We lost one of the greats this past week when singer Tony Bennett left us for the great jam session in the sky.  His phrasing, nuanced style, and charisma has been a part of the jazz and pop music worlds for decades; there’s a giant hole in the music landscape with his passing.  I wanted to pay tribute to this master musician, and of course, there’s no song that resonates with the soul of Tony Bennett than I Left My Heart In San Francisco.  As I worked with this song, I realized that this song held a dual meaning for me – the connection with Mr. Bennett rings strong every time I hear this song, but being a Bay Area resident, the city of San Francisco holds so many rich memories for me.  Putting together this video reminded me of the multitude of beautiful places, people, and experiences in the city by the Bay; I realized that a piece of my heart will always be in San Francisco.  So in tribute to the way that Tony Bennett touched our lives with music over the course of decades and in honor of this very special city, here’s my version of I Left My Heart In San Francisco.

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I may spend most of my time immersed in the world of jazz, but I often go back to classical music for inspiration and insight; and I find that there’s often no better place to find that than the music of J.S. Bach.  Of course, that’s a vast catalog of music, so it’s important to cue into a specific collection.  Recently, I’ve been spending time with The Well-Tempered Clavier.  I find these works to be simply constructed but deeply complex in both the compositional approach and the artistic vision; they’re also stunningly beautiful.  So I took the first piece from the first book of music – this might be the most well-known of the collection – and I gave it a try on my six string bass.  These were originally pieces intended for keyboard and I’m still in the process of seeing how this piece best falls on the six string bass.  But I firmly believe that the creative process is meant to be shared so I wanted to put my early version of this piece out into the world – I’d love your thoughts!

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This week’s song takes us into the Latin Jazz Lab, where I experiment with new ideas while wrapping them around tradition. I’ve been interested in odd meter grooves for a while, but if I’m being honest, they’ve never been a strength of mine. So I decided to take something that is one of my strengths- Latin Jazz – and force an odd meter onto it. This was an interesting challenge for me, and it ended up feeling a little . . . awkward. That’s OK, there was still a groove and I’m actually pretty excited about this direction. If you’ve got any feedback or ideas, I would LOVE your thoughts in the comments below. You can expect to hear more of this from me in the future!

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