| Salutations Solid Folks of Jazz!
The wild Cali winds of fire are blowing and for some reason the right sonic fit this morning is Blue Note Classic Hits. This is on Spotify and you dial it up and in comes a steady stream of some of the great moments of jazz. Spinning right now is Jimmy Smith with Stanley Turrentine playing “Back at the Chicken Shack”. This is totally x-rated non vegetarian fare served up in a 12 bar cycle. Tasty audio and it’s a good way to start the day, the day that finds us putting up with severe devil winds and hoping she doesn’t catch on fire.
For this week we’ve got two nights of jazz guitar heaven worked up. On Friday night it’ll be NYC guitarist Roni Ben-Hur and myself in search of truth on the six strings. It’s a Dizzy’s hit and if you haven’t heard of Roni before now might be a time to get aquatinted with one of the greats. He grew up in Dimona, Israel. He is the youngest of seven children and one of two born after the family emigrated from Tunisia in 1955. When he was eleven, he started playing guitar. He learned about jazz from a high school’s friend’s record collection. In Israel he performed in clubs and at weddings and bar mitzvahs until he had enough money to move to the U.S. He arrived in New York City in 1985, spending time at Barry Harris’s Jazz Cultural Theater. He took lessons from Harris, then became a member of his band.
We played a spirited house concert together last year and it was just too good to not bear a repeat performance. We both love jazz and samba and all of the points in between. The duet setting contains large amounts of potential magic and is ideal for exploring a whole palette of moods and color. I can’t wait! Roni and I are playing at Dizzy’s on Friday night and then again on Sunday up at the Newport Coast. The details are below and we hope to see you there!  Roni Ben-Hur and PS from last year’s house concert.
Last evening Tripp and Fred came over and the three of us worked out the kinks for our musical program slated for Saturday night. Our group is called Blurring the Edges and the goal is to include all of the different musical styles that catch our attention and blur the lines that divide them. Fred’s early roots are The Beatles and from there he got heavy into classical and flamenco. Tripp and I are rock heads from the early days and then morphed over to jazz and samba. Together we add all of these sonic ingredients into a magic box and then push the BLUR button for the full effect. Ta dah! Blendo at it’s best!  Blurring the Edges back in 2002  Blurring the Edges in 2019. Look below for the details of our Blurring the Edges concert on Saturday and we hope to see you there.
That’s the weather report from SpragueLand today and thanks for checking in! adios, Peter |
