Author: ekkarn

The Safari – meets Philadelphian, Chicagoan, New Yorker, pianist, organist Ben Paterson!!

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So on Sunday while I was exploring the music and legacy of Lester Young, I also listened to the music of a new musician, Ben Paterson. His Trio’s new album Essential Elements is currently,number 4 on the Roots Music Reports Jazz Chart. On Sunday I put the album on while I was reading and I really didn’t notice the album as the first two songs went by, but then the songs and Paterson’s piano playing got stronger and stronger and by the end of the album I was a fan! I listened to the album again tonight and was more impressed the second time around! Now I’m listening to his second release Blues for Oscar, which is pretty good, too. Now, I only have to go and listen to his first album Breathing Spaces! From his biography at his website:

Originally from Philadelphia, Ben spent his younger years studying both classical and jazz music before moving to the great city of Chicago. There he spent years performing and working with the best musicians in town, absorbing the unique blend of Jazz and Blues that can only be found in the Windy City. Now, moving to New York, Ben is poised to bring his unique talents and style to a wider audience, combining hard-swinging grooves and melodic improvisation with an impeccable touch.Full biography

On Essential Elements Paterson covers songs from Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, Keith Jarrett and Ray Charles and others, in addition to five original compositions. As I listen I think I like some of the originals the best, particularly “Around the Block”. Joining Paterson on the album are two Paterson’s favorite Chicago-based musicians: Josh Ramos on bass, and Jon Deitemyer on drums.

Here’s what some others are saying about Ben Patersn’s music…..

“On first listen, you can hear why so many people on the Chicago jazz scene are singing Paterson’s praises. His playing is always where it needs to be: one minute sensitive and relaxed, at another moment, explosive and muscular, and always musical.”
–Paul Abella, Chicago Jazz Magazine

“An inspired repertoire… some creative arrangements and reworkings… the first-rate musicianship and the joyful spirit are other reasons why Breathing Space is heartily recommended to fans of piano trios.”
–Scott Yanow, All Music Guide (4 out of 5 stars)

“…a monster on the Hammond B3.”
–Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader

I particularly like that last quote!  From his website…

….Ben’s own organ group blends hard swinging jazz chops with blues and funk influences, creating a sound that is hard not to like, and impossible to ignore.  This group recently performed at the 2013 Chicago Jazz Fest, receiving a standing ovation,

….Also keep an eye out for his debut Organ record scheduled for release in Summer of 2014.

I think I will keep an eye out for that album….. But for now let’s go “into the night”with  “On the Move”  from Ben’s album Blues for Oscar……

The Safari’s Eclectic Music Day – A Little Folk, New Age and Prog from three great guitarists!

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More New EverythinhCrossposted from Me.Myself, Music and Mysteries

So today was an eclectic music day. I had to return to Lambertville today, so I loaded music on the iPhone from two different genres. First some folk music from a longtime favorite, Brooks Williams,  his latest release, More New Everything which is an EP. Then some New Age from guitarist Alex DeGrassi. I listened to those two albums on the way to the site. Then on the  way back, I listened to music from a third genre Prog Rock from the album Ravens and Lullabies from Gordon Giltrap and Oliver Wakeman. As I was listening on the way back, I thought about what tied all three of these albums from different genres together. The answer was that three of the four artist are exceptionally fine acoustic guitar players!!

I have enjoyed the music of Brooks Williams since his 1999 release Hundred Year Shadow. The first time I heard the album I thought “This is one damn good guitarist!! Brooks’ next release in 2000 was Little Lion his first all instrumental album and to this day it is one of my favorite guitar albums!!  Since those two albums, I’ve liked some of his releases better than others, so I have not picked up every album. But listening to More New Everything today I was hearing the Brooks Williams that I first enjoyed 13 years ago!! Some great songs and some great guitar!! Now i have to go back and listen to New Everything, since the tracks on More New Everything are left over from the New Everything session!! Because if these songs were left out, how good must New Everything be!!! I also need to go back and listen to some of the albums that I haven’t listened to over the years!!

