Hi listeners-- I know it's been a while with no updates. Unfortunately I haven't been performing nearly as often as I'd like lately (an Obama fundraiser here, a street fair there), and with the recent closing of two more San Francisco jazz venues (Jazz at Pearl's and the Octavia Lounge), prospects don't seem encouraging. Pearl's was an especially tough blow, as it was home to the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, which I really enjoyed playing with once or twice a month. But no excuses, we musicians just have to get out there and find new places to play.In this month's JazzTimes and in a post on his blog, the great jazz writer Marc Myers takes a critical look at the cult of adoration surrounding Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (1959), which has been widely hailed as the greatest (or at least most essential) jazz album of all time. The post is definitely worth a read, as it places the album in the context of its time and looks at factors (on both the musical and the marketing sides) which contributed to its lofty stature.

After mulling the post over for a few days and seeing Marc accused of being a "reactionary nitpicker," I left the following comment which sums up my feelings about Kind of Blue, and why, for once, I agree with the "conventional wisdom":

I know Marc ISN'T a reactionary nit-picker, so I took this post as a legitimate question, and one that deserves to be asked periodically of any canonical artwork.Aside from the question of whether KoB can be separated from its reputation, as I thought about this post I realized the more difficult task for me was separating it from my memories of the record. Although I'd grown up hearing my dad's copies of the Miles/Gil Evans compilations, KoB was the first jazz CD I bought myself, mainly because of its rep (and despite the cheesy cover the first Columbia CD issue featured). My first listen to it was a sort of rubicon, and maybe because of its reputation, I listened to it with a focus I'd never given any other album. It was moody without being somber; bluesy without being corny; intelligent without being effete; virtuosic without being cold.And even though over the years I've come to see it in the continuum of Miles' output (and jazz history in general), it still remains above and beyond for me because of that near-religious response I initially had to it, and which has stuck with me.The other records mentioned are great, too, but I hear them as great jazz albums, whereas KoB still feels like the Gutenberg bible (even if I hear it in Starbucks). How much of that is due to the hype-based expectations of a teenager, it's hard to say--but I'd still rather take it to a desert island than any other jazz record.

I also read an interesting post by the excellent New York jazz writer Howard Mandel talking about his visit to Berklee College of Music and the incredible number of young musicians still dedicating themselves to jazz even as the market dwindles. It reminded me of my student days, and I left the following comment:

I've often wondered whether it would've been helpful for someone to clue me in to the incredible imbalance of supply and demand in the jazz world when I was going into a mountain of debt to finance my jazz education at the New School... (I think I remember my roommate at the time telling me that the average starting salary of a Parsons design grad was over $50,000, and thinking that the average starting salary of a New School Jazz grad would be tips and a beer.) However, I probably wouldn't have listened if they had, since I was young and invincible and little things (like the fact that there seem to be more people making jazz than listening to it) couldn't faze me.

Howard nicely responded with this note: "... I don't mean to dissuade anyone from studying jazz; as you write the power of jazz to attract the young and invincible is stronger than financial considerations for them. Those of us involved in the music though ought to look at our society clearly, and consider how to work with the gap between what we're called to do and how we can live. This is what jazz musicians have done since the get-go. I think such reality-checks strengthen the musician and the music. Who said it was gonna be easy?" Damn straight.

Last week Linda and I decided celebrate the home stretch of my sabbatical and her spring break by taking a short trip up to Portland, Oregon (where she lived for a year or so after college). Although we were really only looking to explore and eat some delicious food, the trip wound up having some real musical highlights for me, as well.

I didn't know any musicians up there beforehand, but since I had heard there were some great players in town, we dug through the newspaper listings and were lucky enough to find a jam session the first night we were there. It was hosted by the great local drummer Ron Steen, and was at a cool little pub called Produce Row. They were nice enough to let me play quite a bit and hear some fine local players like bassists Scott Steed (formerly of the Bay Area) and Lea Ball, among many others.

Kate Davis & I with Ron Steen at Wilf's. More photos here.

Ron also kindly invited me to come by and sit in at his gig two days later at Wilf's, which is in the classic Union Station building downtown (with its flashing "GO BY TRAIN" sign). Also playing were pianist Dan Gaynor, who was a great soloist with a really nice touch, and 17-year-old phenom Kate Davis on bass and vocals, who will definitely be famous before long.

Another definite high point of the trip was my visit to the Monette trumpet and mouthpiece factory, where Dave Monette and his staff have been quietly revolutionizing the brass instrument business for the past few decades. First, Dean Comley treated me to a fascinating tour of the shop, where they make every part of their instruments and mouthpieces, "except for the rubber rings on top of the valve casings." They were just finishing a prototype of a new, hybrid instrument for Ron Miles (it looked a little like a larger, shorter trumpet, and was pitched in G!), which one of the employees demonstrated--it had a great, resonant sound.

Once we finished the tour, Dave Monette himself came in and gave me an impromptu clinic on the concepts behind his mouthpieces--perhaps the most crucial point being that standard trumpet mouthpieces were originally sized for trumpets in the key of A, and are therefore too long to "slot" correctly over the range of the instrument without requiring the player to make body adjustments which introduce unhelpful tension and effort. He asked me to a) play notes over three octaves with my old mouthpiece and posture, then b) had me repeat them with my tuning slide pulled out until my horn was in the key of A, then c) pushed the slide back in, and had me repeat them again with a Monette mouthpiece and the posture and breathing adjustments he suggested. The results won me over immediately.

