Bright Moments

I really don´t know. And I must say sincerly I hadn´t noticed it. But a good occasion to present myself, since I didn´t find a thread where I could have done it: born in 1959, male, married, jazz-fan since I was a teenager, musical tastes: spreading from be-bop (maybe my main interest), hardbop, earlier avantgarde (Ornette Coleman etc.) , and maybe some of the 70´s stuff, but not necessarly. I found this board while trying to find some sources that share my impressions about Bud Powells very last album. That´s when I saw ccex´s thread on "Up´n Downs" and thought that might be a good place to stay. Since I am on the board I found many other topics that are interesting to me, like about Mingus, Miles, the one about the "Golden Eight" (Kenny Clarke) etc. In my live, I saw quite a few musicians on stage: Dizzy, Dexter, Sonny Stitt, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Mingus, Miles, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, that´s only a handful of great musicians I saw live... And I can play piano by ears. Since my greatest musical inspiration (on piano) was and still is Bud Powell, it´s natural if I play tunes and improvise on them it "sounds like Bud" (says my wife). I couldn´t read a note as big as a house, but can pick up quickly tunes even if they more complicated like "Conception" or fast bebop stuff like "Salt Peanuts" "John´s Abbey" etc....Also like to play ballads and getting a feeling from it that I got to know and to love from later Bud Powell interpretations. My most loyal listener is my wife! welcome!!!!

sorry - my bad.

not to take this of-topic but how did our topic starter get to ne member #11407?!!! did we have a successful membership drive recently? is this an ACORN thing?

Rabbi Moshe Cotel, Composer, Dies at 65 By DENNIS HEVESI Published: November 2, 2008 Rabbi Moshe Cotel, an acclaimed pianist and composer whose works were often infused with themes emanating from his deep Jewish roots, a weave of influences that only later in life led him to the pulpit, died Oct. 24 at his home in Manhattan. He was 65. Russell J. Fish Rabbi Moshe Cotel in 2004. He died of natural causes, his son, Sivan, said. At his death, Rabbi Cotel, who was ordained five years ago, was spiritual leader of Temple Beth El of Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn. “My religion changed from Judaism to classical music, and in adulthood it changed back again,” Rabbi Cotel told the newspaper Jewish Week last March. Performing or conducting his own works or those of others around the world, Rabbi Cotel was known for a career that arched from early Romantic compositions to atonal, unpredictable avante-gardist scores and then to a reversion to Romanticism. “That Morris Cotel is a composer-pianist of unusual capabilities seems beyond question,” Allen Hughes wrote in The New York Times in 1977, adding that his playing built “to climaxes of absolutely torrential fury.” Morris was Rabbi Cotel’s birth name. Among his notable compositions are “Deronda,” an opera based on George Eliot’s novel “Daniel Deronda,” about an English Jew who is a proto-Zionist with Kabbalistic ideas; and “Trope for Orchestra,” a choral work that evokes Torah cantillation, or chanting. His cantata “The Fire and the Mountains” memorializes the Holocaust. Not all of Rabbi Cotel’s works were connected to Jewish themes. His “Night of the Murdered Poets” incorporated writings of poets and intellectuals murdered in the Stalinist pogrom of 1952. It had its premiere in New York in 1978 with the actor Richard Dreyfuss as narrator, and was performed around the country in subsequent years. An epiphany for the composer came in 1994, nine years after the premiere of “Dreyfus,” a two-act opera. It was based on the treason conviction in 1894 Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army whose trial exposed deep-rooted anti-Semitism in France. Opera News praised it as “compelling in its traditional lyricism and new-wave originality.” Performances of “Dreyfus” were scheduled for Germany and Austria in the early 1990s. To improve his German, the composer found a tutor, an old German widow living in Upper Manhattan. After returning from Europe, he spotted the woman on the street. She greeted him in Hebrew and told him that she had been so inspired by his telling of the Dreyfus story that she had returned to Judaism, an identity she had forsaken since the Nazi onslaught. “My life changed right then and there; it was like a voice came down into my head: ‘Become a rabbi,’ ” Rabbi Cotel told The Juilliard Journal in September. “Without knowing it, I had changed this woman’s life, and she had no idea that she had just changed mine.” Since 1972, Mr. Cotel had been a professor of music composition at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Soon after the encounter with the woman, he enrolled part time at the Academy for Jewish Religion in the Bronx. In 2000, he retired from Peabody, where by then he was chairman of the composition department, to focus full time on his rabbinical studies. He was ordained three years later. Rabbi Cotel never turned from music. His most recent compositions include “Chronicles: A Jewish Life and the Classical Piano” and “Chronicles II,” which combine Torah lessons on subjects ranging from spiritual intention to the mysterious source of the dye for the blue threads woven into the traditional Jewish prayer shawl (that segment incorporating strains from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”). Morris Cotel was born in Baltimore on Feb. 20, 1943, the son of Charles and Lena Bormel Cotel. Besides his son, he is survived by his mother; his wife, Aliya; and a daughter, Orli Cotel. Young Morris was educated at the Talmudic Academy of Baltimore but at the same time was enrolled in college preparatory courses at the Peabody Conservatory. At 13, he told his piano teacher there that he had written a symphony. The teacher did not believe him until he pulled the 200-page score out of his book bag. After studying at the Peabody, Mr. Cotel was accepted at the Juilliard School in New York, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, in 1964 and 1965. At 23, he won the prestigious Rome Prize in music composition. Professor/Rabbi Cotel is said to have inspired hundreds of aspiring composers — and one cat. In 1996, while he was at his piano playing Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” his 3-year-old cat, Ketzel, pounced on the keyboard. The professor grabbed a pencil and inscribed a descending paw pattern from treble to bass. A year later, he entered the score — if one can call it that — in the Paris New Music Review’s One-Minute Competition, open to pieces of no more than 60 seconds. The judges gave Ketzel an honorable mention. More Articles in Arts » A version of this article appeared in print on November 3, 2008, on page A29 of the New York edition.