As You Drift AwayThe second album that I turned on was Alex deGrassi’s  2008 release As You Drift Away:Lullabies On Guitar. Hum I didn’t see the complete title of this very good album, that was doing a good job of relaxing me this morning on the last leg of my trip! From AllMusic

….AS YOU DRIFT AWAY is a collection of both classic and original lullaby songs, ideal for late-night unwinding or early-moring chilling-out in addition to lulling young children to dreamland. A fine, discerning addition to an already extensive body of work, AS YOU DRIFT AWAY is one of those rare recordings that transcends age and genre. doing a good job of putting me to sleep on the last leg of my trip this morning.From AllMusic:. Read More

 

Ravens & LulllabiesThe last album actually connects to the second album because of the title and the acoustic guitar of Gordon Giltrap. . The album is Ravens & Lullabies a collaborative album from Giltrap and Oliver Wakeman. The album is probably one-half instrumental and the other half vocals and also one-half Gitrap and the other Wakeman. in turn Wakeman alternates between some beautiful piano work and his steady organ work. The only things that I really didn’t like were a few of the vocals and some of the lyrics. The lyrics seemed a little simplistic at times, at least to me. The other musicians that join Giltrap and Wakeman on the album include: Paul Manzi of Oliver Wakeman Band and Arena on lead vocals, Johanne James of Threshold plays the drums, and Steve Amadeo the bass. Benoit David of Mystery and Yes contributes a guest vocal on “From The Turn Of A Card”.

This album has been on the iPhone for a while and this is really the first extended listen that I’ve given the album and I’ve come away impressed by both artists – Giltrap’s guitar work and Wakeman keyboards are both outstanding. Now if the lyrics were a little better??

All and all, it was a fine musical journey today Good music is good music, regardless of genre!! Here’s Gordon and Oliver performing “Ljw” from Ravens and Lullabies”

 

Book No 1 for 2014 – Cut to the Bone – Jefferson Bass

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cut to the boneSo I finally finished book No. 1 for 2014, Cut to the Bone by Jefferson Bass. Cut to the Bone is the 5th book in Body Farm series, which features the exploits  of forensic anthropologist Bill Btrockton. The character of Bill Brockton is based upon the life of the real life director of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee, Dr. Bill Bass. Bill Bass is half of the writing team that creates these great novels. The other half of the writing duo is journalist, writer and documentary film maker Jon Jefferson.

While this is the 5th book in the series, it is actually a prequel to all the books. The story is set in 1992, when Bill Brockton, head of the Anthropology Department at Tennessee, was in the early stages of setting up the Body Farm at UT. In the story, Brockton and his assistant Tyler Wainwright, are called in to help police in determining, who the bones found at an old mining site belong to. Brockton and Tyler quickly decide that the bones belong to a young girl, who appears to have had a hard life. But when the police ask how long her body has been there, Brockton doesn’t have an answer for them. In fact the last time he work with this police department he only missed the age of the bones by a hundred years!! So Brockton decides that Tyler’s dissertation should revolve around using the life cycle of blowflies to determine the rate of decomposition of  the human body. Now while all this is happening in and around Knoxville. Bill is also called to help in the brutal murder of a prostitute. But when the method of cutting up the body matched a case that Brockton worked on a few years earlier and then more bodies start piling up that also match Brockton’s cases, it seems that Brockton and company are on the trail of a serial killer who may have his sights set on Brockton and his family!!

Like all the past novels, Cut to the Bone is a fast paced you don’t want to put it down read! The nice part of the book is that the reader are introduced to characters like Brockton’s wife Kathleen, his graduate assistant Tyler, and of course the infancy of the Body Farm! This novel really didn’t have as much of the forensic science in the story, as the other books in the series.  But the development of the character of the serial killer, Satterfield  was good and the tension built up over the last pages was another plus for the book. So all in all Cut to the Bone is a fine addition to the series, now I think I would still start with Carved in Bone, just to get to know Bill Brockton,  first  he’s a great character both in fiction and in reality!!

Ok so now I just went to the Jefferson Bass website and I see there is another prequel Jordan’s Stormy Banks a novella! I guess I have to go pick that up at Amazon…..it’s only 99 cents!! sounds good to me!!

 

This Day in Music – Jan 10, 1978 – Happy Birthday, Jazz Pianist Kekko Fornarelli!!

