New site!

I'm in the process of moving this site off of Blogger, and onto my own hosting, so please come on over to www.toddbishopjazz.com for all my latest stuff!

New album for 2014: Todd Bishop Group — TRAVELOGUE

TRAVELOGUE, the new album by the Todd Bishop Group has been completed, to be released on Origin Records in July, 2015. The album features Bishop's original compositions, written in collaboration with Jasnam Daya Singh (née Weber Iago). There are also tunes by Singh, saxophonist Richard Cole, and a cover of Only Shallow, by the Manchester psychedelic pop band My Bloody Valentine.

The band will tour Europe in October-November 2014, and April 2015.

Track list:

1. Moving — Bishop/Iago
2. Far And Awake — Iago
3. Ventimiglia — Bishop/Iago
4. The Trip — Bishop/Iago
5. Dom's Riff — Bishop
6. Norwegian — Bishop/Iago
7. Somnambulist — Cole
8. Only Shallow — Butcher/Shields

Richard Cole — soprano, tenor and bari saxophones; bass clarinet; alto flute

Jasnam Daya Singh (Weber Iago) — piano, Fender Rhodes
Chris Higgins — bass
Todd Bishop — drums

Produced by Todd Bishop
Recorded by Bob Stark at Kung Fu Bakery, Portland, March 10, 2014.
Mixed and mastered by Bob Stark

Playing in Seattle tonight...

Hey, if you're in Seattle, come on down to Egan's in Ballard tonight— my group will be playing at 10:30, as part of the Ballard Jazz Festival. The band includes Richard Cole, Jasnam Daya Singh (née Weber Iago), and Chris Higgins. Before us at 8 is George Colligan's group, with Matt Jorgensen on drums. There's a whole lot of other music going on in the neighborhood, too.

The new record — UPDATED

UPDATE: Since this post, the album has been completed, and, as with all creative endeavors, has evolved in the process. Weber Iago has brought a lot of beautiful Brazilian light to the recording, so I've retitled the album TRAVELOGUE. On bass is my old grade school chum Chris Higgins, with Rich Cole playing the various winds. As always, Bob Stark did an incredible job recording, mixing, and mastering.

Nocturnes, the new Todd Bishop Group CD is in pre-production as we speak. The album will feature my own original compositions, in collaboration with pianist/composer Weber Iago. The band will again include Iago, and saxophonist Rich Cole, who will be playing everything but his main axe: bass clarinet, bari sax, alto flute. If we decide we need a second horn, Tim Willcox will be our man. The bass chair is TBD at the moment. We'll again be exploring the terrain between free and composed music, with the aim of setting a mood— that's a recurring theme through all of my recordings, actually.

Included will be an old composition of mine, Headlights, which was previously released on the Lower Monumental album:

On this tune, with Cole playing bari, we may have achieved a similar mood to what we'll do this time around:

We will record in March, and the album will be released in April, at the time of the Ballard Jazz Festival.

Interview in Le Soir

A very traditional Belgian scene at Le Pitch-Pin, at Place
Flagey— one of my new favorite places in Brussels.

At the start of the tour the band was interviewed by Jean-Claude Vantroyen for Le Soir, the major French-language newspaper in Belgium. Vantroyen also put a brief little note about the CD on the LS site.

The full piece:

“Todd Bishop habite à Portland, en Oregon. Une ville moyenne aux Etats-Unis : quelque 580.000 habitants. C’est là que vivent Todd Bishop le batteur américain et Weber Iago le pianiste brésilien. « C’est un grand centre musical depuis longtemps, explique Todd. Il attire plein de jeunes de tout le pays. » L’Oregon borde l’Océan Pacifique. La Columbia s’y jette. Portland est établie sur sa rive. Todd et Weber ne sont pas dépaysés quand ils arrivent en Belgique : « C’est le même type de temps : la pluie est souvent au rendez-vous. »

Todd et Weber viennent d’arriver à Bruxelles ce lundi matin. Dès mardi soir, ils jouent. Avec deux Belges : Jean-Paul Estiévenart à la trompette et Olivier Stalon à la basse. Tous quatre sont réunis dans un café, place Flagey. Les résident US sont un peu maqués par levoyage. « Mais c’est un peu notre première répétition », lance Weber Iago.

