London Avatar of Harmonization!

Greetings Kind Folks!

The London avatar of harmonization, young Jacob Collier, has done it again with the 3rd installment of IHarmU. The idea is that the common man and woman sings or plays a little tune or lick, makes a vid of it, and then submits it to Jacob. He then works up a new arrangement and harmonization including mostly vocals but also all of the other instruments that he plays. He builds all of this up around the original video and performance. What he ends up with is beyond belief — grooves, chord movements from outer space, pure magic! Highlights are Hans, Kiki, and Gaku (a dog) from Germany singing “Frère Jacques” and the whole series ends with Herbie Hancock submitting a 12 tone-ish tune of single notes on the piano. Jacob takes both of these and yields stunning results. You’ve got to check it out!

A month back we played an ultra beyond sellout concert situation of the Planet Cole Porter music at KSDS’s Jazz Live. A bunch of folks were bummed that they couldn’t get in. Good news, we’re doing it again and this time it’s at the Museum of Making Music on June 16th. It’ll be me and Rebecca Jade along with Tripp, Gunnar, and Duncan once again taking a sonic tour of Cole Porter’s masterpieces. We’d love to have you with us and maybe act soon to secure tickets. This is where you get them:

For live music this week our story begins at Ki’s Restaurant on Friday night with me, vocalist Lisa Hightower, and brother Tripp on sax and flute. Lisa’s one of the great singers and when she tells the story of Strayhorn’s “Lush Life”, or Jobim’s “Desifinado”, or brings it down to the folk music beauty of “Rain”, well it doesn’t get much better than this. Wonderful music in a wonderful setting, hope to see you there!

Lisa Hightower and Peter.
photo by Michael Oletta

Next up, the magic piano improvisations of Joshua White mixed with me, lucky me, take place on Saturday night at the Encinitas Library. A month back the two of us took the stage at the Atheneaum in La Jolla and without much prep, we made new music of the moment and it was both exhilarating to create and folks said they loved the way it sounded. A great time and stoked we get to do it again. Hope to see you there!

Before the concert starts, Joshua on the right laying the conceptual ground work.

On Sunday eve I’m meeting up with vocalist Errolyn Healy, pianist Cris O’Bryon, Leonard Patton on percussion and vocals, and bassist Mack Leighton for a night of moonlight music. Errolyn just recorded a new CD at SpragueLand called “Moonlighting” and all of the songs have something to do with the moon. “It’s Only a Paper Moon”, “Moon Dance”, etc. I’m not sure what stage the moon is in on this night but we’ll be crooning for it’s romantic presence all evening long. Join us if you can!

That’s the story for this week and thanks for tuning in.

all best, Peter