Lorin Benedict: News

Hi folk(s)! Well, I have nothing of much significance to say, as I've been focusing a bit more on my non-musical endeavors of late. Nevertheless, I have managed to do a few stimulating gigs in the past few months. The Holly Martins played at the wonderful John Schott-curated Berkeley Arts Festival; Bleeding Vector played at the SIMM Series at the SF Musicians Union; and a new band in which I am a member played (twice!) at Bird and Beckett Books. What I've been mainly dealing with, however, in the musical realm, is working on voice-leading in the context of fairly traditional structures possessing a goodly amount of functional harmony... I hope that the recent entries in the Practice subsection of the Music section of this site bear this out.

And then I've been listening, of course! In this area, I've been particularly enamored with MC Breed, formerly of Flint, MI (and now, sadly, deceased as of 2008). And then also some of Franz Liszt's Sonetti Di Petrarca as played by Jorge Bolet- that second one is really killing me! Finally, Pluripotent, by pianist Corey Smythe!!!!!!! check that one out if you haven't already. Shit's deep.

I haven't written on here in a while, so I thought I would do just that, so that all (one, none?) of you can read what I'm up to ("up to what I am"?). Recently, I took part in a couple of fun shows in which I was sort of a  "ringer": First was a guest appearance with trumpeter Anthony Coleman's big band. This also featured some VERY strong rappers/spoken word folks. I always like it when my scatting shtick is refracted against that of vocalists from the hip-hop arena; I've always considered what I do to be, functionally at least, closer to that than to "jazz singing". I wasn't on any tunes with the rappers, but it was interesting for me, just the same. And then not a week later, I was similarly featured as a guest with the Shotgun Wedding Ensemble as a part of their reinvestigation of the music of Cab Calloway. Here, I used an original recording (passed to me by Adam Theis) of Calloway as a jumping-off point... I tried to evoke the general tenor of his vibe while resolutely inflecting with MY vocal vehicle. So, two interesting experiences of me being a "guest".

And then drummer Sam Ospovat and I had one of our best gigs ever at the Actual Cafe, as part of Jacob Zimmerman's and Theo Padouvas' "Actual Jazz Series". I think we're beginning to figure out what works in our duo. Plus, we each did (for the first time in this setting) two SOLOs as well. Sam premiered a composed piece of his, while I attempted to scat the slow movement of the 5th Bach Cello Suite. Neither of us were satisfied with our respective solo efforts, though we were both glad that we got through them. And thanks so much to the trio of Ian Carey, Adam Shulman, and Bryan Bowman who played before us (for, it must be said, very little money). Until next time...

I just returned from another "un-vacation" in New York... "un-" because I was working HARD on music the whole time. The first three days were almost exclusively spent at the home/studio of Malik Ameer (and his wife, Molly); we were putting the finishing touches on our upcoming duo release, home is where the house is. And you know, I have to say this: I think this album is probably the best thing I've ever been involved with- and that includes my non-musical endeavors as well. That said, I'd actually be surprised if anyone (and I mean this) besides me and Malik actually ends up liking it. Who knows? Maybe I'll be surprised. But at least I like it. Maybe it sounds silly to say this, but I think I'm so on board with it because it seems to exhibit a somewhat bigger picture than is normally found in my hopefully detailed, but often myopic work.

And then in the last night of the trip, I hit at the Downtown Music Gallery with vocalist Jen Shyu and percussionist Ches Smith. This was very fun, much like my earlier free-improv start with Jen and Oscar Noriega a few months back. The only thing that sucked was that I was dealing with head cold symptoms during it. I hate that. But musically, this might have been better for the group, because otherwise I could easily have surrendered to the temptation to be a friggin' grandstanding blow-hard.

It's official... NYC-based rapper/writer/producer Malik Ameer (one of my longest-standing musical collaborators) and I will be releasing a duo album, entitled: home is where the house is. It will come out on Edgetone Records, probably sometime in early 2011. By the way, Edgetone is the label which put out the recent Holly Martins album as well (in 2010). Malik and I already have 9 tracks which we made together during three separate NYC trips of mine during 2009 and 2010. I'm now scheduled to make another trip in early December of this year to put some finishing touches on these tunes as well as to (maybe) make a couple more.

Three of these tunes are already posted in the Music section of this site. Stay tuned for the official release to hear the rest  :)

Last night I played 2 sets of music at Local 269 in Manhattan. First was a freely-improvised set with Jen Shyu and Oscar Noriega. I was kind of nervous about this at first, since I don't generally do free-ish stuff. But I think it went pretty well! It was HARD but FUN! The 2nd set was with The Holly Martins, and was one of our usual greatly rehearsed affairs. It went over well in general, but I was quite disappointed with my inaccuracies in a couple of places. But wow... so fun to play for a serious listening NY audience (during both sets, in fact)! I feel very lucky that it was like that, particularly since I don't live there.

Just started this brand new website (officially sick of myspace now)! So what's new... hmm... well, I'm hard at work (or at least hard at procrastination) learning some new material for the Holly Martins NYC gig in August. Also, I just started up an entirely unofficial collaboration with electronic musician Tim Perkis- I'm pretty excited about this; he's the man, and I feel I can be completely unhinged and Lorin-ic in this setting... I might put some tracks up soon, we'll see. That's all for now!