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So on this date in 1978….I was married for three years and was a year  away from the start of several turbulent years, and jazz pianist Kekko Fornarelli was born……from Wikipedia:

Kekko Fornarelli is a pianist and a composer. He was born in Bari, Italy in 1978. He began learning classical piano at the age of three, first through private tuition and later at the Conservatorio Piccinni in Bari.

Fornarelli’s interest in jazz music began at the age of 18. From there on, he has immersed himself in jazz, which has led him to travel worldwide.

He has recorded three albums, Circular Thought in 2005, A French Man in New York (2008), inspired by French pianist Michel Petrucciani in the three years he spent in France.
Room of mirrors was released in 2011 by Auand sound. Alison Bentley writes “I can’t stop listening to the CD: a fusion of Romantic classical music, modern jazz and 21st century dance rhythms, played with Italian brio from the heart.”[1]

and at All About Jazz I read

Kekko Fornarelli is one of the most widely appreciated young pianists internationally. His unique ways of balancing an endless research with universal usability, and his ability to draw the profanes up to that foreign thing called jazz makes him one of the most eclectic and pervasive artists in the current international music scene. His unique style is characterized by its attempt to create music to observe, more than just to listen to. A way to tell stories, emotions and situations……

Then I went to YouTube to check out Kekko’s music and watched and listened to the following……. 

After that I traveled to his website and saw that he is at work on his fourth album and like many artist he is fund-raising to pay for the album. You can visit his page here.

So after reading and listening,I’d like to wish Kekko a Happy Birthday and I am putting Room of Mirrors on the iPhone for some listening tonight. Why don’t you join me and then let me know what you think???

Evening Distractions lead to Oliver Wakeman and Steve Howe and some great jazz guitar!!

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So I came home tonight from being outside all day doing a percolation test in Howell Township, all ready to write about the albums that I listened to on the way to, and from the site, and then……


I was researching the album  Ravens & Lullabies from Gordon Giltrap and Oliver Wakeman. As part of the research,  I went to Oliver’s page on Spotify and found a great album The 3 Ages of Magick-  wait Oliver Wakeman and Steve Howe?? The light bulb goes off over the dim old man’s head…….and at AllMusic I read this about the album……

It seems this album has been tailored for fans of Yes and particularly of their colorful keyboardist, Rick Wakeman. The latter’s son, Oliver, is at the helm of this project, which shares thematic similarities with dad’s Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Granted, there is something unfair about comparing Oliver Wakeman’s music with his father’s, but who could do otherwise? Everything he knows about music he learned from his father. He plays the piano, the organ, even the mini-Moog like him, using the same kind of phrasing and conveying the same conception of romanticism. And the fact that he recruited guitarist Steve Howe to grace half of the tracks on The 3 Ages of Magick will make any Yes fan feel at home.

So here’s YouTube Video for “The Enchanter” keyboard’s by Oliver (son of Rick) Wakeman and guitar by Steve Howe…..

Then I glanced over my shoulder and spotted Wes Montgomery’s album Down Here on the Ground, which made me think about one of Wes’ other A&M releases Road Song, so I thought was that I’d go “into the night” with a video of the title track of the album “Road Song” What I found at YouTube was a super group of guitarist playing the song. The group consisted of: Mark Whitfield, Chuck Loeb, Pat Martino and Russell Malone. The video took up 11 plus minutes of my time, when I was eating dinner, but it was worth every minute of it!!! It reminded me of how much I liked Mark Whitfield and Russell Malone and sent me scurrying to find out more about Chuck Loeb and Pat Martino, whose names, but not their music I know!!

So here is the video,  you can go “into the night” with the great “Road Song”, while I check out the two guys in the middle, and think about which albums from the guys on the ends, I want to listen to tomorrow!! So maybe you’ll read about Ravens & Lullabies and Rubidium by Mashine later or maybe I’ll just fall asleep while reading Cut to the Bone by Jefferson Bass, who knows….not even The Shadow….

A Tap on the Window – Linwood Barclay

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A Tap on the Window - Linwood Barclay

 Several years ago, well to be a little more accurate back in 2007 I read Linwood Barclay’s first Zack Walker novel Bad Move  That book came to mind when I read the first line of Book 34 for 2013 Barclay’s latest thriller A Tap on the Window 

The Story

A middle-aged guy would have to be a total fool to pick up a teenage girl standing outside a bar with her thumb sticking out. Not that bright on her part, either, when you think about it But right now, we’re talking about my stupidity, not hers.

