B-Blog

“Big Band Antics Worth the Trip!”

Wed, 1 Sep 2010 15:20:46 -0400

This past August I organized a series of concerts at my musical home in Baltimore, Joe Squared, that occurred every sunday night for the first four sundays of the month (August had five sundays). I called it “The Sunday Night Gun Show with Brad Gunson and Orchestra” (or “Rockestra”, sometimes for fun). I created a whole new band of some of my favorite musicians that performed my songs and arrangements. Each week we performed two wild late night sets. It took me a lot of time to organize the music, the band, and promote during June and July. I tried some new things and relied on some old trusty things. It was a wild ride for me and I feel so excited and accomplished to have made something this big happen!

Baltimore is a great town. There are lot of really talented people doing some incredible things there for very little reward or recognition. It has always seemed to me like a scene that happens despite the scene. In this case, I was fortunate to call upon some incredible musicians to populate the band and invite some featured guests who I have noticed doing good work to participate in my show.

Bus to Baltimore

Mon, 9 Aug 2010 16:20:27 -0400

I haven’t written in this blog for over a year. My time has been busy writing, performing, producing videos, and job hunting. I’m on a bus back to New York City right now so I have a few minutes to write....

This summer has been really wild, creative, emotional, and rigorous. I am involved in a lot of great projects at the moment. My last year at NYU was so intense. I accomplished a lot musically with the aid of the university community, but I was so busy there that as summer approached I kind of shot out of there like a shotgun blast that spread out really quickly and is still dissipating.

My band Gunson Roses played a bunch of gigs and it has developed into something I really enjoy, we have some more shows coming up. Come enjoy it too.

I’ve been playing in some other folks bands and trying to contribute compositions and arrangements for those groups as well. Two bands in particular that are playing great right now are both lead by great trumpet players out of NYC. Jason Prover has a killer traditional jazz band that I play trombone in with an assortment of players including guitarist and banjo player Greg Englar, that has been playing Dixieland and Swing with a lot of success. It’s great to play in a band that lots of people from all walks of life immediately respond to. A highlight included playing in Louis Armstrong’s garden in Queens and touring his house.
Another great trumpet player and bandleader that I have been playing a lot with is Jon Lijoi. Him and his younger saxophone playing brother Chris have been developing a great funk band that plays original music and transcriptions of classic funk tunes with a live show the includes old zombie and horror films. I shot lots of video of these two bands and wrote some music with each of these bands in mind. I hope they both grow with more success.

All summer I have been also preparing for a set of shows that I’m halfway through right now: The Sunday Night Gun Show at Joe Squared. I felt really happy with my graduate recital which went down in March. I wrote a lot of music for two sets: one with my rock quartet Gunson Roses and one with a jazz orchestra with lots of guests. I combined the vibe of the two sets, shrank the jazz orchestra or enlarged Gunson Roses for what I call The Big Gun Show which is a 5 peice horn section with a full rhythm section and lots of guests including singers, MC’s, instrumentalists, and composers. The first two shows have felt great. The band is one of the best I have ever assembled with musicians I’ve known for years and a few I recently just met. I can’t thank them enough. The show doesn’t even pay enough to cover the expenses of traveling to Baltimore every week, let alone pay the musicians or cover incidentals like food, printing music, etc. The more I do this I realize the respect and camaraderie that comes with truly devoting yourself to your art and working with other creative individuals that are willing to contribute to your vision, make something new, and have fun with as many people as possible. I hope this project can continue as well. I have some video of it. Check out the commercial I made for it.

There have been some other fun events this summer including a wild Carnival themed party I played with Memo Acevedo’s Batucada Ensemble....Some trips to Coney Island...a road trip to Baltimore, MD-Athens, GA-Nashville, TN for visits with friends and a fun wedding...

I also have one last NYU adventure coming up at the end of the summer with the amazing trumpet player and brilliant teacher Brian Lynch. A group he put together of NYU students is going to rip some Afro-Caribbean Jazz all over the Eastern-European country of Latvia at the end of August. He is amazing musician I have have followed for years and was fortunate enough to study and play with him in NYC before this. He know jazz. check him out www.brianlynchjazz.com

All this creative energy has definitely come at a price. I need to get some more lucrative work. I feel proud to call myself a musician, but ashamed to call myself a poor businessman. There are some emotional and physical stresses that come with this sort of lifestyle. The concept of “paying your dues” really hits home with me right now and I understand why some people never get past that. I believe music and commerce are two distinctly different endeavors. Sometimes their paths cross, but I don’t like the conversations they have. I’m looking forward to finding some “prospects” and some more solutions to sustainability.

