Hi folks, just for the heck of it, here's a live track from a pianoless trio gig I did last week with bassist Adam Gay and drummer Bryan Bowman at Kaleidoscope in SF. It's the classic Ornette tune "The Blessing"--listening back, we basically stayed true to the form, while not really playing the changes per se (wouldn't have been very harmolodic if we had). It's also the first time I've played my cornet in years (it's an old British Besson), which immediately put me into a different sound/idea zone, somehow.Enjoy (hopefully)!

• "The Blessing" (Coleman) Adam Gay, bass; Bryan Bowman, drums; Ian Carey, cornet; recorded 7/21/10.

Hi folks: 2 things--first, want to hear my dulcet tones talking about my CD and my career so far, plus my mumblings about jazz philanthropy and the State of the Gig? Here's an interview I did last week with KVLU's Jason Miller. It also features a live cut from our CD release show with guest vocalist Lorin Benedict. Check it out:

• Ian Carey interview with Jason Miller, KVLU FM (7/17/10)

Second, I have a couple of short-notice gigs to tell you about: tonight, I'll be playing and hosting a jam session with drummer Bryan Bowman and bassist Adam Gay (while Ben Stolorow wows them in Japan) at Kaleidoscope in the Mission. Come on by and bring your music-making things!WHAT: The Kaleidoscope SessionWHO: Adam Gay, Bryan Bowman, and Ian CareyWHERE: Kaleidoscope, 3109 24th Street (@ Folsom), SFWHEN: Weds., July 21, 7:30-11:00HOW MUCH: Free!I'm also excited to be playing with the 16-piece Contemporary Jazz Orchestra (the former Pearl's Monday night band) this Sunday at the Benicia Fine Art & Jazz Festival. Come on out for a bonanza of big band bodaciousness!WHAT: The Contemporary Jazz Orchestra (led by Tod Dickow)WHERE: The Benicia Fine Art & Jazz Festival, First Street Green, BeniciaWHEN: Sunday, July 25, 5:00pmHOW MUCH: $8 adults, kids free!

Lee Mergner of the happily resuscitated JazzTimes recently published (and A Blog Supreme mentioned) a list of "jazz-related things to do before you die (or Keith Jarrett kills you)"--an unfair jab, really, as it's been years since Keith has murdered anyone, unless you count the fatwa he ordered after Umbria.Anyway, the list had a few I've done:

• "visit the Village Vanguard and soak up the history" (I think that was history I found on my shoes);
• "walk on hallowed ground at Congo Square in New Orleans" (actually it was more like stumbling--3 hurricanes will do that to you);
• "memorize at least one solo from a famous jazz record and hum it for someone who might actually recognize it" (welcome to my college social life); and
• "Buy the CD of a local jazz musician playing a gig where no one pays attention to the music, ever" (That was me. I bought 1000 of them. Most are still in my garage).

Following JT's lead, I came up with a few more musician-centric suggestions of my own:

• Make a waiter call his boss at 1am to get the band paid
• Be told by a relative he only likes "real jazz, like Al Hirt and Kenny G"
• Take out thousands of dollars in loans to prepare for a career which pays tips and sometimes beer
• Listen to Trane's first recording and feel ecstatic joy at how crappy he sounds
• Get a request for "Summertime," within 5 minutes of finishing playing "Summertime"
• Consider renaming your band "[Your Name]'s [Exotic-sounding word]" to get more gigs
• Consider hiring a DJ, tubist, theremin player, hog-caller, and bearded lady to appeal to the indie crowd
• Get shredded at a jam session by some kid from Lithuania who looks 14 years old
• Get asked by a club to play something "jazzier"
• Get into a physical fight about straight-8ths odd-meter jazz
• Practice Bird tunes in all 12 keys on a NYC rooftop, get yelled at by neighbors
• Quit music in heat of passion and then come crawling back
• Buy 20 copies of my CD and use them as coasters, doorstops, cat toys, or pizza cutters

There were also a few good suggestions from Twitter's peanut gallery, including the notorious Jazzfamoose ("Realize that Del's Frozen Lemonade is so much better than who's on the mainstage at the Newport Jazz Festival," "Get berated by Lorraine Gordon at the Vanguard" (done that!), "Have your CD get reviewed by @natechinen & still sell less than 500 copies in 2010"), and improviz ("Contact Mingus by Ouija board"--I wouldn't recommend that, I think he can still punch you from beyond the grave). Got your own? Throw 'em in the comments.

