Musical miscellany

Bill Evans' Symbiosis album is a most recent discovery of mine (discovered in my hard drive, that is...I don't know why I had never listened to it before). It's definitely not your usual Bill Evans stuff (that is, piano trio on standards and originals), but it is instead more "third stream" jazz...(for a definition, see Wikipedia's entry on it.) If jazz or classical music is your kind of thing, this is definitely an album to check out. Recently I've been working with a colleague on some piano duet music for an upcoming event. In preparing for it, I realized that I haven't worked on 'legitimate' music for quite a while indeed. That is, by 'legitimate' I mean stuff with a more classical bent. I mean, it's just an arrangement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the overture from Rossini's Barber of Seville, and it's not super-difficult so it's not really hard core or anything, but it's great nevertheless to get back into stuff where I have to sit down and grind away at some parts. One thing about playing jazz for so long is that I'm finding my chops are deteriorating; my fingers are definitely not as fast as they were four years ago. Maybe I should start working more on stuff like this. The duo work is good also because it's just plain fun to make music with people. It's why I've been a band geek for as long as I've had the opportunity, in the end it's a lot of fun. This is relatively unexplored territory for me, and I like it; maybe I should keep my eyes open for duo opportunities in the future. As for my usual jazz trio work, I think it's time to go in for another lesson or something...we've found lately that we're settling into a routine, playing the same old stuff the same old ways. It's fun and all, and it doesn't sound bad, but I think I've definitely got to keep on doing that growth thing. Two things I've noticied: Improvisation, and solo piano work. One is kinda linked to the other, because in the end I think it boils down to having a few new tricks up my sleeve. What I tend to play seems to be very diatonic (probably a product of classical background); I need to incorporate more chromaticism into my lines and such. Plus when we're doing stuff that's sparse (Miles' Blue in Green, if I'm playing a ballad by myself, etc.) the texture seems kind of thin and bland. I think I need some techniques to broaden the sound that I get out of the piano. Anyway, that was a rather long and probably uninteresting music-rant. Maybe I'll write more tomorrow, I should probably turn in now, considering I have a fluid mech midterm in 8 hours... ...32 days until Germany!