Salutations Fine Folks! So here goes my thinking on freezing hands—adjust the shades and let the sun in even though it’s early and there isn’t much heat coming off. Then, the real solution is put on Joao Gilberto singing “Besame Mucho” and THINK Brasil in the summer. It’s warm, the samba takes over, the mind shifts. It might be working but still, urgghhh, winter is my second favorite only to summer. I know it’s going to warm up later…
 Cold hands, navigating the keyboard, hunting for the right words, seeking out warmth in both the literal sense and the temporal sense. Hah! I did a recent sprint on wrapping up my online guitar series and it’s now being transported across the U.S. on a hard drive via FedEx (too much data to upload) to the Open Studio Network offices. Next they’ll do some of their magic in building the website and infrastructure and maybe by mid December it’ll launch. How fun and I’m stoked to be sharing my chords and melodic lines with everyone. More later… Up for this week’s live music, on Friday night at Grossmont College it’ll be me along with Fred Benedetti on guitar, Tripp Sprague on sax, and N. Scott Robinson on percussion. We call ourselves Blurring the Edges and it’s a fine ensemble specializing in music that blurs the boundaries of jazz, flamenco, classical, rock, Brazillian, and folk music. Lots of fun and the venue is set up for full on listening so this makes us happy. Hope to see you there!  Blurring the Edges the last time we played at Grossmont College. Peter, Scott, Fred, and Tripp. On Saturday night we’re thrilled to present Jazz Explorations on Rock Classics. It’ll all come together at Dizzy’s in Pacific Beach and we’ve got a killer band of jazz heads that love rock too. We’re playing selections from Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, Cream, Bob Marley, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and Jimi Hendrix. The angle is bringing a jazz approach to these classic tunes and hopefully retaining the original hard hitting vibe. I know one of our arrangements (“I’ve Just Seen a Face”) challenges the limit of this concept but it’s a riot on wheels! You’ve got to hear it to believe it. It’ll be fun and hope to see you there…  Jazz heads embracing rock with (left to right) Rebecca Jade, Helen Kupka (concert promoter), Peter, Justin Grinnell, Tripp Sprague, Leonard Patton, Duncan Moore, and Danny Green. That’s it folks for now. Joao is still bringing the Brasilian warmth to SpragueLand, my fingers are still cold, the winter has just started, and it’s still a good day to be living the dream. see you soon, Peter |