Music

Welcome to the last day of the rest of your year. I’ve heard many, many people exclaim how grateful and relieved they are to bring 2009 to a close, and in many ways I join them in their sentiment. Still, for me it’s been a pretty good, even great year, though it’s been fraught with many of the same financial precipices as we’ve all shared as a national community. But this is a music column, not a financial one, so let’s take a look at what I believe will be the biggest musical news of 2010, the end of the album as we know it.more...

Sept. 24 — Let’s take a look around the musical landscape and see what’s coming up this week and in the near future, eh? We are striving for eclectic here, because I know this space focuses a lot on blues. When I venture too far from the blues, I tend to sound even more ignorant that I am, which is not easy. At any rate, as a public service, here are some shows at home and abroad you definitely want to check out:

Martinez, this weekend:more...

August 20 — When we left off last week, I had been cuckolded by my first wife, tried and failed at reconciliation, and was invited to Point Richmond to play in a bluegrass band, where a background singer was also invited. Her name was Barbara, and she made her entrance the way she always did – with boisterous exuberance, dominating the very air molecules and lighting up the darkest corners of wherever she was. more...

Whether you are already an avid opera fan or you have yet to experience the genre, Festival Opera’s current production of Puccini’s “Turandot” at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts is an excellent choice for an evening of music and culture. The story is timeless, the players are professional and passionate, the theater’s design and acoustics are exceptional, and the set, costumes and choreography are masterfully done.more...

Fans filled every seat at Oakland’s Yoshi’s Jazz Club on Tuesday night to see the Diablo Valley College Night Jazz Band play with the legendary saxophonist Bob Mintzer.

“We are recording this for possible inclusion on a new CD, so really make some noise,” bandleader and DVC Director of Jazz Studies Rory Snyder said to the crowd just before Mintzer appeared on stage.

‘Birdlike” by Freddie Hubbard and two of Mintzer’s compositions, “Camouflage,” and “Runferyerlife,” were the highlights of the high-energy, swinging two-set night.more...

I have spent my entire adult life whining about the fact that I’m not a full time working musician, following my bliss blah blah blah. I have worked a day job since my mid-20s, which means that I had not much energy left at the end of the day to pursue a full time musical career. I’ve been bitter about it for a long time, but not any more. more...

You know that Armando’s features all kinds of music: jazz, bluegrass, blues, etc. And you know that it’s one of the premiere nightclubs in the Bay Area, a place where musicians of all stripes and degrees of success want to perform, because of the amazing people who come to see the music there. You know all that. No need to repeat it here.more...

Break out the Mardi Gras beads and hula skirts, Martinez.

Mal Sharpe, the renowned comedian, prankster and current KCSM D.J., will be in Martinez tonight wearing another of his many hats – that of musician.

Sharp’s band, Big Money In Jazz, is playing at Armando’s, and it promises to be a night of high jinks and  “New Orleans jazz with a Hawaiian flair,” Sharpe said yesterday.more...

Ah, the love song. Indeed, it’s the stuff dreams and fortunes are made of. The yearning, the longing, the absolute certainty that the love will last forever, because how could anything that feels so darned good not be permanent? Even people who know better, people as old as even myself, can bear witness to the illusions that love can bring. If, that is, you define love the way we’ve been taught to define it in our culture — that is, the way it’s defined in love songs.more...