Photo by Gerhard Klocker

Playscape Recordings will launch its 2010 release schedule on March 16th with the Peter Madsen Trio’s The Litchfield Suite (PSR#080308). This is pianist/composer Peter Madsen’s third recording for the label, but his first leading, and composing for, his own band, following the acclaimed solo piano showcases Sphere Essence: Another Side of Monk and Prevue of Tomorrow. The Litchfield Suite, also featuring bassist Andy McKee and drummer Gerald Cleaver, documents the premiere of Madsen’s six-part titular work at the 2008 Litchfield Jazz Festival.

“Two years ago,” writes Madsen in the liner notes, “festival founder Vita Muir invited me to perform with one of my own bands. Given my love of composing, and close association with the festival over the years, it soon became clear that I should write something special for this event. I needed a drummer who was diverse enough to handle the wide variety of styles in my writing and Gerald fit perfectly. Andy, who I’ve known for more than 25 years, is a dream to work with…I knew he could also deal with all the different styles, freedom and written parts I wanted on the bass.”

“Madsen has the chops and harmonic skills of two pianists,” declared David R. Adler in a Playscape Recordings label feature for the American Music Center’s NewMusicBox. Critics have called his previous recordings for the label “stunning” (Ken Dryden, AllMusic.com), “must-hear” (Marc Medwin, Cadence), “consistently intriguing” (Nick Pitt, Coda) and “confrontational and interesting” (Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, Eighth Edition). In his review of Madsen’s latest, Prevue of Tomorrow, the Village Voice’s Francis Davis wrote, “He’s the maverick’s maverick, and this could well prove the year’s most unlikely tour de force.”

A well-kept secret among critics, musicians and jazz aficionados alike, Madsen is a highly valued 30-year veteran of the creative music scene who earned his first big break touring with Stan Getz in 1987. He has since worked with poets, choirs, dancers and dozens of the world’s premier improvisers ranging from Benny Golson and Stanley Turrentine to Joe Lovano and Kenny Garrett to Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker. Overall, his discography features nearly 100 recordings, including numerous Playscape titles as the pianist of choice for longtime collaborators Michael Musillami and Mario Pavone. Originally from Wisconsin, he currently splits his time between New York and Vorarlberg, Austria. Learn more at http://www.petermadsen.us

More by Andy McKee

Meredith Mauldin’s Website

Another Peep @ The Imposter

Andy’s from Topeka, the capital city town of Kansas. Having said this, I guess I bound myself to say a few words about one summer day in Topeka. Next time.

just wait till you hear her sing...

There’s a beautiful voice, belonging to an equally beautiful singer/songwriter that’s starting a fire.  Her YouTube videos have accumulated over 320 000 hits, she’s creating a stir busking on the streets of Leeds, and we’ve featured before on Hectique Boutique. Its only the beginning though. This is Hannah Trigwell and she’s the spark! We managed to track the lady down for an interview….Check it:

Q: Hannah your music is beautiful. The songs evoke images of delicate sunshine on a winters day …where does this all this awesome come from?

Oh its completely inborn… Haha no I don’t know, I love writing and making music. When I first started learning how to play guitar I used to make up simple riffs and the lyrics just flowed out with whatever melody I had made. One of the first songs I completed was based around a really simple finger picking tune which sounded a bit like raindrops, the song ended up being called Waterfall… it all fitted together quite well. Most of what I write about is driven by intense emotion, so I try my best to get however I feel about the situation across to whoever’s listening.

Q: Are you a trained musician? Did you grow up in a musical home?

No, not at all haha. I’m self-taught in guitar and singing. Teaching myself guitar was once of the most drawn-out frustrating things I have ever done, but it has more than paid off. When I was young I started off on the dreaded recorder and then moved onto the flute but quickly got bored of the classical stuff. [for those of you who have been spared the um unique pleasure of the recorder please enjoy this video - hectique]

Q: How long have you been singing and writing songs?

I loved singing from a young age but only started performing alone about 2 years ago. I’ve been writing songs for about 4 years now, I’m much improved from when I first started but I am still learning new tricks everyday.

Q: Was there a moment when you were “this is it, this is what i want to do with my life”?

When I was younger I wanted to be a paleontologist, teacher, and then for a very long time I wanted to be a dentist. I never really considered music as a career until recently. I would absolutely love to be able to pursue a career in music but I think a lot of it rests with luck, being in the right place at the right time, that sort of thing. Making music is something I can throw myself into completely; it’s what I’m most passionate about.

Q: It shows! Your songs carry an ocean of emotion… so I gotta ask underneath who is Hannah Trigwell?

…When I figure that out, I’ll write a song about it and let you know.

