Musical Meanderings

This is a blog centered around some of the musical encounters and experiences that I come upon in my daily life as a musician.

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Location: Alameda, California

Saturday, September 16, 2006

It happened!

Well, it happened! It has been a long time. But every once in awhile, you play with a musician that really makes you listen. And you get all happy and all inspired and you just feel great.

That hasn't happened to me in a long time. I can sometimes get inspired by people playing other instruments, but I think that some of that is the unfamiliarity with the particular sound that they are getting, or often it is their technical ability that is inspiring. Like for example, if someone can play really fast, that's inspiring usually, as long as they are playing something that is interesting too. Or if someone has a large repertoire and knows all kinds of different scales, that can be fun.

But it is rare that someone hits me with the simple beauty of music itself, and with the expression of feeling on an instrument that is similar to mine. I am so familiar with the strings sound that I didn't think it could excite me anymore. Wrong!

The violinist that I played with Thursday night, for a three hour party gig beside a pool, is an extraordinary musician! His name is Chris, and I met him the other night at my Flamenco gig. He was really good and seemed very kind and interesting, so I hired him for a gig that came up this week. It was a great move.

Three hours is a long time to fill with duo music, but the time flew with Chris.

First of all, he showed up in a flashy, Liberace type vest, which was perfect for this party. He's kind of tall and stately to look at, and he's got the Kevin Klein debonaire kind of look going on.

I had told him to bring some music if he had any. He brought an amp, two pickups and an orchestra recorded so that we could play some popular favorites along with them backing us up!

It was really fun playing some overplayed, romantic tunes like the Titantic theme, Pachelbel's Canon, and a couple of the Puccini arias...Everyone loves to hear these kinds of songs.

But, anyway, back to my new inspiring friend. He plays beautifully! His sound is so soulful---and he puts everything he has into every little melody. I have to say that I was blown away by his artistry and his musicianship. And even when we read some classical Stamitz duets, he was a master. His comments, too, were very humble: "This is so difficult to read and play well," he said, after ripping through an allegro perfectly at a fast tempo. But it wasn't just the tempo, it was how well he played this thing musically. The expression of it all.

I walked away, changed.

The last time I was thrown into a state like this by a string player was when I first heard and played with Lei Quiang in the Cirque du Soleil "O" show. Leigh plays the Chinese violin, or "erhu", with a hauntingly beautiful tone. It was a tone that I had never heard before, but similar to a standard European violin sound. When I first heard it, sitting there in the audience at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, I just had to smile. I was so excited that I would be playing duets with this instrument and this musician.

After playing 600 shows with Lei, and sitting right beside him every night for over a year, I feel the same way about him and his musicianship.

Of course, one of the most fun things about Lei was jumping up from the sound booth when we both had a three minute break in the music every show, and running up and down the backstage ten flights of stairs four times, as fast as we could, and then skipping back into the sound booth, jumping into our chairs and coming in on our next melodic entrances with a heightened sense of energy and with a very fast vibrato! Now that was fun! Every night!

But anyway, I have diverted. I have to go practice.

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