The narrator is Cal Weaver, a private investigator who lives in Griffon, New York. Weaver makes the decision to pick up the girl, who identifies herself only as Claire, only after she recognizes Weaver and says Cal’s son Scott was a friend of hers

. See Scott killed himself by jumping off of the roof of a furniture store in town, after taking a hit of X. The first thought going through Cal’s head is that Claire may be able to provide him some information that will help his quest, which is to discover who supplied the X to his son only two months earlier.

Soon Cal’s words ring true as he is drawn into a plan hatched by Claire and her best friend Hanna that leaves both girls missing and Cal’s life a mess!

Not that his life hadn’t been a mess before that. After Scott’s suicide Cal and his wife Donna’s marriage has been on the rocks as Cal can’t give up his quest to find out answers surrounding Scott’s death, and Donna deals with the loss by spending her time trying to draw the perfect portrait of Scott, Claire turns out to be Claire Sanders the mayor’s daughter.

The mayor is in a battle over the use of excessive force that seems to  be prevalent on the force.Oh by the way, Cal’s brother-in-law Augie, is the police chief!!

My Thoughts

Like all of Barclay’s books the pages turned fast on this one, as I tried along with Cal, to figure out first where Hanna and Claire were, who they were pulling their scam on, and what does any of this have to do with Scott’s death??

Overall, the plot of the book twisted and turned and the final resolution of the various interwoven storylines was not what I expected.

The book was a little darker than Barclay’s other books, and lacked some of the humor, that I thought was coming based on the first few lines of the book!

iWebsite
Orion Books
Amazon
Wikipdianks

Linwood Barclay

About Linwood Barclay

Linwood Barclay continues to be a prolific author, releasing new, critically acclaimed thrillers annually. Known for his high-octane plots and relatable characters, his recent work has solidified his status as a master of contemporary suspense.

Visit the Linwood Barclay Page

If you like standalone Mystery/Thrillers…….

Here are three Authors whose books might enjoy:

Charlie Donlea
Charlie Donlea
Michael Koryta/Scott Carson
Riley Sager
Riley Sager
  • Charlie Donlea — tightly plotted thrillers often built around cold cases, missing persons, and strong female leads, with twists that keep coming
  • Michael Koryta / Scott Carson — blends crime, suspense, and sometimes the supernatural, with a darker tone and strong atmosphere
  • Riley Sager — modern psychological thrillers with big twists, often centered on isolated settings and unreliable pasts

The Safari visits Ethiopia and finds the Music of Mulatu Astatke – Sketches of Ethiopia

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This afternoon the Music Safari took a little trip of the most populous landlocked country in the world Ethiopia. The reason for the trip was to explore the music of Mulatu Astatke. The genesis of the trip  was a review of the World Music Charts – Europe – where his most recent release Sketches of Ethiopia was spotted at No 4!

A trip to Wikipedia revealed that Mulatu  is an Ethiopian musician and arranger best known as the father of Ethio-jazz. From Wikipedia:

 

Born in the western Ethiopian city of Jimma, Mulatu was musically trained in London, New York City, and Boston where he combined his jazz and Latin music interests with traditional Ethiopian music. Astatke led his band while playing vibraphone and conga drums—instruments that he introduced into Ethiopian popular music—as well as other percussion instruments, keyboards and organ. His albums focus primarily on instrumental music, and Astatke appears on all three known albums of instrumentals that were released during Ethiopia’s Golden ’70s.[1]

Astatke’s family sent the young Mulatu to study engineering in Wales during the late 1950s. Instead, he earned a degree in music through studies at the Welsh Lindisfarne Collegeand then Trinity College of Music in London. In the 1960s, Astatke moved to the United States, where he became the first African student to enroll at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music, where he studied vibraphone and percussion.