Q: Ha ha, fair enough…. I do wanna know this though…. despite a voice that makes one a lil teary eyed and such, you’re busking in Leeds and playing a couple of gigs too… Why given your obvious talent have you chosen this route rather than X factor and the like?

As much as living the dream and being thrust immediately into the limelight doing what I love appeals, I just don’t think it would be a good idea for me. I’d much rather build up a local fanbase (of actual fans) then go from there. I love busking, you get immediate feedback and it’s brilliant for getting the public’s reaction to your own songs.

Q: Keeping it real is always respected at the Boutique! Which musicians inspire you? What are you listening to right now?

Missy Higgins, Tegan and Sara, Paramore, David Gray, Coldplay, Adele, Nizlopi… the list is endless Right now I can’t stop listening to Andy Mckee- For My Father, that guy is a genius, its completely instrumental but I think all of his stuff is just beautiful.

Q: What else makes you write?

Anything driven by emotion can make me want to sit down with a guitar and start writing. It could be something which has happened to me or something that I see in everyday life. I’d be reading something and a line could grab my attention, for being clever or just beautiful but simple, and so I’d write something around that idea.

Q: Whats next for Hannah Trigwell? When will we have an album or E.P.?

An EP under Hear Me Roar Management is in the works to be finished before Christmas. I keep writing new material though so we are just deciding which songs will make it. I’m also gigging around Leeds, catch up with me on Facebook or Youtube for updates!

Q: There you have it y’all, Christmas pressies sorted! Thanks for your time Hannah. Mad love to ya!

Um selo pra lá de foda que descobri por acaso pela internet. Os caras tem uma seleção incrível de músicos, tentei achar um cara ruim em todo o site e não consegui, todos são bons e a maioria excelente. Alguns dos meus novos favoritos aí embaixo:

Andy McKee – “Rylynn”

Wow.  This guy was suggested to me about a year ago and he seriously has some talent.  No words, just acoustic guitar.  This song was really got me into his music.  Go buy the CD or download it from iTunes when you get the chance.  I believe he is self-taught, and he explores different ways to make the guitar sing.   This one made the list because of both the melodic and rhythm of the track.

Vad sägs om det här! Jag var inne på You Tube och botaniserade lite och helt plötsligt snubblade jag över Andy McKee. Vilken kille, jag har aldrig sett någon hantera en gitarr på det här sättet förut och bra låter det också. Det finns flera klipp med honom och alla ger mersmak. Det får nog bli en investering för min del. Jag ser fram emot att ligga raklång i tv-soffan och njuta av hans sällskap. Sämre kan man ha det, helt klart.

Andy McKee är född i Topeka, Kansas 1979 och om jag förstått det rätt så komponerar han också mestadels av den musik han framför.  När jag börjar att leta lite information om honom upptäcker jag att han alldeles nyss varit i Uppsala och medverkat på en gitarrfestival där, nu i oktober. Synd att man missade det. Kolla in klippen på “tuben”, den här killen är bra! På de här adresserna kan man också lyssna till flera låtar och beställa skivor om man har lust: http://www.candyrat.com/artists/AndyMckee/GatesofGnomeria/  http://www.candyrat.com/artists/AndyMckee/ArtOfMotion/

I recently experienced the bliss of attending a finger style guitar gig in Toronto. I am not too big a follower of the genre but I do own all of Andy McKee albums and I have listened to a fair bit of Don Ross music as well. To my surprise the place was packed with talented musicians. Most of them played original instrumentals while a few played instrumental versions of well known songs from the rock music genre. Most of the musicians there used pedals to loop their music but a fair bit didn’t use any such pedals and they definitely outshined the others.

It does take a fair bit of skill to play lead, rhythm, bass as well the vocal sections of a song simultaneously. It’s something I myself have been working on since the last few months. You hardly hear such intricate guitar music on the radio today but that’s a whole other debate. Michael Hedges was one of the few well known musicians who employed such guitar playing techniques coupled with numerous alternate guitar tunings. Unfortunately he is dead now but he did leave an extensive collection of tasteful music. Check him out if you’re into acoustic guitar music.

Great accoustic guitar soloist from Kansas. Take a look. Young guitar players with weak nerves better pass this by. Joking

These days it seems as if all of my hobbies and extraneous dreams have been left by the wayside as I pursue that elusive and highly enchanted “good life”—you know, the one that always seems just close enough to glimpse in the distance but never close enough to grasp. The only legit distraction I can claim to have nurtured with any sort of remarkable effort is my ever closer companionship with the sweet and homey sound of the acoustic guitar. I mean really, who doesn’t love that? Honestly, if you don’t love acoustic guitar, the terrorists win.

Andy McKee’s Rylynn serves as a reminder to me about where I came from playing guitar, and where I one day aim to go.

As I fell in love with those deep vibrations from the dreadnought chamber, inevitably, I fell in love with fingerstyle guitar. I had never had an acoustic until last summer. You see, when I was in middle school, I was treading on the untried and untested ground of social dynamics. So I bought myself a Mexican Strat with a pile of hoarded lunch money. What better way to endear myself to my peers than to learn how to rip off wild riffs like Eddie and Jimi? That’s why everyone starts playing guitar right? Just little kids in a big world, which then seems like a personal, limitless playground—a land of dreams and opportunity. But then you grow up and find better things to do, because it becomes clear to you that the approval of others is not enough motivation to master any instrument. I was no exception—I played off and on for years, never really appreciating the beauty of the music I played at playing, and never learning to play a single piece to its full potential. Even worse, I was a band kid—percussion—I knew what good music could be.

I spent all of high school calling myself a guitarist, yet I degenerated to playing to a couple times a month or worse. I had given up on all of those flashy phrases and would now simply strum a few chord progressions and call it a day. Near the end I stopped playing altogether.

Then I went to college. I discovered that I was in no way prepared for ivy-level coursework. I discovered that living in a foreign place where I knew no one was a lot lonelier than I had anticipated. I discovered alcohol. It was a nightmare of symbols and equations, desperate late nights devoted to impossible problem sets, and weekend releases littered with empty ethanol cans and the formation and dissolution of so many fledgling friendships.  In a world full of nothing familiar, I began to pick up guitar again. This time not as a flashy gimmick, but as an outlet, a healthy return to a hobby that reminded me of home. And as college began to click for me, so too, did my love for guitar.

I began to learn songs I could sing to, songs that required more advanced fingerings and god-forbid the dreaded barre chords. They came slowly but surely. Soon all of the folk chords were second nature and barre chords no longer scared me, and I longed for more technical pieces. I began to force myself to use my left pinkie—no mean feat. I had not used a pick since I came to college—for chords, this wasn’t important—for anything more melodic, I knew would have to find one or adjust my playing style. In the meantime, I learned Travis-picking and began to operate with three plucking fingers, but I soon realized this was a half-assed effort on my way to fingerstyle playing, which to me then was an exciting new subset in the acoustic guitar world.  In order to switch to this new style I had a lot of bad habits to break, and I would have to let go of any songs I had ever added to my repertoire, effectively starting over. It took me the better part of this past summer, but I now pluck with every finger on my right hand, including my pinkie. It wasn’t easy, but as it turns out, it was completely worth it.

Now this whole excerpt of my playing history was necessary for me to explain the source of power that a song like Rylynn holds over me. Everything that I’ve worked on with the instrument is validated in the melody of such a masterpiece. This is fingerstyle at its greatest, from the one of the best in the business. You can literally feel McKee’s emotion as his head bobs and intent expression washes over his chosen instrument. I find myself wanting to feel whatever it is that he is feeling. I find the passion that this song evokes in me as the introduction shifts into the percussive melody to be simultaneously impossible to describe and deeply moving. I am nowhere near a master of my strings in the way that this man undeniably is, but as I said, this is where I would like to go with my playing.

Some of you might be saying Andy McKee is a pretty mainstream artist, and culturally, his name is well known among fingerstyle guitarists. I might normally have picked a work by a lesser known musician, but as this is a blog post and I expect many of my peers are not familiar with the genre, I wanted to make what I feel to be a good first or second impression of it.

-Chris “In With the Purple and Out With the Blue” Garcia

Andy McKee

I discovered this guy only a few days ago – he is amazing! Music that needs no words. Enjoy!

Só ele quer ser foda!

I found Andy McKee on You Tube doing an amazing cover of To To’s Africa.  This video received over 9,000,000 hits (says Wiki) before being pulled from You Tube buy Andy’s record label, Candyrat Records.  I guess they allowed it again because I watch it all the time.   Andy is 30 years old and is from Topeka, Kansas.  He’s been touring around since 2001, I can’t wait for the chance to see him Live. 

So, in diesem Monat verleihen wir nur einen Preis: Den MVP Award für die meisten Klicks im vergangenen Monat. Vorher aber (wie eigentlich immer) Werbung in eigener Sache:

Plan B bei School of Rock

Kommt zahlreich und bringt alle eure Freunde mit. Es ist für einen guten Zweck und wir haben fleißig geübt, um euch mit neuen Stücken und einmaligen Performances mit Gastsängern zu überraschen. Drei Proben mit einigen Gesangstalenten sind nun schon gelaufen und ich verspreche euch, dass euch einige Songs noch lange im Kopf bleiben werden. Jetzt aber zur Preisverleihung.

MVP Award – August 2009

(An dieser Stelle müsst ihr euch jetzt den Trommelwirbel denken.) Auch in diesem Monat gibt es eine Wachablösung an der Spitze. Vielleicht nicht überraschend, aber mit großem Vorsprung gewinnt das Bandmitglied mit der engelsgleichen Falsettstimme.

Seitenaufrufe des jeweiligen Bandmitglieds im August 2009

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Sebastian! Um diesen Anlass würdig zu zelebrieren, verlinke ich einfach mal ein weiteres Video von Sebastian. Hier covert er Drifting von Andy McKee. Und gibt nebenbei mit seinem Flachbild-TV und seinem E-Piano im Hintergrund an. Viel Spaß dabei!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNF0fwI8n68

Sebastian - Gewinner des MVP Awards im August 2009

9tes Video von Waldniel online

Ja, auch das soll hier mal erwähnt werden, obwohl es schon etwas länger auf Youtube zu sehen ist. Einige haben es sicher auch schon gefunden, hier aber die Zusammenfassung für alle, die es noch sehen wollen: Jana dirigiert das Publikum bei 99 Luftballons, Jens rappt noch ein bisschen bei Tubthumping, wir spielen einen Ärzte-Medley und schließen souverän mit einem Marius Müller-Westernhagen-Klassiker ab. Hier ist der Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCEukPtLXnw

Plan B im studiVZ

Unsere Lieblingssängerin Jana hat im studiVZ die offizielle Plan B Gruppe gegründet. Die existiert auch schon was länger, aber hier ist nochmal der genaue Hinweis mit Link zur Gruppe:

http://www.studivz.net/Groups/Overview/423953bd37abe01a

Christian hat eine Gruppe speziell zu dem School of Rock-Auftritt gegründet. Diese findet ihr hier:

http://www.studivz.net/Groups/Overview/d03c788f4b8d0864

Ansonsten sind alle Mitglieder von uns auch im studiVZ zu finden. Wer sich die Mühe machen will, kann uns gerne suchen.

Plan B beim Oktoberfest in Schwalmtal

Wir können hiermit auch bekannt geben, dass wir einen weiteren Auftritt im Oktober spielen werden: Am 02.10.09 spielen wir auf dem Oktoberfest im Vogelsrather Hof in Schwalmtal. Genauere Infos hierzu folgen noch. Die Plakate sollen aber schon im Druck sein.

So, das war´s jetzt erstmal. Ein letztes Video von Waldniel gibt es auch noch und wird im Laufe der Woche hochgeladen. Nebenbei haben wir schon insgesamt über 1.000 Videoaufrufe verzeichnen können. Ich denke das kann sich sehen lassen.

Bleibt uns gewogen,

Der Peter

01 – Gates of Gnomeria [5:39]
02 – I’ll Be Over You [3:24]
03 – 7-14 [3:27]
04 – A Sphere [3:22]
05 – Ouray [2:21]
06 – All Laid Back and Stuff [2:45]
07 – Nakagawa-san [4:34]
08 – Dependant Arising [4:46]
09 – Venus as a Girl [4:28]
10 – She [3:01]
11 – Ebon Coast [5:06]

download here

01 – Art Of Motion [3:26]
02 – When She Cries [3:36]
03 – Drifting [3:12]
04 – For My Father [3:55]
05 – Practice is Perfect [3:00]
06 – Shanghai [4:14]
07 – Into The Ocean [3:52]
08 – Nocturne [3:13]
09 – Heather’s Song [3:24]
10 – Samus Stardrive [2:42]
11 – Keys to the Hovercar [3:49]
12 – Rylynn [5:14]

download here

From Wikipedia

Andy McKee (born in 1979 in Topeka, Kansas, United States) is an American fingerstyle guitarist currently signed to the American record label Candyrat Records. His style of playing and his compositions have earned him a considerable international fanbase; in late 2006, a live performance of his flagship song “Drifting” became a Featured Video on YouTube and MySpace, achieving over 21,000,000 views on the former to date and remaining one of its highest rated music clips. A handful of McKee’s other songs have experienced lesser success on YouTube, such as “Rylynn” and “Africa” both eclipsing 9,000,000 views apiece.

01 – Common Ground [2:54]
02 – Building A Memory [4:47]
03 – Dreamcatcher [2:46]
04 – When She Cries [3:37]
05 – Art of Motion [3:25]
06 – Into The Ocean [3:50]
07 – Heather’s Song [3:22]
08 – Theme From Schindler’s List [2:10]
09 – Africa [4:13]
10 – The Friend I Never Met [3:32]
11 – I Will See You Again [3:06]

download here

Guitarra Acústica Andy McKee