Todd n’est pas très connu encore chez nous, même s’il est déjà venu en tournée. « Je suis juste un musicien, dit-il, qui fait des disques et essaie de prester des concerts. » Depuis 1985, cet homme né en 1967 joue de la batterie en professionnel. Mais c’est aussi un artiste visuel : peinture et photo. Et il tient un blog : Cruise Ship Drummer où on trouve tout sur le « drumming ». Deux albums à signaler : l’un consacré à la musique de Serge Gainsbourg, l’autre à celle d’Ornette Coleman. Le premier s’appelle « 69 Année érotique », l’autre « Little playes little bird ». Weber Iago joue dans celui-ci. Todd et lui se connaissent de longue date.”

Continued after the break:

Review: show at Flamingo/Brussels

Here's a French-language review of the last date of the tour, at Flamingo, a very hip place in the center of Brussels. The writer, Michel, a very nice cat, gives us a blow-by-blow gig report:

“Rue de Laeken, un dimanche de novembre, en fin d'après-midi, entre chien et loup!
Mihaela: tu montes, chéri...
Euh.. bonsoir, madame, sans façon, merci!
T'es pédé?
Je m'appelle Michel, vais au Flamingo , un concert jazz!
T'es un intello, alors...
De gauche, tendance NVA...

Menu: Todd Bishop's Group plays the music of Ornette Coleman!”

Continued after the break:

2013 Europe tour wrap-up

After our first gig, at Hot Club de Gand, in Ghent.

The tour went quite well, by the way— the shows were all well attended, audiences were very appreciative, purchased a lot of CDs, we got some good press, and we are well situated to expand our reach next year. This was my fourth tour of Europe leading my own group, and the most successful one yet both artistically and financially.

There's a gallery of photos from the tour here, and our updates from the road are here.

Earlier I posted a list of tunes I was including in our book— we ended up playing:
Mothers Of The Veil
Feet Music
Strange As It Seems
Enfant
Mob Job
Lonely Woman
Owl of Cranston
Guinea
Mopti
Empty Boat
Valse de Melody

And less frequently:
Comme Il Faut
Check Up
Las Vegas Tango
Olhos de Gato


Here's the group playing Mopti, by Don Cherry, at the Jazz Station in Brussels, on the second night of the tour:



The musicians there are: Weber Iago — piano / Jean-Paul Estievenart — trumpet / Olivier Stalon — bass / Todd Bishop — drums

On tour

As you may've heard, because I keep mentioning it, I'll be in Europe for the next 2+ weeks, starting now. Stay tuned for whatever updates I can make from the road— photos, video, and such. If you're in Belgium, Luxembourg, or northwest Germany, come on out and hear the band. Visit our Facebook event page for a list of gigs, with all details, but here are the essentials:

Personnel: 
Todd Bishop - drums
Jean-paul Estievenart - trumpet
Weber Iago - piano
Olivier Stalon Music - bass

Gigs: 
12/11/13 - 21:00 :: Hot Club de Gand — GENT
13/11/13 - 20:30 :: Jazz Station Asbl — BRUSSELS
15/11/13 - 19:00 :: Blues-Sphere — LIEGE
16/11/13 - 20:00 :: Appeltuin Jazz — LEUVEN
17/11/13 - 15:00 :: Centre Culturel Hannut — HANNUT
18/11/13 - 20:30 :: Dumont's — AACHEN
19/11/13 - 21:30 :: LiquID — LUXEMBOURG
20/11/13 - 21:00 :: Le Rideau Rouge — LASNE
23/11/13 - 21:00 :: Lokerse Jazzklub — LOKEREN
24/11/13 - 17:30 :: Flamingo Brussels — BRUSSELS

For drummers who would like to get a private lesson from me, I will be based in Brussels from the 12th-24th, and then in Berlin on the 25th-27th. You can reach me through the regular site email.