To end on a high note, I am excited about the things going on right now. Life is in flux and it is good to be active. Come participate with me at one of these events coming up. Say Hello.

This blog entries was partial inspired by a blog I read by a really cool Brooklyn based artist named Cristina Ferrigno that I recently met a Puppet Jazz Club. Check out some her work here:
cristinaferrigno.blogspot.com

Six Weeks on the Road, on the Tracks, and in the Sky!

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:30:59 -0400

I have been traveling a lot over the past few weeks, mostly playing music, but also having fun catching up with old friends, making new ones, and seeing the world. Since my last blog I have been working really hard on some new music and got a chance to share it live in front of an audience and also in a recording studio. I traveled to several cities in the U.S. with my band Gunson Roses and made a new record. Then I went overseas to Europe to play with some bands out of New York University.

The first chapter of this adventure began after I finished my first year of graduate studies at NYU. I really wanted to keep the momentum of that experience going by planning a road trip with my band. The music I wrote for this project featured some of my good friends from Baltimore: Nathan Ellman-Bell on Drums and Mike Lollis on trombone as well as a fellow NYU friend, Aaron Rockers, on Trumpet. Our first gig was at Joe Squared, one of my favorite Baltimore venues in which I have been able to perform at a lot over the past few years. I took a bus down to Baltimore to rehearse with Mike and Nathan the day before the gig. The following day, I picked up Aaron at the train station and we enjoyed some crab soup and crab sandwiches in Fells Point. Then we played at Joe Squared and I was happy to see a lot of my good Baltimore friends, fans, and fellow musicians come show their support.

The next day we packed into a van and drove to Athens, Georgia to visit my good friends and fellow musicians Dave Spivey and Brent Hedrick. We got to Athens late that night, but not late enough to have a few beers with Dave and Stravinsky. We rehearsed with Dave the next day and that night enjoyed the southern hospitality of the Globe and its local and college patrons as we played our warped recipe of potluck american music stew. We ended the night on the roof, under the influences, and over the heads of the downtown scene.

Another few hours in the van and an obligatory stop at Waffle House lead us to Nashville to hang with my long time friend and collaborator John Baldwin. He has been establishing himself in the Nashville scene for the past ten years and has built an incredible recording studio on music row and produced some great music. I had been hoping to bring a project to him and work with him in his element. We set up the first night we arrived, drove through downtown, then crashed in a hotel. We woke up and recorded all day until early in the morning. Another crash and we were back in the studio to record for all day before jumping on the road back to Baltimore that night.

We made it to Baltimore early in the morning. I dropped off Nathan and Mike in Baltimore and Aaron took a bus to New York City. We had one more gig in NYC scheduled for the next day. After I slept a few hours I woke up to find out that the National Underground in NYC had doubled booked the club or completely forgot about our booking. Only after a grueling process of emails, phone calls, and myself driving to NYC and visiting the club did I secure the gig a day later than originally scheduled. This change in plans meant that Nathan, Mike, and Aaron for their own individual reasons couldn’t make the gig. I was bummed that the group that had just polished some new music and travelled the week together couldn’t perform the final gig of the tour, but I didn’t give up. I got on the phone and assembled another band of NYC musicians equally as fierce including Jackie Coleman on Trumpet, Matthias Konrad on Trombone, and Takehiro Freeman on Drums. I told as many people as I could on one days notice and we rehearsed and played a really fun show. Some of my good NYC friends came out and showed their love. I have no desire to play that club again, but I am happy to have represented the Gunson Roses music in NYC.

I was only home in NYC for two or three days before Trumpeter Jon Lijou was driving me to JFK airport with his saxophone playing brother Chris in the back seat. Jon and I traveled to Paris, France for a few days before the New York University Jazz Orchestra was scheduled to begin rehearsing with Wayne Krantz in Florence, Italy. We checked out the sites and the nightlife all the while I was writing a new arrangement of some music by this incredible guitarist Wayne Krantz for the band to play in Italy. Paris is a beautiful city and we met some cool people from Algeria on top of Montmarte and noticed a lot of transexual prostitutes walking on Avenue de Cliche where we were staying. I have no judgements for or against this demographic, I just found this to be an interesting cultural phenomenon. The food...mussels, pastries, coffee, fresh bread, wine...wonderful. After a short week or tourism we were on a plane to Florence.