I've recently found myself with some listening time I can count on each day, so I figure it's time to pay more focused attention to a handful of tracks and put together another of my Subway Playlists (that's a set of tracks I listen to every day for a few months, to try and absorb on a deeper level than random listening allows, so named because I originally listened to them on my subway ride--some more background here). This one is a little long (although I like iTunes' option to set markers for the beginning and end of playback on a track--I won't tell you where I've done that, to protect those bass players fine musicians whose solos were sacrificed for time). Here goes:

1. Steve Lacy/Roswell Rudd – "Think of One" (from Early and Late, 1962) A recently unearthed studio recording from the "School Days" band, which is one of my all-time favorite groups, period. The sound! The swing! The ideas! The counterpoint! The Monk! (I would kill to take a time machine back to when these guys were playing every night, but I was lucky enough to see Lacy & Rudd in New York in the 90s--read my memorial post for Lacy here.)
2. Donny McCaslin – "Recommended Tools" (from Recommended Tools, 2008) I first saw Donny in the 90s in NYC, but recently got into his playing in a big way after reading about a workshop he did at Banff--was able to see him tear it up with his current trio at SFJAZZ and take a quick but really informative lesson (in which he walked me through how the melody for this tune came to be). What I like about this track: ideas, ideas, ideas!
3. Keith Jarrett – "Semblence" (from Facing You, 1972) Still possibly my favorite Keith album for sheer inventive energy. This is a tricky tune I first came across on Gary Burton's 70s classic Times Square, presented here in a much more loose and organic way. (I play this sometimes with the Quintet when we're in the mood for a workout.)
4. Charlie Haden/Jan Garbarek/Egberto Gismonti – "Cego Aderado" (from Folk Songs, 1979) Came across this album in a used record store in Portland; it promptly sat in my "to listen" pile for 2 years, but since I finally put it on I've been wearing it out (along with its slightly more ethereal follow-up, Magico). Outstanding writing, blowing, interplay. This group has been accused of being too new-agey but I don't hear it; this is joyous, serious improvisational music, and Gismonti is an underappreciated badass.
5. Conlon Nancarrow – "Player Piano Study No. 43" (from Juergen Hocker's YouTube channel) Have been a fan ever since I saw a retrospective by Continuum in college; recently came across the whole amazing player piano series on YouTube. Lorin Benedict mentioned that his favorite was #43, so I picked that one, but they're all great.
6. Keith Jarrett – "Spiral Dance" (from YouTube--Hannover, 1974?) More Keith?! I know, but this one is totally different! It's the Euro Quartet, burning on a live version of the Belonging hit--on the studio version, only Palle D gets to blow, but here everyone gets a turn. (I confess I cut out the 5-minute free intro, which is interesting, but not something I need to hear every day.)
7. Hank Jones/Joe Lovano – "Budo" (from Kids, 2007) After Hank Jones passed away in May I made a mental note to pick up a record of his, and this was the first one I came across in the used CD bins. It's a keeper--Hank managing to sound simultaneously stately and burning, JoLo once again convincing you that even if he was standing there with no horn in his hands, somehow the same sounds would be coming out. (I need to learn this tune.)
8. Thad Jones – "Yes Sir That's My Baby" (from Mean What You Say, 1966) Another Jones brother: this was recommended to me by my friend and former teacher Bill Kirchner. The head is mock-corny in that Thaddish manner, but the solos are happening. People focus on Thad's writing, but I've been meaning to dig further into his individualistic and unpredictable playing for a while.
9. Steve Coleman & The Five Elements – "Ascending Numeration" (from Alternate Dimension Series I) This tune was introduced to me by Lorin B. and Eric Vogler, both of whom are longtime followers and/or collaborators of Mr. Coleman (they also recorded a fantastic variation on it with their new band The Holly Martins). It's extrapolated from Coltrane's "Countdown," and involves inverting the root motion as well as each chord's interval structure, with the added bonus of a wild metric pattern. Someday they will force me to play it, so I'll take any head start I can get.
10. Kurt Rosenwinkel – "Flute" (from The Remedy) I was late getting to this album, after OD'ing on his previous 4 studio records, but there is a lot going on here. Like slash chords? This is your bible.
11. Ornette Coleman – "EOS" (from Ornette on Tenor) I've listened to the Ornette Atlantic box a ton, but the person I, uh, borrowed it from somehow left out the disc with this album on it, so I heard it for the first time just recently. Classic early OCQ with everyone in fine form; as I get older, I find Don Cherry gets more and more inspiring.

