Roy Campbell and William Hooker CD, Heart of the Sun

My old friend Roy Campbell, a wonderful trumpet player, passed away recently. We had The House Band, which played every Monday night at the Bitter End for Giorgio Gomelski's Tonka Wonka Mondays, always with a guest band leader: I've put up Billy Bang's music with this band on this blog, and if anyone requests, have a lot more.

Roy and I had just released a CD, Heart of the Sun, as the William Hooker Trio and were to do our CD release concert at Cornelia Street Cafe. Instead we had Matt Lavelle, who read a poem Roy wrote decades ago about the life and death of a jazz musician.

There was a beautiful tribute at Roulette with dozens of players. An open casket funeral near his home in the Bronx with Roy in a suit holding his trumpet and a beautiful flag with Roy reading something like "Blues, Jazz, Hip-Hop, R&B and Gospel".

I'm really glad I reconnected with Roy lately and I was looking forward to spending much more time with him.

writing this blog...

I haven't been writing this blog for a few months as I haven't had any comments or feedback, not even one note! But according to the "statistics" there have been over 10,000 visits. Maybe these are internet robots... but if I hear that you are reading, I'll continue with it.

Brainwave Music Project Radio Show with drummer William Hooker and Brad Garton

Here's a radio show based on a performance Brad Garton and I did together with William Hooker recently in Williamsburg at the Cameo Gallery

TV show on Mulatta Records

An Australian TV show, Subsonic, from about 10 years ago about our record label, Mulatta, with interview with yours truly, and video of the Thai Elephant Orchestra with Richard Lair and Ken Butler conducting the elephants, also the Tangerine Awkestra.

Here's the link.

Does anyone know how to upload this video, which is on Vimeo? Or put it on here? This blog software is owned by Google and they seem to only have a means to open YouTube.

new film by People Like Us (Vicki Bennett)

A new collage film - GESTURE PIECE, - by People Like Us also known as collage artist Vicki Bennett - also known as Vicki the DJ on WFMU. 6 composers, including yours truly, Matmos, Andrew Sharpley, Matmos, Wobbly, Gwilly Edmondez, Jason Willett, Ergo Phizmiz: none of us knew what the others would do. Can be seen here.

Thai Elephant Orchestra Interview on NPR All Things Considered

BBC and NPR decided both to interview me on the Thai Elephant Orchestra at about the same time... here's a link to my interview with Jacki Lyden on All Things Considered.

Interview with Butch Morris

Here's the first of a series of interviews from the early 1990s I produced for WKCR, this one with the late GREAT Butch Morris. The series was called "Playing Attention" and the interviewer on this one was Susan James. There are some wonderful insights by Butch on his work and music in general.

This is a long show, about an hour, so it may take a while for the player to show up on your screen.
(If anyone knows how to post long audio files that will download easily or play faster, tell me, there are more interviews I should post, and they are each about an hour.)