After that, all that remained was for Dean to very patiently hand me a long succession of mouthpieces while we looked for the right combination of comfort, sound, range, and flexibility--a process which made me pity the captive audience of guys working in the shop, but which finally helped me find "the one," which I fortunately settled on with just enough time left for the short drive to the airport and to make our flight home. (And although I was expecting an "adjustment period," I used the new mouthpiece on Ben Stolorow's CD release party gig, and it felt great.) For any trumpeters visiting the Portland area, I highly recommend a making an appointment to visit to the shop, even if you're not a current customer of theirs. But I warn you, you may walk out a believer.

Finally, I should mention another great thing for musicians about Portland--its wide variety of used record stores. I made it to just a handful, and came home with way too many new (used) albums and CDs--all reasonably priced, and (most importantly) sales tax-free. My favorite of those I visited was the funereally named Vinyl Resting Place, way out in the North part of town. Fortunately my stack of finds (including Jimmy Rowles, Charles Lloyd with Keith Jarrett, Gerry Mulligan and Lee Konitz, Toots Theilmans with Joanne Brackeen, Paul Motian, etc.) wasn't quite heavy enough to push the suitcase over the limit--but it was close.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who came out to our shows last week at the Parc 55—I had a great time playing with Adam, Ron, and Noah, and with any luck I'll be able to play there some more in the future. For those of you who weren't able to make it, here's our version of the standard "I Love You," from Friday night.

• I Love You (Cole Porter) With myself on trumpet; Adam Shulman, piano; and Ron Belcher, bass. Recorded live, 10/05/07.

Also: last Saturday, I played with one of three pickup jazz groups (mine had Jeff Marrs, Eugene, and Evan Francis) that performed for the Fillmore Street "Indian Summer" Stroll, which culminated in a wild sidewalk jam session featuring 15 or so musicians wailing away amid the pedestrians. I told another musician it would be cool if random jam sessions just broke out all the time on sidewalks around the city--kind of like "Critical Mass." (Which then led to the mental image of thousands of jazz musicians clogging the streets and stopping traffic to play 500 or so choruses on "Now's the Time," as well as the unfortunate nickname "Critical Jazz.")

For more photos of this and many of my other gigs, visit my Flickr site here.

First of all, thanks to everyone who came out to last week's shows. We had a great time performing at Anna's in Berkeley—had a good crowd, sold some CDs, ate some carnitas tacos—which was only slightly marred by accidentally leaving our car in the garage past the midnight deadline. (No harm done, though—Linda heroically got up early and rode the BART over to retrieve it the next morning.)

We also enjoyed our Friday show at the Parc 55 in the city (those of you who made it out got to witness my debut on my recently-acquired vintage cornet—something you can tell your grandkids about, I'm sure). We were filling in for the excellent vocalist Betty Fu, who performs there on a weekly basis, and with any luck she may call on us again.

Saturday evening brought a performance at a wedding with the great Mitch Marcus and his big band, which featured the amazing spectacle of old ladies in their best formal finery dancing happily to a 7/4 funk groove (with a 15/8 feel superimposed). God bless San Francisco.

Finally, I wanted to mention that Justin Freitas of the Berkeley Daily Planet wrote an in-depth profile of myself and the quintet, which appeared in last week's edition of the paper. Here's a sample:

When Oakland-based jazz trumpeter Ian Carey was about 14 years old, he experienced something of a revelation. While he was growing up in upstate New York, his family attended church regularly, all singing in the choir. But when they moved back to Folsom, Calif., just east of Sacramento, Carey’s father searched the area in vain for a suitable church with a strong choir. Churches were plenty but choirs were not, and when he couldn’t find one he liked the family’s church-going days were over.

"I had always thought that we were a religious family," Carey says, "but once we got to California I found out we were really a musical family."

Thus one muse was replaced with another and a life-long obsession was born.

For the full article, click here.

That's all for now—hope to have more gig announcements soon.

Via Rifftides, Doug Ramsey's excellent blog, here's some incredible recently unearthed footage of the legendary Clifford Brown appearing on the Soupy Sales (of "send little green pieces of paper" fame) television show. Clifford was one of the great bop trumpeters of all time during his short career, which ended tragically early when he was killed in a car accident at the age of 25.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo5giymiLj8]

Clifford's playing was one of my biggest early influences on the trumpet—my first jazz trumpet teacher, Tom Peron (a great improviser in his own right and long-time fixture in the Sacramento jazz community), introduced me to Clifford's music while I was in high school, and I spent many hours fumbling through transcriptions of his solos on tunes like "Stompin' at the Savoy" and "The Blues Walk." A few years later, another teacher, the great Charles Tolliver, wisely recommended ditching the 19th -Century Arban's etudes I'd been practicing and use Clifford solos to develop technique instead. (There's a place for Arban, of course, but I believe his point was that if you want to be a jazz player, you might as well practice jazz as much as possible.)

As I became interested in more modern players, I drifted away from Clifford for a few years, but recently began listening to him again—I particularly like his "West Coast" album, Jazz Immortal (which can be found in this boxed set), and the beautiful Clifford Brown with Strings.

Although I always felt that Clifford's delivery—that is, his vibrato, phrasing, etc.—was a little bit over-expressive for my tastes (just a matter of subjective personal preference, of course), his line construction, harmonic vocabulary, and overall phenomenal chops are unparalleled and should continue to inspire trumpeters (and improvisers on all instruments) for years to come.

No new performances to announce as of yet, though we've got a lot of demos out there, so it shouldn't be long. (I'll also post a "recommended listening" entry soon.)

In the meantime, I've discovered that the video free-for-all site YouTube has become a real treasure trove of jazz history (at least until it gets shut down by copyright lawyers). Here's a great clip of Keith Jarrett (read my review of one of his shows here) playing Miles Davis's Solar...

There's also lots of classic Bill Evans, Miles & Coltrane, and even a trip to a trumpet factory with Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Enjoy!