Not a lot of early jazz in this one! No Louis, no Bird, no Bach, for a change (though they'll probably be back in the next one). Suggestions for my next edition? Leave 'em in the comments.

Somewhere in the middle of a notey solo on "Moment's Notice" last night I started thinking about the role of virtuosity in jazz. (For those unfamiliar with the tune: that is not a good time to start thinking about abstract concepts, because it can lead to "Did I really mean that phrase there? How about that one? Crap, where am I?"--but we can't always control what pops into our heads.)

Tunes like that often get me thinking along those lines, though, since their chock-full-of-chord-changes-ness tends to give one the sensation that he or she is being played by the tune rather than the other way around. (The solution, it turns out, is to learn the crap out of the tune until it feels as unconscious as a medium-tempo blues. Check back with me in another 20 years and I'll let you know how that's going.)

Coincidentally, the jazzoblogowebosphere offered two interesting posts on the same subject this morning--one from Peter Hum and a somewhat related take at Nextbop, both worth reading--exploring the role of technical wizardry in the genre. I don't claim to have any universal insight on the topic, but I have had an evolving thought process about it, which is tied in with my development as a player (as I suspect is the case for most players).

The short version: when I started getting serious about playing in my teens, I was focused on the high/loud/fast side of things, mainly because it came easily to me (or so I thought) in the early days. But by my college years I had started to reach the limits of that ease, and entered a long period of struggles with my instrument. I think this is true for many instrumentalists, and trumpeters especially. My chops became a harsh and fickle mistress which I could never count on from day to day. I fantasized about the sound my horn would make as it was slowly flattened beneath a steamroller into a large brass pancake more than I care to admit. I felt in those days that if I wasn't able to play to a certain level, it wasn't worth trying to make music at all.

Here's a clip of one guy who made me rethink this equation:

I know that Chet, and late Chet in particular, can be love-it-or-hate-it proposition, but I think you have to concede he's doing a hell of a lot musically with not a lot technically--and at a time when the technical side of the equation was giving me nothing but frustration, the idea that you could find something to say no matter how your chops were treating you that day was a revelation. I credit this approach with getting me through my years of wandering in the bad chops wilderness--if I felt like I needed to sound like Freddie Hubbard every night I never would've made it (in fact, that ended up causing problems for Freddie Hubbard himself in the long run).

Fast-forward ten years or so, and through a combination of good teachers, hard work, ad hoc self-psychology, second/third/fourth-guessing, and dumb luck, I've gotten to a point where I can count on my chops to be at least serviceable most of the time, which means that I find myself prone to forgetting the Gospel of Chet and giving in to the voices that say, "You waited so long to play high/fast/loud! Let it rip!" It's a good problem to have, and sometimes that's exactly what the musical situation calls for. (For example, I enjoyed playing a  Friday night gig recently at a noisy bar--when my wife asked how it went, I said, "They were loud, but I was louder.")

And chopsy playing can be great as a texture in itself (as Hum mentions in the article above)--I remember an older musician talking to me about the different strategies of building a solo--sometimes you start simple and build to complexity; sometimes you start sparse, build to notey and come back again; and sometimes "you come in doin' it and you keep on doin' it." That can be a hell of a lot of fun.

(Side note: in several reviews of my CD, the reviewers included points like, "He may not be a technical wizard, but..." and then went on to compliment my musicality or melodicism. It's a testament to how the jazz-as-technique meme is still ingrained in my head that my immediate response was, "What's wrong with my technique?!")

My long-term goal, though, is to get to the point where technique IS just a means to the end of being able to relax and let the music flow however it wants to.

Maybe not on "Moment's Notice," though.

Thanks to some quick listening by our bassist Fred Randolph (who was in a cab on his way to the airport) and some help in tracking down the details from Mitchell Feldman, I learned this weekend that the tune "Sockdolager" from our latest CD was used as "interlude music" on NPR's Fresh Air on June 24.While it's not quite the same as a review, it's definitely cool to hear us while Terry Gross reads the credits, and I like the idea of the tune going out on the 450 or so stations which carry the show.You can listen to the entire story where the tune was heard at NPR's website, or just the snippet of us rocking away behind Ms. Gross' dulcet tones right here:

• Ian Carey Quintet: "Sockdolager" on NPR's Fresh Air

UPDATE 7/26: And another track! "Shake & Joe," one of the cheerier tunes on the record, was heard last week. Hopefully it helped counteract a depressing (but interesting of course) analysis of the new financial bill. (Thanks again for the quick hearing, Fred!)