2013 tour repertoire

Here's a list of the tunes we'll be working with on next week's tour. We won't play all of these, but they are in the books:

Alice In Wonderland
Beatrice — Sam Rivers
The Blessing —  Ornette Coleman
*Blood — Paul Bley
Check Up — Ornette Coleman
Comme Il Faut  —  Ornette Coleman
Country Town Blues — Ornette Coleman
*The Empty Boat —  Caetano Veloso
Eighty-One — Miles Davis 
Enfant —  Ornette Coleman 
Feet Music — Ornette Coleman 
Guinea — Don Cherry
*Happy House — Ornette Coleman
Ida Lupino — Carla Bley
Las Vegas Tango — Gil Evans 
*Let's Play — Ornette Coleman
*Law Years — Ornette Coleman
Lonely Woman — Ornette Coleman
Mob Job —  Ornette Coleman 
Mopti — Don Cherry 
Mothers of the Veil — Ornette Coleman 
Never — Steve Swallow
Olhos de Gato —  Steve Swallow
Owl of Cranston — Paul Motian
*Somnambulist — Rich Cole 
Strange As It Seems — Ornette Coleman
Syndrome — Carla Bley
Valse de Melody —  Serge Gainsbourg

Bold — likely players
 * —  new additions for 2013. We'll see if they work...

2013 tour poster

All right, the posters for the upcoming Europe tour are done!

Here are the shows, once again, with performance times:

9:00, Tuesday, Nov. 12 Hot Club de Gand GHENT, Belgium

8:30, Wednesday, Nov. 13 Jazz Station BRUSSELS, Belgium

7:00, Friday, Nov. 15 Blues-Sphere LIEGE, Belgium

8:00, Saturday, Nov. 16 Appeltuin Jazz LEUVEN, Belgium

Event starts 5:00, Sunday, Nov. 17 Hannut Jazz Festival HANNUT, Belgium

8:30, Monday, Nov. 18 Dumont's AACHEN, Germany

9:30, Tuesday, Nov. 19 LiquID LUXEMBOURG

9:00, Wednesday, Nov. 20 Le Rideau Rouge LASNE, Belgium

9:00, Saturday, Nov. 23 Lokerse Jazzklub LOKEREN, Belgium

5:30, Sunday, Nov. 24 Flamingo BRUSSELS, Belgium

UPDATED: November '13 Europe tour dates

This way to Hot Club

AUGUST UPDATE: Current dates for our November, 2013 Europe tour:

Tuesday, November 12
Hot Club de Gand — Ghent, Belgium

Wednesday, November 13
Jazz Station — Brussels

Friday, November 15
Blues-Sphere — Liége

Saturday, November 16
Appeltuin Jazz — Leuven, Belgium

Sunday, November 17
Hannut Jazz Festival — Hannut, Belgium

Tuesday, November 19
LiquID — Luxembourg

Saturday, November 23
Lokerse Jazzklub — Lokeren, Belgium

Sunday, November 24
Flamingo — Brussels, Belgium

November date TBA
Le Rideau Rouge — Lasne, Belgium

Sunday, November date TBA
Roskam — Brussels, Belgium


Tour personnel will be:
Jean-Paul Estievenart — trumpet
Weber Iago — piano
Olivier Stalon — bass
Todd Bishop — drums

Ballard Jazz Festival this weekend

If you're in Seattle, hopefully you're out going to all of the Ballard Jazz Festival events anyway, but my group will be playing at the Salmon Bay Eagles on Friday, from 8pm-midnight, as part of the Jazz Walk. The band will feature three incredible players, along with myself:

Rich Cole (reeds)
Jay Thomas (trumpet)
Paul Gabrielson (bass). It's going to be good.

More Jazz Walk info.

Get your tickets here.

Another Best of 2012 list: All About Jazz

Dan McClenaghan at All About Jazz has included my record Little Played Little Bird on his Best Releases of 2012 list. He had this to say:

“Drummer Todd Bishop is an underground treasure. He doesn't boast the highest of profiles, but he has put out two consecutive great CDs for the Origin Records label: 2009's 69 Annee Erotique and now, this nod to alto saxophonist/free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman.”

Thanks Dan!

