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Where in the world is Joe Locke?

This question was just asked by Ed Saindon on a post today… well I have news!

Yes, Joe is less on the site than he used to be, but who doesn’t know about his crazy life and agenda? On his itinerary, we can see he will be touring in Europe in July, but I’m sure he’s just very busy with all kinds of terrific projects (which I have no ideas about!). :o)

But there is a great news about him: yesterday evening, he won for the second time the prestigious JJA Jazz Award as Mallet Player of the Year!

Invitation by Ed Saindon & Philippe Mace, Paris Music Conservatory, 5/7/09

Here’s a clip of Philippe and me playing Bronislau Kaper’s composition Invitation. It’s an unusual standard in terms of the melody, harmony and form. The A section has long durations of minor 6th chords which allow for some nice, open type of playing. The bridge has more conventional II-7 V7s resolving to minor 6th chords. The melody is quite angular and filled with rich tension over the underlying harmony. That’s what makes it such a great tune to play. Nice melody and harmony. Not to mention the ABA form with a tag ending.

The Days of Wine and Roses, Philippe Mace & Ed Saindon

Here’s a version of Philippe and me playing Henry Mancini’s The Days of Wine and Roses. It’s a fun tune to solo on since the changes are so interesting to maneuver through. We play the first part of the tune in F and then modulate in the second half to Ab which gives the tune a lift. The great pianist Bill Evans played it this way. Also, Joe plays it this way on his tribute album to Mancini which by the way is a fantastic recording and one of my favorite recordings of Joe.

While I'm Away! More Lessons!

So I'm heading out this week to do workshops in Ireland and Holland.

This is great and I'm psyched. In Ireland I'll have a very small group of vibe players, maybe 2 or 3. However I'm also doing an improv workshop which will have about 8 or 9 students after the vibesworkshop. We'll work for a few days and then do a concert. I'm excited and love teaching improv workshops.

Then I head to the Vanderplas factory and we should have about 5 or 6 vibe students there.

Almost 1 Year Old

August 1st vibes workshop will be 1 year old. It's been a very hard and fun year. I've mad so many friends from all over the world and we have this instrument in common. That's totally cool.

The site is slowly growing and things are starting to happen. I think next year will be an even better year. It's great that many of you are willing to support the site as you do. I think we're going to build something great.

Philippe Mace and Ed Saindon playing Hope, 5/7/09 Paris

Hi guys,

Here's a clip of Philippe Mace on marimba and me on vibes from the Paris performance on May 7th. We're playing one of my tunes titled Hope. You can view or download Hope here: http://www.edsaindon.com/images/pdf/hope.pdf

There's a clip of us playing Invitation, but it's not quite right in terms of the synchronization of the audio and video. Tony graciously said he would try to fix that. If he can, I'll post that as well.

Ed