the creative process of improvisation. This leads me to discuss my thoughts on vocalists.

I'm generally not a big fan of most vocalists. I do appreciate and respect the vocalist who really knows the music and the mechanics of music. Unfortunately, so often, once you get a vocalist in the picture, the music turns into show biz versus music. The music loses its depth and the music and the process of creating the music turns superficial. Another thing that is unfortunate is the fact that the jazz trade magazines lean towards putting the vocalists on the covers of the magazines. I cringe when I see a vocalist on the cover of a magazine or CD cover posing in a provocative manner. Not only is it degrading to the vocalist, at the same time it completely degrades the music we call Jazz.

Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovich and Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner. Both books cover some very deep thoughts and concepts on the process of creative improvisation.

I listen to a lot of piano players from as far back as Fats Waller and Art Tatum all the way up to the present. Some of my favorite jazz pianists are Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Brad Melhdau. One of my favorite Mehldau recordings is The Art of the Trio, Songs Volume 3. The recording is a perfect illustration of the creative art of improvisation devoid of clichés, filled with nuance and subtlety. The trio, rounded out by drummer Jorge Rossy and bassist Larry Grenadier, exhibits sensitivity, lots of interaction and a very high degree of musicality.

I probably listen to as much classical music as I listen to jazz. Some of my favorite classical pianists would be Horowitz, Rubinstein, Arrau, Richter, Gilels, Gould, Brendel....there's so many great classical pianists. The classical pianists have so much depth to their sound and are great models for truly playing the piano.

I use the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Violin extensively as well as music from Baroque guitar books, piano music from Bach like the 2 Part Inventions, Chorales (good for working on dampening) and Minuets. Develop Sight Reading (published by Charles Colin) is a book I recommend for sight reading. It’s includes a good deal of dynamics and varied articulation, so it’s very effective for developing a nice sound filled with dynamics, articulation and other nuances. We spend some of the lesson on reading, technique and playing classical pieces. In addition, we also work on playing tunes which addresses topics such as melodic embellishment, improvisation, comping and solo playing.