Jazzques writes up our Café Belga show

Photo by Jazzques

Here's a review of our Brussels show at Café Belga in November, written in French by Jacques Prouvost, AKA Jazzques. Google Translate certainly distorts his original meaning, but is rather poetic:

“This Sunday, November 4, [Todd Bishop] was Café Belga Brussels.

The world, the noise, the usual deal of the place. So Todd Bishop slams the first shots on the snare. Must be heard. His game is tight, bright and dry. The pulse is strong. And it works! The quartet starts like clockwork.Very quickly, the soloists take their brands and Méreau Martin embarks on a solo feverish Check Up. Then it's Guinea Don Cherry with his throbbing trance. The music hums, rolls and fills the space.

This is a fantastic playground for Jean-Paul Estiévenart. His way up phrases, to invent by mixing always that little bit of humor shifted, this slight ray of light that is in the density of the moment, make him a trumpet definitely always interesting to listen . Guess we always looking for novelty, the truth and the desire to never repeat.Todd Bishop was quickly understood and exchanges with accomplices enrich natural confusing.Then the music turns better and Olivier Stalon benefits and spaces to enter the dance. His improvisations, extremely effective - both rich and simple - revive a Martin Méreau increasingly released vibraphone.

The themes are connected (Feet Music, Comme Il Faut) to the powerful Enfant, played here with an incredible passion. This is probably the best moment of the concert. Dialogues ignite quickly, ideas jostle. This dizzy and it seems that nobody wants to stop. There is a chorus of bidding more attractive to each other. The quartet has found and pleasure on their faces. Each dare go further, driven by one or the other. Bishop gives some indication at a glance, module tensions, holds and releases the clamp. [...] 

Ornette be happy, he really has not been betrayed.

A +”

Hit read more to read the complete review in the original French:

2012 Europe tour repertoire

Rehearsing jetlagged at Jazz Station
in Brussels, with Martin Mereau
and Olivier Stalon

A little tour documentation here. These are the tunes I had in my book on our 2012 outing, along with some notes on how our actual performance rep shaped itself. The gigs were all two to four hours long, mostly for listening audiences, with one regular restaurant gig at which we were mostly playing background music. The group consisted of trumpet, vibes, bass, and drums. I set out with a big pile of tunes, not knowing what was going to work best with this collection of players, who, except for bassist Olivier Stalon, I had never played with before. The new players worked out great, and we ended up with a couple of very effective, nicely-programmed sets of music.

Tunes with an * are on Little Played Little Bird, the CD we were promoting with this tour. Tunes with a † are my own transcriptions/arrangements; others are fake book charts. The Steve Swallow/Carla Bley tunes are from their site, which has a bunch of free lead sheets.

We played these tunes from my record on almost every gig:

†*Check Up — Ornette Coleman
Friendly tune, an easy swinger.

†*Comme Il Faut — OC
We used this free jazz anthem as our set-opener several times. We would keep it fairly short, since the gig was just starting, and I would be paranoid about scaring off the audience.

†*Enfant — OC
Bright swing tune with drum breaks on the head. By the end of the tour we were doing the first solo as a trumpet/drums duet, and trading eights with the drums after the other solos.

†*Feet Music — OC
A grooving, crowd-pleasing tune.

†*Lonely Woman — OC
One of our set pieces. You can't do an Ornette Coleman presentation without including this tune. We played it with the drums in an Afro 6/8, with the other instruments floated in at a ballad tempo. Since we were already playing a couple of other full-blown Afro-jam numbers, I had to remind the group not to play on the same 6/8 grid as me— similar to the original, in which the drums play a fast bop tempo while the rest of the group plays slowly.

More after the break:

Best of 2012 list: Bird Is The Worm

Another Best of 2012 list for my CD Little Played Little Bird, this time on the Bird Is The Worm blog, written by eMusic contributor Dave Sumner. We're in the number 12 slot:

So, take obscure compositions from the songbook of a challenging artist and perform renditions… the math for that equation should result in something resembling a didactic lecture of music theory and not the refreshingly listenable Little Played Little Bird. Todd Bishop tackles the music of Ornette Coleman, and without watering down the source material, has created a recording that was both tuneful and a fun listen. It’s an impressive accomplishment, and a solid album when judged on its own merits. I find this album as infectious at the end of the year as I did when it originally came out.

