Member

Hi All,

In Newsweek online, there's an article call "Jazz is Dead. Long Live Jazz" (see http://www.newsweek.com/id/226331). I'm not sure I can decode a coherent message from the article, but one of the comments seems to be about the friction between jazz's pop/dance music roots and it's art music present (and arguably last 40-50 years or so), and judging the quality of today's jazz vs. yesterday's on the basis of popularity is the wrong approach. It also seems to me that the article does better with "Jazz is Dead" than it does with "Long Live Jazz".

Andrew is a freshman at the University of the Arts. And he's a hard working freshman! He came to the vibe hang today and played minority. Check it out!

Man we had a great vibe hang today! Great players and great music! It seemed like we had the whole world together. I counted France, Netherlands, Germany, USA, China and Australia. Pretty cool huh?

It's like we have this growing community now of vibe players who love the instrument and want to play it well. That's really cool to me.

David Friedman said something great about the site. He said, the site was built around my hard work, and also vibe players with passion and desire. (Something like that). That floored me and it was the truth.

I spent a few days with James Whiting, definitely an up and coming vibe player. James is a hard worker and picks up things fast! We had 2 great lessons here in Philadelphia, and he was at the vibe hang today also.

I asked James to play something so I could introduce him on the site.

So check him out!

Yili is from China and plays in the Ganzouh Symphony. She's a great percussionist and the orchestra sent her here to widen her skills, which is totally cool! She's a great percussionist already and one that is very open minded!

She's studying with Don Liuzzi (timp), Marc Dicciani and myself and has been here for almost 3 months.

Check her out playing the Friedman Dampening and Pedaling Etude No. 10.

The cool thing about this etude is that the pedal is down the whole time.

Ella is the best! Check her solos and her intro here. The band is happening also.

Sounds like her voice is a little tired. But check this out. You talk about ears!!!!

Check Out Terry Gibbs' Solo!

SMOKINNNNNNN

Man he's in great shape!

Listen to when he has the whole band playing 16s. Everybody in that band is a mo' fo. Oh man, wait till that part. I was dying!!!