Ah spring...

Hope you made it through April Fool's Day unscathed...having it fall on Palm Sunday takes most of the mischief factor away don't you think? To share a few musical highlights of the wonderful week just passed...

We are so blessed to have as potent a musical presence here in River City as the VCU Jazz program. We caught the Jazz Orchestra II under Taylor Barnett's skillful guidance roll through an engaging program of Duke Ellington and Thad Jones material with special guest (and Taylor's mentor) John D'Earth, Charlottesville's highly-pedigreed trumpet legend. He even brought his talented mate Dawn Thompson down this way for some of her soaring and often surreal vocal stylings. Anthony Garcia heads up the nationally-renowned VCU Jazz machine...shoot Tony an email and ask to be placed on his busting-at-the-seams VCU Jazz E-News list (ajgarcia@vcu.edu). Speaking of VCU, their guitar program led by John Patykula is offering up another Guitar and Other Strings series this summer, with local faves The Jackie Frost Ensemble opening up on July 7th. After that, the venerable Mike Seeger on July 13th.
http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/artweb/Music/concerts/other_guitar.html

I do want to acknowledge the high level of improvisational musicianship we enjoyed last Friday night during Harmonica Crossroads at In Your Ear Recording during our most recent JAMinc/Studio A concert. What a treat to hear Phil Wiggins stretch his wings with fellow harpist (and former student) Allen Holmes to the tastefully solid accompaniment of Daniel Clarke at the grand and Brian Jones on percussion.
Very cool to watch the camaraderie develop among players who'd just met the afternoon before, especially Wiggins & Clarke. The cats were killin' as Daniel might say. And kudos to Allen's wife Alison for her haunting guest vocals, Roddy Barnes who took a fine turn at the piano, Robbin Thompson for in imprompt blues wail, and to JAMinc's own Andy Garrigue for some solid harp work and for putting the whole evening together. As one of Andy's, Robbin's and Daniel's fellow JAMinc board members, let me encourage you to get on our email list so you'll be the first to know about future Studio Concerts at In Your Ear. www.JAMinc.org

This is a most gratifying time to be living in Virginia and witnessing Nature's stunning rebirth all around us. With apologies to those suffering the effects of wind-blown allergens, this time of year, with its visuals and the increasingly rich soundtrack of live music...more of it outdoors...stirs the soul. Do take advantage of at least some of the tempting offerings just ahead.
Including...Old School Freight Train's Jesse Harper sharing some of his new work with some old friends like former bandmate/fiddler Ann Marie Calhoun and the aforementioned Daniel Clarke on keys. That's this Saturday at Ashland Coffee & Tea. Daniel is giving it double thumbs up. www.ashlandcoffeeandtea.com

And Emmylou Harris on Brown's Island on May 19th...how about that?
http://www.showtimetickets.com/eventInstance.do?method=load&id=748684

And a tube tip...Alison Krauss & Union Station will be joining Don Imus on MSNBC Tuesday morning to debut her new CD "A Hundred Miles or More...A Collection" the day of its release. There's a lot of her movie stuff and earlier duets (James Taylor and Brad Paisley) on there but also 4 or 5 new ones too. Very nice.
You can preview it at http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/krauss_alison/1487164/album.jhtml

Thanks for the encouragement...no foolin'. Have a great week...TT