With my Idyllwild roommates (left to right: Chloe Drazen, Michelle Webb, me, Sarah Corza) My final year of high school has finally begun — after a great summer spending time in New York (which you may have read about earlier; if not, check it out) and at the Idyllwild Arts Academy Summer Jazz Workshop (which [...]
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Vijay Iyer had a distinctly different demeanor from many musicians that I’ve met in the past. It wasn’t that difficult to spot him from my table when I arrived at the Birdland Jazz Club — he looked exactly the way I’d seen him in pictures: sharp, clean-cut, emanating professionalism. In fact, his image was so [...]
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Tonight was definitely a contrast to the Fred Hersch show I went to yesterday night — I was at the Blue Note to hear the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band. I learned several things at the Village Vanguard show, one of which being the necessity of showing up early. I forgot to mention (embarrassingly enough) that [...]
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The Village Vanguard immediately fulfilled some of my expectations the moment I went through that red door. It was crowded with people — a few college students, but mostly those beyond twice my age — nearly all the way to the back of the room by the time I arrived. It was frozen in time, [...]
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One thing’s for sure: New York City is nothing like home. There’s really no way I can describe the huge shift from stepping out of my house to trimmed lawns and white houses to bustling crowds of people and the incessant honks of car horns. And there’s absolutely always something to do here. The lights [...]
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The title of this post says it all: I’m off to New York City. Tomorrow morning I’m leaving at about 4:30 AM to catch a morning flight on Virgin Airlines with my family to New York City with two main goals in mind: (a) tour colleges and (b) check out the NYC jazz scene. But [...]
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Last night I had the privilege of meeting bass player Kaveh Rastegar and drummer Jaydon Bean (as well as my teacher, Mark Nilan Jr.) at the Watermark on Main in Ventura. Let me tell you, it was quite the experience just watching the three musicians set up in such a tiny venue — a small [...]
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After a grueling two weeks with four AP tests, I can finally open my computer for reasons other than the College Board. But still, these past two weeks were also a collection of some valuable experiences in jazz. (Not to mention that the last few months of life in front of AP review books and [...]
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It’s thirty minutes before we leave for Newbury Park: thirty-six of us are packed into our small jazz rehearsal room, staring at the unbelievable amount of equipment in disbelief. Three amps. Forty music folders. Two keyboards. A drum set. Two basses. Some of us take a slightly extended trip to the restroom. Some of us [...]
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Time is a common problem in jazz band. Before competitions, we constantly fret over time — is the music too long? do we have enough of it? are we speeding up? are we slowing down? But yesterday, my jazz director made an interesting remark: “If I catch anyone playing hacky-sack in the courtyard while we’re [...]
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