The nice thing about traveling as a musician is that it affords a lot of uninterrupted music study time. At home I tend to listen to music while cooking, eating, cleaning, checking email, or some other activity that takes a part of my attention. On this trip, Andy and I had a ton of TIME in the car to study with our ears: form, chord progressions, grooves, melody, meter, album structure (something we don’t notice with the I-pod on shuffle.) Here are the routes and what we studied along the way:
Red–Grand Rapids, MI to Lincoln, NE (10 hours)
Mike Stern: Who Let the Cat’s Out?
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg with the Assad Brothers (Stuff recorded at Aspen)
(Carmen played flute along with both of these in the car and did some transcribing from the Mike Stern album which inspired a new tango compoostion called Cumparsita Cats)
Orange– Lincoln, NE to Boise, ID (16 1/2 hours)
Dave Douglas: Freak In
Chick Corea: Past, Present, Future
Last five discs of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov Audio Book
(finally finished this from January; keeping our literary life afloat too!)
World Saxophone Quartet: Tribute to Miles
Yellow– Boise, ID to Uintah Wilderness, UT (7 hours)
Bartok Piano Concerto No. 3 (Andy listened to this three times through in different movement orders while Carmen unintentionally slept…)
Green–Uintah Wilderness, UT to Vega State Park, CO (6 hours)
Tom Waits: Brawlers from Orphans
DJ Andy Spun a Shuffle Mix of CDs: Jason Mraz: Live, Tori Amos: Boys for Pele, Victor Wooten: Live in America, Pat Metheny: Day Trip, Charlie Hunter Quartet, Scofield: Works for Me
Brian Blade: Seasons of Changes
(Kurt Rosenwinkel + views at 10,000 feet = AWESOME)
Blue–Vega State Park, CO to Glenwood Springs to Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP, CO (5 hours)
Dave Holland: Critical Mass
Bob Marley: Catch a Fire
Purple–Black Canyon NP to Great Sand Dunes NP, CO (4 hours)
(Best Mix of the Trip on this Stretch!)
Brad Mehldau: Highway Rider (2010 release! both discs!)
Jimi Hendrix: Axis: Bold as Love
The Mothers of Invention: Weasels Ripped My Flesh
Black–Great Sand Dunes NP to Colorado Springs, CO (3 hours)
Dave Douglas: Keystone Live in Sweden
John Adams: Dharma at Big Sur
Brown–Colorado Springs to Lincoln, NE (8 hours)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard: Ravel and Carter Works
Biagi: Su Orquesta y sus Cantores, Demare: Sus Primeros Exitos, De Caro Sexteto: Todo Corazon, Pablo Ziegler: Quintet for New Tango
(Carmen did a tango transcription and form study session with these for the upcoming tango seminar in July)
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik
Pink–Lincoln, NE to Grand Rapids, MI (10 hours)
Osvaldo Golijov: Oceana
Mahler Symphony No. 5: Bernstein/NY Philharmonic
Yusef Lateef: The Diverse Yusef Lateef/Suite 16
Radiohead: Amnesiac
BT: Emotional Technology (Special request from the driver (Andy) to get us through the 80-90-94-Traffic-Hell, 15mph baby! the ONLY northern route through the Midwest without going 500 miles out of the way!)
Best Radio Finds in the Car
Classical: Leif Ove Andsnes: Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2
LIVE! with the Berlin Philharmonic
88.7 FM Colorado Springs/Pueblo/Manitou Springs
Independent: Cheryl Wheeler: White Cat
from her album Pointing at the Sun
KGNU 88.5 Boulder