It was a busy few months leading up to the end of the year. The Empty Cage Quartet got together in October after a two-year hiatus for a live recording and several concerts culminating in a fantastic night at the Blue Whale in Los Angeles. In September I had the pleasure of performing at REDCAT with pianist Cathlene Pineda, who put together an impossibly beautiful suite of new compositions based on the poetry of Eloise Klein Healy for the Angel City Jazz Festival. Other recent concerts included collaborations with Thollem McDonas, Charles Sharp, Jeff Schwartz, Vijay Anderson, Chris Schlarb, Tabor Allen, Phillip Greenlief, Motoko Honda, Beth Schenck, G.E. Stinson, Alex Cline, Steuart Liebig, Kio Griffith, and the Invisible Astro Healing Rhythm Quartet.
Reaching back further into 2014, there were musical encounters with Jack Wright, Ben Wright, Tatsuya Nakatani, Michael Vlatkovich, Anna Homler, Kyle Burnham, John Fumo, Jeff Kaiser, Daniel Rosenboom, Ted Byrnes, Brian Walsh, John Lindberg, Gilbert Isbin, Scott Walton, Wadada Leo Smith, and quite a few others.
I’m opening this new year with a deep and profound feeling of gratitude for the wonderful and endlessly inspiring friends I’m fortunate to cross musical paths with so often, each one pursuing a life uniquely centered on beauty and creativity, bringing life-affirming music with them wherever they go.