Some of her album cover art in LP days used to be nice ! :rsmile: this was one of the posters i had on my wall growing up:

truer words have never been spoken

WTF is THAT??? Watch the movie. Once. That sounds like a dare... Or a threat. and now for a contrasting point of view! i liked the movie and the soundtrack! i thought the cast was excellent and performed the songs quite well! flame away!

happy birthday!!

i am late too but i am sorry for your loss james.

happy birthday!!!

happy birthday!!!

no surprise that it is good jim because it seems that everything RR puts out is great! i will definately pick this one up!

this is so sad!

again already?!!! happy birthday my friend!!!

I AM GOING TO THIS TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Legends of Jazz Date/Time:Fri., November 7 Price: $45 to $125 Ivories Will Be TickledAnd fans will be sated at the Legends of Jazz concert.BY ERNEST BARTELDES It is no easy task to fill in for a talented musician such as Ramsey Lewis (the pianist announced he will be suspending all performances owing to an undisclosed “medical issue”), but one cannot deny that Dave Brubeck — one of the biggest living legends on the national jazz scene — is more than a suitable replacement to lead the band on the ivories while the main man recovers. This Friday night, the Arsht Center kicks off its anticipated Jazz Roots concert series with a Legends of Jazz show that truly rises to the occasion. At 87 years of age and still actively writing, recording, and touring, Brubeck came to national prominence after his quartet's 1959 Take Five album went platinum thanks to songs such as “Blue Rondo à la Turk,” “Pick Up Sticks,” and the title track became instant standards that still resonate to this day. Sharing the stage with Brubeck at this special South Florida concert is a who's who of jazz. Clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera has built a highly respected career both as a leader and sideman, appearing alongside the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Yo-Yo Ma, and Rosa Passos. Backing band Fourplay is an all-star group comprising keyboardist Bob James, bassist Nathan East, drummer Harvey Mason, and guitarist Larry Carlton. Rounding out the group is Chicago-based Kurt Elling, a vocalist who has been taking the technique known as vocalese to new, greater heights. The presence of all these gentlemen on a single stage is reason enough to say this is a concert not to be missed. It begins at 8 p.m.

happy birthday!!!

happy birthday!!

fuck cancer!

two words - "ken nordine"

happy birthday!!!

i am in!!

same game - new photo!

i saw her "star" on the hollywood walk of fame.

good one vint!