While living in the US, Astatke became interested in Latin jazz and recorded his first two albums, Afro-Latin Soul, Volumes 1 & 2, in New York City in 1966. The records prominently feature Astatke’s vibraphone, backed up by piano and conga drums playing Latin rhythms, and were entirely instrumental, with the exception of the song “I Faram Gami I Faram,” which was sung in Spanish. Though these records are almost indistinguishable from other Latin-jazz records of the period, some tracks foreshadow elements of Astatke’s later work, and he is credited as having established conga and bongo drums as common elements in Ethiopian popular music Read More

As I was listening to Sketches of Ethiopia knowing nothing about Mulatu Astatke, or his music I was struck by how much of a Latin flavor his music had. I thought that it sounded much like the Cuban music I’ve recently listened to. I also caught the sound of the vibes on one of the tracks (Hager Fiker) and wondered if  it was actually vibes or a traditional Ethiopian instrument!!

After listening, I started my research into Mulatu’s music I came across this All Things Considered piece at NPR from September of 2013 – After 40 Years, Mulatu Astatke Still ‘Sketches’ Ethio-Jazz Deftly  from Banning Eyre :

It is bold indeed for any jazz artist to evoke Miles Davis’ landmark album Sketches of Spain. ButMulatu Astatke, like Miles, is a true original.

The music Astatke first imagined 40 years ago sounds as fresh and contemporary today as it did in the swinging Addis Ababa of 1973 when Astatke created a signature “Ethio-jazz” style by blending jazz with Ethiopian music. Decades later, he earned an international following when his early recordings appeared on reissue CDs. Now, Astatke has rewarded fans with new album called Sketches of Ethiopia….

….Astatke doesn’t just compose, arrange, and play jazz. He uses it as a tool to explore cultures, and create musical bridges between them. On the song “Azmari,” he fills out his brassy jazz ensemble with Ethiopian drums and the masinko lute, orchestrating it around a cantering, traditional rhythm.

Sketches of Ethiopia incorporates ideas and musicians from three continents and many nations, but the music still maintains a strong Ethiopian stamp. It’s never predictable and, for all the surprises, it never feels cluttered or gimmicky. That’s the mark of a master. And we’re lucky that after all these years, the father of Ethio-jazz has not lost his edge. Read More and Listen to All Things Considered 

After finishing listening to Sketches of Ethiopia the Safari went back to the Chart and started checking out the other albums and artists – The Safari found several that it liked, so be forewarned theres more music to come!!

Here’s a live performance of “Azmari” (Live at Fontenay en Scènes, May 2013)

On this Date in Music – December 8, 1928 – Organist Jimmy Smith was born!!

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Jimmy Smith

 

On this date in 1928 the master of the Hammond B3, Jimmy Smith was born. I have been listening to Jimmy Smith’s music since he late 60s when I discovered Wes Montgomery and then Jimmy & Wes an album by the two masters that they released in 1966. I love to put on a Jimmy Smith album at work and well just let it flow!! So let’s have some morning music to start our Sunday and to honor Jimmy on his birthday. But first some background….. from AllMusic

Jimmy Smith wasn’t the first organ player in jazz, but no one had a greater influence with the instrument than he did;Smith coaxed a rich, grooving tone from the Hammond B-3, and his sound and style made him a top instrumentalist in the 1950s and ’60s, while a number of rock and R&B keyboardists would learn valuable lessons from Smith’s example.

 

James Oscar Smith was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania on December 8, 1928 (some sources cite his birth year as 1925). Smith’s father was a musician and entertainer, and young Jimmy joined his song-and-dance act when he was six years old. By the time he was 12, Smith was an accomplished stride piano player who won local talent contests, but when his father began having problems with his knee and gave up performing to work as a plasterer, Jimmy quit school after eighth grade and began working odd jobs to help support the family. At 15, Smith joined the Navy, and when he returned home, he attended music school on the GI Bill, studying at the Hamilton School of Music and the Ornstein School, both based in Philadelphia. Continue Reading for complete biography

and from Wikipedia:

While the electric organ had been used in jazz by Fats Waller, Count Basie, Wild Bill Davis and others, Smith’s virtuoso improvisationtechnique on the Hammond helped to popularize the electric organ as a jazz and blues instrument. The B3 and companion Leslie speaker produce a distinctive sound, including percussive “clicks” with each key stroke. Smith’s style on fast tempo pieces combined bluesy “licks” with bebop-based single note runs. For ballads, he played walking bass lines on the bass pedals. For uptempo tunes, he would play the bass line on the lower manual and use the pedals for emphasis on the attack of certain notes, which helped to emulate the attack and sound of a string bass.