New York University owns this huge villa called La Pietra which sits in the north of the city in Florence. It was once the home of a wealthy art collector and family that donated the estate to the university which now serves as a campus for NYU students. This location I stayed at for an incredible week and a half. The first four days we rehearsed most of the day with the NYU Jazz Orchestra directed by composer and arranger Rich Shemaria featuring NYC guitarist Wayne Krantz. I shared a room with a great drummer from Chile named Rodrigo Recabarren who also shared a love for Wayne’s music. While we were staying at La Pietra he organized a gig with Wayne and himself to play in Chile later this month. We played two really great gigs in Florence which you can see and hear some of on the videos page. I also went to some great jam sessions while I was in Florence and met some good Italian and German musicians.

My second week began in Florence with small group rehearsals. I played in a great band led by New York and Roman trumpeter Andy Gravish. The band also included saxophonist Nick Myers, pianist Jon Thaler, bassist Thomas White (who became my third room-mate at La Pietra), and drummer Rosie Glassman. This group had two fun gigs: one in Florence and one in Terni. I also had the opportunity to play with a great blues band led by the director of Jazz Studies at NYU Dave Schroeder and Rich Shemaria called The Scrunch. This band had a gig in Florence and then a 3 night run of late night gigs at the Grand Tour Jazz Festival in Terni. The second half of this week was spent in the mountain city of Terni which hosts and incredible jazz festival that I played a bunch a gigs at and heard other great bands play. Another highlight of the festival included hearing Wayne’s trio at an ancient colosseum. Right before the last song he invited the people from NYU to come hang on stage while the played. Most of the nights at festival ended with jam sessions at this great cafe in the heart of town.

After Terni, I headed to Rome with some muscians from New York to be a tourist. We were there for a few days visiting the ruins, the colosseum, shopping, riding motor scooters, drinking wine, eating great food, and taking photos. After Rome I flew to Berlin with another great guitarist named Dean Anbar. Berlin is a unique place. There is a different attitude there than the US or France or Italy. Dean and I played on the streets together a lot. Sometimes we had to compete for attention with these super-hero style hookers that came out at night. Beer is cheaper than water in Berlin. My flight back to NYC was shared with a Jamaican band that claims to have invented Ska music called the Skatalites. Europe is cool, but it feels great to be back in New York City.

I took that picture of the burnt Scooter in Rome. I can only imagine how it became like that.

Spring Tour & Record Date Set for Gunson Roses!

Sun, 10 May 2009 23:26:46 -0400

Hey Friends!
I have been planning a series of events for my band Gunson Roses that are about to happen in a few weeks. Over the past couple years I have amassed a pile of my own tunes and my own versions of some other peoples songs that will be featured at venues around the country. We are also going to make a record working with one of my favorite musicians and long time collaborator John Baldwin at Lake Fever Productions. The band includes one of the most versatile, tasteful, and talented drummers from the Baltimore music scene Nathan Ellman-Bell, the New York City trumpet powerhouse Aaron Rockers, and my long time friend and Trombone compadre Mike Lollis. There will also be some special guests at each of our performances that you will have to come out to find out. Check out the schedule:

Thursday May 28th @ Joe Squared in Baltimore, MD 9pm
www.myspace.com/joesquaredpizzabar

Saturday May 30th @ The Globe in Athens, GA time TBA
www.myspace.com/theglobeathens

Sunday May 31-June 2 @ Lake Fever Productions in Nashville, TN
www.lakefeverproductions.com

Friday June 5th @ The National Underground in New York, NY 9pm
www.thenationalunderground.com

This should be pretty awesome. Hopefully I’ll see you there!

B-Rad

The NYU Jazz Orchestra and Wayne Krantz Rock the Blue Note, New York!

Wed, 6 May 2009 00:07:58 -0400

This past monday May 4th, I played a very special performance with one of my favorite musicians in New York City at a premiere jazz venue called the Blue Note. I play trombone in the New York University Jazz Ensemble and over the past couple months we have been working on the music of Wayne Krantz. I have been interested in what Wayne has been doing for several years now, so I wanted to contribute as much as I could to the project. I arranged a couple of his tunes into two big band arrangements that were played at the concert. The show was awesome and we rocked the faces off of standing room only crowds for two sets. I am excited for the shows we will be playing when the band goes to Italy next month!
Check out my arrangement of some of Wayne’s music recorded live at the Blue Note: