| Hiya Good Folks, today Joni Mitchell is singing about picking up a hitcher, a prisoner of the white lines on the freeway. The music is amazing, the lyrics mind-blowing, Jaco is on the bass and he’s hitting insane harmonics. The whole experience is music and art at it’s best and Joni is forever trending.
And this gets me thinking about new ways that music is taken in as technology evolves. Check out this video of Snarky Puppy playing a tune with Lalah Hathaway (Donny’s daughter). I love this band and I’ve seen a few clips of them before and check out the way that they’re playing this tune in realtime, a performance of sorts, with a small and I’m sure select audience, and the whole band and audience are wearing headphones. So long subpar room acoustics, go right to studio quality sound! Wild and why not have it sound just like a record. And wow, Lalah sounds the end!  Trending with Snarky! Great news for Gilbert Castellanos this week! He wins big at the San Diego Music Awards including Artist of the Year. Super deserving and such a wonderful muso, Gilbert plays up a storm and continues to be one of the shinning stars of music in San Diego. Check out this article about how it played out. Bravo Gilbert and keep it going! Onwards and upwards!
Up for this week, starting tomorrow I’m playing two nights at the 10th Avenue Theatre and Arts Centre in downtown San Diego. Leonard is organizing these gigs and he’s got avatar pianist Geoffrey Keezer in the loop along with bassist Justin Grinnell and Julien Cantelm on drums. I can’t wait and it’s been sometime since we all got to hear Keezer shred and this alone is reason to TURN OFF THAT T.V. and take in some living music. See you there!  Leonard Patton  Geoffrey Keezer  Peter Sprague I’m zipping on a plane on Monday bound for Tenerif in the Canary Islands. Mega hours in the air leading me to connect with Dianne Reeves and the band for a 2 week spin through Portugal, France, and England. Big fun with music and new vistas to take in through my eyes. I’ll let you know what I find out. Possibly alert friends that might live near where we’re traversing. Dianne is on fire!  Dianne Reeves Just looking a little farther ahead (‘cuz I’m getting back really close to this gig) we’ll being doing the tango with Astor at Dizzy’s on November 23. We’ve got a stellar group poised to take on Chick Corea’s “Night Streets” and Piazzolla’s “Adios Nonino”. Hope to see you there!  The band with Peter on the left, Coral, Lou, Gunnar, and Monette. Missing is Beth. That’s it and thanks for reading along… hanging ten in Portugal, Peter |
“The Expanse”
Lately I’ve been having some time to catch up with projects that fell by the wayside. This week I went through the sheet music for my most recent recording Dr. Einstein’s Spin and cleaned up mistakes and omissions and prepped the music so that it can be sold on my website with hopes that other string quartet groups might lean into the notes. One of the pieces that I revisited is the final movement from the suite called “The Expanse”. Check out the big tempo at the end with virtuosic lines and the strings devouring the notes with ease. It’s great to hear this again after an initial sonic submersion leading to months without even a listen. It’s holding up well and I can’t wait to play it again with the group. The scores are available now here. And if you want a listen you can check it out here! Check it out!