 

Smith influenced a constellation of jazz organists, including Jimmy McGriff, Brother Jack McDuff, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Joey DeFrancesco and Larry Goldings, as well as rock keyboardists such as Jon Lord, Brian Auger and Keith Emerson. More recently, Smith influenced bands such as the Beastie Boys, who sampled the bassline from “Root Down (and Get It)” from Root Down—and saluted Smith in the lyrics—for their own hit “Root Down,” Medeski, Martin & Wood, and the Hayden-Eckert Ensemble. Often called the father ofacid jazz, Smith lived to see that movement come to reflect Smith’s organ style. In the 1990s, Smith went to Nashville, taking a break from his ongoing gigs at his Sacramento restaurant which he owned and, in Music City, Nashville, he produced, with the help of a webmaster, Dot Com Blues, his last Verve album. In 1999, Smith guested on two tracks of a live album, Incredible!, the hit from the 1960s, with his protégé, Joey DeFrancesco, a then 28-year-old organist. Smith and DeFrancesco’s collaborative album Legacy was released in 2005 shortly after Smith’s death. Read More

and now the sad part of the story…..

….. In 2004, Smith was honored as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts; that same year, Smith relocated from Los Angeles to Scottsdale, Arizona. Several months after settling in Scottsdale, Smith’s wife succumbed to cancer, and while he continued to perform and record, Jimmy Smith was found dead in his home less than a year later, on February 8, 2005. His final album, Legacy, was released several months after his passing.

FourmostAs I look down Jimmy’s vast discography at AllMusic among my favorites is his 1991 release Fourmost, a reunion album with his 30 plus-year associates tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and guitarist Kenny Burrell along with drummer Grady Tate.

So let’s say Happy Birthday and Thanks to Jimmy Smith with a 1993 performance of “Organ Grinders Swing” with  Jimmy Smith playing with mates; Kenny Burrell on guitar;  Grady Tate on drums and Herman Riley playing the part of Stanley Turrentine on tenor sax!

 

Book 33 for 2013 – James Rollins – The Eye of God!

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The Eye of GodWith all the music listening and writing this week, I totally forgot to write about Book No. 33 of 2013, James Rollins The Eye of God. I have been a fan of Rollins’ Sigma Force novels since I read my first Map of Bones in 2005, and have enjoyed Rollins blending of science, history and of course a lot of action into 9 terrific reads!! It’s interesting as I write this that characters that first appeared in Map of Bones play a central part in this latest novel.

Like Harlan Coban’s Six Years this book is also a quest well actually it is several quests rolled into one action packed story. The most important quest is to find the satellite IoG2 which was studying dark energy surrounding a comet that is approaching the earth. While IOG2 (Eye of God) was preparing to perform and experiment evolving the transfer of dark energy back to its sister satellite IOG the satellite became unsteady and crashed to earth before its crashed pictures of the earth were transfer to the command center where Jada Shaw an astrophysicist  whose theories of dark energy were being proven correct and Director of Sigma Force Painter Crowe were watching. The pictures showed a destroyed eastern coast of the US and more amazingly they were dated four days in the future!! So began Sigma Force’s quest was first to find the satellite whose final resting place was somewhere in Mongolia and then find out what the hell was going to happen and can it be stopped!!

Meanwhile in Italy those characters that previously appeared in Map of Bones Rachael Verona and her Uncle Vigor a priest were about top embark on their quest, which also involved saving the world, but involved another priest Father Josip a priest that Vigor thought was long dead. Josip sends Vigor a skull and the Book of Thomas bound in human skin. The message hidden in these artifacts was clean to Vigor and it pointed to the end of the Earth in FOUR DAYS. So they set off to find Father Josip and a quest which also involves Ghengis Kjan and Attila the Hun!! Mongolian, eh??