You can buy my infectious record through links in the sidebar, either as a CD, or digital download.

PUT! A! BIRD! ON! IT!

Funny little tour story: Being from the Pacific Northwest, I've never felt we projected any kind of cultural identity to the rest of the world. Even within the region all we ever had to latch onto were Prefontaine, Henry Weinhard's beer, Nirvana, and Drugstore Cowboy. Usually when I'd go overseas if people knew where Oregon was, all they would know about it is that “it's rainy.”

So I was kind of happy to actually be able to live up to a stereotype when we were performing in Europe in November. A friend of one of our Brussels musicians, who was familiar with Portlandia, heard where I was from, and was getting a kick out of quoting this to me all evening:





It took me a little while to remember my own CD cover and merch:

An epic 48 hours of travel

Among the last civilized moments of the trip,
despite the automatic weapons.

Got up early on our last morning in Paris to go see the Eiffel Tower at dawn and then hustle with our luggage from our hotel in the Bastille to St. Michel to meet Casey's friend and mentor Mario Sprouse, who arrived in town that morning for his own tour. Straight to Gare du Nord on faith that our train to Brussels will be running despite the raging austerity strikes happening there.

Made it to Brussels for mussels and champagne, and then white box wine at Olivier's house with Casey, Catherine, Bram, Teun, and Bruno until way late. Up at 6 for a typically hairy early rush hour ride to the airport, then our flight to New York (on the incredibly civilized Brussels Air). Three hour layover in which we had to collect our bags, go through customs and immigration transfer from JFK to the Newark airport— a 30+ mile manic, Cairo-style shuttle ride— for our domestic leg, on the incredibly uncivilized US Airways. Think Greyhound with wings.

Last minute itinerary change routes us through Phoenix (key moment: bleached blond sorority chicks at the gate complaining loudly in church-lady voices about all the weirdos in Portland, and the "quality" of people there in general); ~5 hour flight with no movie and no meal (OK, you could buy one, but the hell with that) and lots of not very restful sleep in 3-second increments. Brief 65 minute layover before equally miserable two hour flight to Portland itself (key moment: after weeks of listening acutely to how people speak, noticing the middle-American, slightly-country Oregon accent on the people in the airport, and how much quieter people are in general.) Adjusting nicely after first real sleep since Paris, which was the first real sleep since Portland before that. New content coming soon.

Rehearsal @ Jazz Station in Brussels

A few shots from our rehearsal at the Jazz Station (who were kind enough to let us play on the premises) in Brussels on our second day in Belgium. The band is myself with Jean-Paul Estiévenart (trumpet), Martin Méreau (vibes) & Olivier Stalon (bass):

 

More after the break:

Review: Jazz Scan

Ric Bang, of the Jazz Scan jazz blog, has written a little review of Little Played Little Bird:

“Little Bird” was a nickname given to Ornette Coleman, an American-born saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer who was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s.

Why the “little played” in the album title? Because, as often is the case with artists ahead of their time, Coleman was a polarizing talent; the kindest descriptor would be “unorthodox.” Some listeners became immediate fans; others were outspokenly critical. That latter group included Miles Davis, who initially declared that Coleman was “all screwed up inside”; Roy Eldridge, who said, “I think he’s jivin’, baby”; and one reviewer, who described Coleman’s group style as “nobody solos, everybody solos.” 

Other musicians felt he played out of tune; and he had difficulty finding like-minded musicians to jam with. But as time passed, Coleman’s fan base increased and he found work in jazz clubs and concerts, and as a composer for film soundtracks. He’s still performing today, and has become more respected, playing with many name artists and securing contracts with prime studios such as Atlantic, Blue Note and Origin. In 1969, he was inducted into the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame. 

Drummer Todd Bishop is a fan, and this album includes nine Coleman compositions. So, as stated in the liner notes, “Little played = an album of Ornette Coleman tunes that you don’t hear, because nobody plays them.”

Continued after the break: