Hi everyone,

Next week, we enter the month of July, time for a clean, new start on a Tune of the Month.

I've spoken with Tony, and we've decided that it may be a good idea to have 2 tunes to study for next month, each of varying difficulty.

Everyone is welcome to study whichever one they see fit, or both, doesn't matter, but be assured that there will be lessons on both tunes. I suggested Autumn Leaves to Tony awhile back as a nice, simple one, but forgot that we did that one a couple of years ago (isn't that crazy? We've been doing TOTMs that long now!)

It's great to be at this workshop in Patagonia.

Yesterday I saw Everisto Aguilar's ensemble from UAT in Mexico. That made the whole trip so worthwhile. They gave an incredibly moving concert at the festival. Eversito seems like such an amazing teacher. Improvisation is very important in his teaching it seems. You guys would have been blown away by this concert!

I'm in Patagonia right now at a percussion festival. I realized something when I was doing my workshop and talking to people about the vibraphone. I had a lot of confidence talking about this instrument. I actually felt proud about the instrument.

Being proud of the instrument for me comes from having a strong knowledge of the instrument. Now think about this. I've probably read about 90-95 percent of everything on this site. Do you realize how much information that is? How much I've learned? Unbelievable.

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Hey everyone,
This is my father with Christos Rafalides at a clinic he did in a conservatorium in Greece. My father use to teach Christos music and now Christos is teaching me!!!

We just finished a fun week here in Boston. Berklee Percussion Week takes place every year at Berklee in June. The week featured classes, ensembles, clinics and concerts with a variety of tracks including drum set, hand percussion, total percussion, marimba and vibraphone. The mallet faculty this year included Dave Samuels, Gustavo Agatiello, Nancy Zeltsman and myself. All of the songs from my Tuesday night concert have been uploaded to SoundCloud. The band featured Matt Marvuglio - flute, Marco Pignataro - sax, David clark - bass, Ron Savage - drums and myself on vibes.

i took out a very old vinyl recording from 1978 by billy joel called 52nd street, which i did not losten to since 10 years or something like that. one of my favorite tracks is the tune "half a mile". after this tune comes "untill the night" i read the credits and couldn´t believe my eyes.

mr.david friedman played chimes and percussion on this tune. ok to be honest the tune david played on is the worst track on this record in my opinion (not his fault!!!!) but anyway david, did you met billy joel in person? do you remember the recording session? how was it like?

I found that on YouTube :

Whats a Jazz musician?:" one who loads 5000$ worth of gear into a 500$ car to drive 100miles to a 50$ gig !!! "

So true ! (Sigh)