And finally former assassin Seichan now in a quasi-relationship with Sigma Force Commander Gray Pierce is on a quest to find Seichan’s long-lost mother. It is a quest that has taken them to the underworld of Macau, China. Only when the trio Seichan, Gray and Kowalski meet an informer who is going to tell Seichan about her mother turns out to be someone who wants to capture and sell Seichan (a large bounty is on her head due to her past) All hell busts loose and Seichan ends up in North Korea and Gray’s quest becomes her rescue!!

Ultimately, as you may have guessed all the quest come together and become a race to save the world from the destruction that was witnessed. The final resolution ties all the threads up in a whirlwind of action.

As always the characters are vividly drawn and while some characters are absent like Monk’s wife Kat and Lisa Painter’s love interest there are new members introduced including the aforementioned Jada Shaw and Duncan Wren who has magnets in his fingers that pick up minuscule oscillations and vibrate in the presence of an electromagnetic field!! and maybe in the presence of dark energy!!

So if you are like me and enjoy books that teach you stuff …. like Attila’s murder, and Genghis Khan’s mother’s birthplace and the quest for Genghis’ tomb, and blends that with cutting edge science and plenty of action, you’ll love The Eye of God… is it a little hard to follow and have a little too much happening maybe, is the action a little over the top with too many bodies, maybe. But the bottom line is that when you turn the last page… you learned something and had a great time doing it!!!

Here’s a cool trailer about the book! And if you’re already a fan of Rollins you can listen to an interview here

2013 Jazz from Cuba’s Roberto Fonseca – Yo! (that resonates here in the Philly Area)

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Roberto Fonseca KellyWynton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Twin Sons of Different Mothers and times?)

(tangentially speaking – about the headline the Yo – is usually followed by Adrian ….. here (ADD strikes again)

Checking out the Roots Music Reports Jazz Chart this afternoon, I saw a name that interested me at number 12, right after the Duduka Da Fonseca Trio, was Roberto Fonseca and his latest album Yo. So the question before the house was who is this Roberto Fonseca and what does he play!! YoI download the album from Spotify and only got to listen to it on the way home. Now that is not a good thing because the trip home from work only last about four minutes (note that is one of the reasons that I have worked at the same job for the last 34 years!!) Anyway, the brief listen to the opening track “80s” was really all I needed to hear to know that I wanted to hear more from this artist! After work I listened to most of the album and while portions of it are not really my taste, I did enjoy the album, and who knows in another few months with the way that my taste is evolving, it may be right up my alley!! Anyway here’s some information about Roberto…….

Roberto Fonseca (born 1975, Havana) is a Cuban jazz pianist. From an early age, Fonseca was surrounded by music: his father was a drummer, his mother, Mercedes Cortes Alfaro, a professional singer (she sings on her son’s most recent solo album, Zamazu), and his two older half-brothers, Emilio Valdés (drums) and Jesús “Chuchito” Valdés Jr. (piano) are also two young musicians of great international prestige. After an early interest in drums, Fonseca switched to piano at the age of 8, and by 14 was experimenting with fusing American jazz and traditional Cuban rhythms; he appeared at Havana’s Jazz Plaza Festival in 1991 when he was just 15. Fonseca studied at the Cuba’s prestigious Instituto Superior de Arte, where he obtained a master’s degree in composition, even though he often says that he was a really bad student. After earning his degree, he left Cuba to find his sound…….Read More

And find his sound he did, and along the way he has been instrumental in the global renaissance of Cuban music. Roberto’s music is known for fusing Latin jazz, urban music, and African rhythms with the sounds of his heritage. His first album was a collaborative effort teaming Roberto with Javier Zalba in Temperamento and released En el Cmienzo in 1999. A solo album Tiene Que Ver, followed in the same year, and in 2001 Elengo and No Limit were released, After their release, Roberto concentrated on touring with Buena Vista Social Club and Rubén González, along with producing records for Asa Festoon and the late Ibrahim Ferrer. Since 2007, he has released three more album Zamazu (2007) Akokan (2009) Live in Marciac (2010), and that brings us back to 2012’s Yo. Check out Roberto at AllMusic – here So let’s go “into the night: with “80s” from Roberto Fonseca………..While I have been writing this and eating supper the music of  Eldar Djangirov (No 15 on the RMR Jazz Chart this week) has been playing in the background … this is a young piano player I need to find out more about… damn all together now “Too Much Music , Too Little Time!!”