Geof Bradfield

07.05.09 | West Coast Next Week!
I will be out on the West Coast next week for a few gigs! First, I'm in Seattle at Tula's Wednesday night for trumpeter Chad McCullough's CD release party. After that, I'm swinging down to the Los Angeles area for a date at Charlie O's with the legendary bassist John Heard and his trio at Charlie O's. You can check out this great club at the link below. To wrap up, I'll be at the Temecula Valley Jazz Festival Saturday Night with a fantastic rhythm section- Bill Cunliffe (piano), Tom Warrington (bass), and Joe Labarbera (drums). For more on that event, see the news entry and link below. If you're in the area, I hope to see you at one of these performances! Dates, times and links are in the Gigs section of the website as well.

03.25.09 | Chuck Niles Bebop Competition
I am very pleased to announce that I have been named the winner of the 2009 Chuck Niles Bebop Award. This competition was created by the Temecula Valley International Jazz Festival and the family of legendary west coast jazz disc jockey Chuck Niles to celebrate his memory and to inspire and support artists playing the music he loved. I'll be performing at the Temecula Valley International Jazz Festival in July this year, sharing the bill with Kenny Burrell, Poncho Sanchez, Richie Cole, and many others. Check out their website for more details and a full schedule.

03.01.09 | Last Morning in Ukraine
We are getting ready to leave Kiev after a fantastic week here. The concerts were very successful, and we had a chance to connect with people (musicians and otherwise) here in Ukraine in a way that was impossible in Russia due to our travel schedule. We drove to Kharkiv and back this weekend (6-7 hours each way) to play a concert hall and give a master class for students at a local college. Many were jazz musicians, so we played with them and had a good conversation about the rhythm section and soloist's roles in the group. Afterwards they had many individual questions, so Anna was working overtime as our translator- thanks Anna! The students I spoke with were very intense and had very thoughtful questions- how to practice, how to transcribe, how to swing, what do I practice now- very insightful, and hard to come up with a concise answer to that doesn't require translation of technical musical info! I am amazed at how hungry all the young musicians here are to learn. In fact, we are trying to engineer a return for more teaching as a group- all the folks we are working with from the embassy are very excited about that idea and seem pretty determined to make it happen, so I am feeling optimistic about coming back in a year or so.

Today we head for Belarus. I have little idea of what to expect there, but suspect it will be a very different environment given the political climate. More in a couple days.

02.26.09 | Day 3 in Kiev
Kiev has been a series of pleasant surprises. Ryan was here 9 years ago and had a very mixed experience, but it seems the city has changed radically since that time. The downtown area we are staying in is beautiful- we can see St. Sophia and St. Michael's from the hotel, as they are practically in our backyard. I'm headed out in a bit to look around and check out the Chernobyl Museum.

Among the pleasant surprises here are the many talented and hungry young musicians we have met. We opened up the last set of our gig at Club 44 a couple nights ago and were literally swarmed with young jazz musicians. One drummer and guitarist (each was 17 years old) were particularly outstanding- mature, swinging, and soulful. We're thinking of starting a farm team for the Chicago jazz scene out here!

We also visited a couple schools. One was a college that most of the musicians we met the night before attended, so we had a chance to work more closely with them. Since we already knew they were laying at a high level, we were able to gear the workshop appropriately and get into sophisticated stuff like group interaction, playing really slow tempi, and so on. Lots of fun. Afterwards, a half dozen sax players came to my hotel room for a group lesson- not sure what the Hyatt staff thought of that, but they didn't throw me out! Another one, their teacher, is coming over this morning for a lesson and hang, so I have to go meet him. more later...

02.22.09 | Last night in Russia
We're back in Moscow tonight for a performance in the Palace on the Yauza River Concert Hall. Last night we arrived late after our concert in Obninsk, where we once again had an excellent hall, piano and audience. The crowd seemed especially enthusiastic; we played a fairly long set for them and still ended up doing an encore of Ryan's new arrangement of 'Round Midnight. This trip has been a great opportunity to play for sizable (500-1700 people), attentive audiences who seem to be familiar with jazz. The new material is developing nicely, and the group interaction is very strong. The only downside is the constant movement. I don't mind the travel so much, but the way this is scheduled we have little opportunity to meet other musicians or experience the culture here ourselves; we literally pack up and catch a train or a bus to the next gig after almost every concert. In a couple cities there were clearly students; it would have been interesting and I think rewarding for both sides if we had stayed one more day in Moscow, for example, and done a clinic at the conservatory. This is a very different tour than the last one in Africa, where we had a chance to meet people and engage with our audiences in more casual settings. Given the extensive preparation for the pedagogical side that we did for this trip with our sponsors at JALC, it seems a shame that we have had little chance to use those skills here!

We did manage to do a bit of sightseeing today on our morning off. Ryan, Lorin and I made it down to the Kremlin and wandered around Red Square. I enjoyed it, but am done with icons for the day. It was brutally cold, so we're back at the hotel room to rest and warm up before the concert tonight. After that, we're off to Ukraine at 7 am! More borscht in my future, I think, although we did manage to regift the vodka one promoter gave us before it did any serious damage!

02.18.09 | More from the Rhythm Road
Moscow Conservatory and Airport Fun

Sunday night we performed at the great hall of the Moscow Conservatory as guests of Russian jazz saxophonist and bandleader George Garanyan. We alternated short sets in each part of the program with his big band, and then played a blues with the big band for the concert finale. The hall was gorgeous- about 200 years old, according to George, and with seating for 1700. It was full, excepting one box towards the front that was clearly reserved for some elite patrons. The room is longer than a hall like Carnegie, and it seemed that the bulk of the seating was on the floor with some stacked balconies in the back. Behind us on the stage was perhaps the largest pipe organ I have ever seen- a beautiful, ornate instrument. Our sets were very well received, and during the bows at the end Kobie snapped a few pictures of the audience. They were very indulgent for the pics, cheering and waving there arms enthusiastically, so we should have some nice shots- I’ll put those up when we get a second.

After the concert, we rushed to the airport to fly a late night plane to Chelyabinsk, a city in the Ural Mountains on the border of Siberia. It was founded as a fortress on the way to Siberia years ago. However, our flight was cancelled for some reason- not weather, although it was snowing. The next few hours reminded me of Phil Woods “so you want to be a jazz musician” joke- the one where he tells aspiring young musicians that to get a feel for the life, you should load the gear in the bus, drive around and around with the windows shut for several hours, unload the gear, put on your suit, take off your suit, and then do it all again- without playing a note! We did just that, loading into the airport, sitting in a dilapidated yet expensive café for a couple hours while Masha madly called every airline and hotel in the area, and then loaded out of the airport to a nearby hotel to sleep for a few hours before our flight left the next morning.

When we arrived in C., everything was cool- nice folks, a good hotel with a decent restaurant, and yet another beautiful hall with a 9 foot Steinway. The concert, like the others so far, was completely sold out several days before- I think this hall held 550 or so. We’re definitely getting spoiled by the playing conditions here, which is good- it more than makes up for the rough travel when we get to play in these settings at the end of the day.

02.15.09 | Russia- week 1 on the Rhythm Road
We've been in Russia for a week now, and I have completely lost my sense of time. Days of the week (and even night and day) have blurred together in a wash of trains, planes and buses. We had an excellent concert last night in Kursk in a concert hall seating about 500 (and packed). The piano was a beautiful new Hamburg Steinway, and the audience was very enthusiastic and focused. A father-son duo on piano and saxophone played before us- beautiful compositions and playing. We played some blues with them for the concert finale, which was very well received. Afterwards, we had a late dinner and the pianist regaled us with stories of learning to play jazz under the soviet government. He listened to Willis Conover's show on Voice of America and secretly practiced jazz when his classical Moscow Conservatory teachers were not around. When we asked how jazz was perceived in Russia at that time, he said he would have been thrown out of the Conservatory if he had been caught "playing a little boogie-woogie!" He played his ass off- great touch, swinging, fantastic energy. We have a couple more gigs with the two of them coming up, and we are all looking forward to playing and hanging more.
The other two gigs also went well- a club in Krasnodar and a festival in a concert hall (650 people, again packed) in Bryansk. We had a little time off in Bryansk, and Ryan and I went with Masha (our embassy guide) to a monastery built in 1228.
We also visited the local art museum; one of the festival promoters, Lubov, is an art historian by profession and introduced us to many Russian artists we were completely unfamiliar with. The museum possessed a huge quantity of oil paintings for its humble size- a mixture of religious and early soviet era work. Sadly, most of it was in rough shape, but it was still a stunning collection. One of the best was a madonna with three arms- some obscure Russian myth.

Tonight we play the legendary Moscow Conservatory Hall with Geroge Garanyan, a well loved Russian jazz musician. We will play a set of our own and then perform with his orchestra. Afterwards, we race off to the airport for a red eye to Chelyabinsk in the Urals- as far east as you can go before you're in Siberia! THe more planes, trains, and automobiles...

02.07.09 | Back on the Rhythm Road
I'm very excited to announce that I'm headed back out on the Rhythm Road with Ryan Cohan, Kobie Watkins and Lorin Cohen! We leave tomorrow for a rigorous tour of Russia. After that, we travel to Ukraine and Belarus. Check in here for periodic updates, and visit the Rhythm Road site to see what other bands on the tour circuit are up to.

11.12.08 | Pacific Northwest Tour
I'll be on tour in the Pacific Northwest next week, playing the Ballard Jazz Festival in Seattle and The Cave in Portland with renowned pianist Darrell Grant as well as recording for my friend Chad McCullough's new CD with an all-star cast from the Origin Records label. Come out to the gigs if you're in the region, and look for the CD next Spring!