Blog entries

AneelSoomary.com

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Partners in Crime.I just spotted that a dear friend of mine has his website up and running. Aneel Soomary is a terrific Trumpet player who is based in Vienna, Austria. I first met him a few years ago when touring there with the Rat Pack. Much more recently we’ve been section-mates in the Lower Austrian Concert Jazz Orchestra – a gig I was offered at Aneel’s suggestion! If you’re touring in Austria and are short a trumpet player, I can’t recommend him more strongly – no matter what the style of music you happen to be playing. It’s an education for me to work alongside him.

Please check out the website and get to know this marvellous musician for yourself.

Catching Up…

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It’s been a busy few weeks, during which I’ve had little time to write or record anything for the site. This post may be some small consolation for you blog readers out there; a new podcast episode will be recorded next week, which I hope will appease my listeners who, judging by the amount of feedback I’ve received about episode 1, are a surprisingly large number!

Since last I blogged, I’ve completed the LACJO Spring Tour and also the last leg of the Rat Pack US National Tour. Both were tremendous experiences. I’ll give a more thorough account of the last 3 weeks of the Rat Pack tour in my next post.

The tour with the LACJO was great fun. It was slightly marred by some technical issues but ultimately the band really gelled and made a great job of some challenging music. My thanks go to all involved for their tremendous musicianship and their patience with my lousy German. I don’t know how many of you reading have ever been in a situation where you speak the minority language but it can be incredibly frustrating; particularly when you can see the clearest route to the resolution of a problem but can’t successfully articulate it. Unfortunately there were moments where this frustration led to anger – not something I’m proud of. I hope, as it seemed, that the rest of the band considered my playing to be of a sufficient standard that they could forgive my mood swings. I’ll be learning more German before my next visit!

Unfortunately, due to my impending immigration to the USA, I will probably be unable to join the band for the next tour(s) in the Autumn. Once in the USA, I have to wait until my residence is finally processed before I can leave again. Since this is likely to take up to a year, and I’m planning to move in July, that means that a September/October tour is sadly out of the question. I just hope that whoever takes my place doesn’t do too good a job – I’d very much like to rejoin in 2010!

Meantime, we should have news about the LACJO CD which was recorded at the ‘Premiere’ concert in St. Poelten in September 2008. Early mixes sound very promising and I’m looking forward to an album of which we can be really proud. We also filmed the last concert of the Spring Tour at Schloss Grafenegg for a potential DVD release. Hopefully that will also come to fruition.

Right now, I’m back in the UK following the end of the Rat Pack tour. I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of teaching and playing. I already have some of my previous students coming back for more punishment(!) and a few gigs in the book. We’ll get the details posted on the site as soon as they’re confirmed. One confirmed date that I’m very much looking forward to is at the Harrogate Jazz Club, this coming Tuesday, the 28th of April. I’ll be playing with my dear friend Jim Corry and his band “A Tribute To Atlantic Jazz“. It’s a great band, with whom I played a few hits last summer. Please come out and support if you’re local – details are in a news item we posted about it earlier. I shall be trying to record some of the gigs I play in the next few weeks, with a view to adding some live audio to the podcast. We’ll see how that pans out…

For now, have a great weekend and I’ll be back with more soon.

Apologies.

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After intending to get off to a good start with my blogging and podcasting, I’ve managed neither! I promise that sensible and informative episodes of both will be forthcoming next week after I get back to the UK. The last week of tour in Costa Mesa, CA is proving a little busy right now!

Sorry for shirking my online responsibilities in this manner; full service will resume shortly!

Bryan.

Bryan Davis Podcast Now Live!

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I’ve now finished recording, and have uploaded, my first podcast episode. This post serves, as well as anything, as a test to see if it all now works as expected.

In the first episode, I give a brief introduction and then talk about “backing off” to make trumpet playing a bit easier.

Please have a listen and send me a message with any feedback. I’m well aware that I burble my way through it a little – this recording was entirely unscripted and off-the-cuff. Hopefully I don’t sound too incoherent!!

You can subscribe to the podcast using the following URL: http://www.bryandavis.info/feed/podcast/

Greetings from Austria

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I’m in Austria right now, performing with the Lower Austria Concert Jazz Orchestra on the Spring Tour. I was hoping to have stopped by with some news about it already but, unfortunately, our accommodation doesn’t have internet access. Luckily, a couple of the other ‘foreign’ guys on the band with me have their cars here. Trumpeter Erik Veldkamp was kind enough to offer to drive ‘in search of civilisation’ – another way of saying that he wanted to check email too!

The tour got off to a heavy start on Sunday with a 7 hour rehearsal in the small town of Langenlois. We’re playing the same “Murdering The Classics” programme as we did back in September and it’s a heavy book! Included are the Stan Kenton versions of “West Side Story” as well as a couple of the things he did based on opera/classical music themes. For the tour we’ve added a few other things as well to make the gig up to 2 sets. The long rehearsal would have been taxing enough without the jetlag I was ‘enjoying’ at the time.

We’ve now played the first 3 concerts; at the Radiokulturhaus in Vienna, and Stadthalles in Mistelbach and Zwettl. Despite some sound problems it’s really starting to kick now and is proving a lot of fun. I’ve now also slept enough to feel a bit more like I’m in the same time zone as the rest of the band!

I’ll be back with more news from the tour and hopefully some photos before long. I’m also almost finished recording the first episode of my new podcast, which has been under consideration for some time. This episode, and possibly one or two more to follow, will be largely based on questions I’ve been asked, by audience and band members, in the last couple of days on tour. More on that when it’s done. If you have any trumpet/touring related questions you’d like me to speak or blog about, please email me via the Contact page and I’ll see if I can help out!

Bye for now…