Last May, I graduated from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY with a B.S. in Music Education. Saint Rose has a very general percussion program, but jazz has always been my favorite so I went out of my way to work on that while getting my degree (not always an easy task when you're supposed to be focusing on classical percussion!). That's why I went to the Delaware workshop this summer too.

Hi All,
I'm happy to tell you all that I will be playing Dana's and Marie-Noelle's "Soulflakes" in my December show. Dana has also given me permission to play his "Christmas Time Is Here."
I'll post more about the show in a few weeks.

Here's a lesson on breaking up chords, and leaving notes out.

For this month's "chords and harmony" topic I've written up an article focusing on tensions and several ways to use them effectively when comping. Some of the areas discussed include:

• using tensions to indicate major or minor tonal center
• available tensions for maj7, min7, min7(b5), dom7, and dim7 chords
• adding tensions to a blues progression

Hope you find it helpful.

Although this is xylo lesson, if you're a begining vibe improviser definitely check this lesson out.

[Ed will be posting here shortly!!]

Here's my review of the many things we discussed with the blues.

This is beautiful!! Illya Amar worked on that Chaplin film "Easy Street" and played solo vibes on the whole movie. This vid is an excerpt. I warmly invite you to watch it entirely (around 20 mn?) from his website: http://www.illyaamar.com/video.html

I'm sure Chaplin would have loved it: clever, right, clear, musical, moving or percuting, but all beautiful! The more I listen to Illya the more I love his playing!! Go Illya! - Enjoy guys!