Here’s a Sneak Peek at my New Theory Book!!

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to clue you in on an project that I’ve been working on for a long time. I’ve been putting together an improvistational concept/theory book which is basically a compilation of the concepts that I try to convey in my own improvistations (sometimes with success, sometimes without). The four pages below are excerpts of what I call the Bowling Ball concept. I’m sure others have other names for it, but I labeled this solely for identification/organizational purposes. I know that the text on the first page may be quite difficult to read so I copied it below:

“Bowling Ball- This technique is intended to enhance fingering patterns throughout the range of your horn. These triplets have a very symmetrical contour when played in succession. I heard these shapes for the first time on a few Nicholas Payton recordings. I thought that the sound and effect of these ideas were pretty potent so I practiced them and expanded on them a little. I encourage you to play all of these sets of triplets using the same fingering (i.e. use the false fingerings when you ascend to the upper-register). I must stress again the importance of practicing these slowly because the later studies will become more difficult. These excercises need to be played slowly in order to be internalized.”

These series of books that I’m planning on putting out are going to be designed for those players who seem to have “hit a roadblock” when it comes to improvising. I must admit that many of these passages will have more of a trumpet slant, but I’ll make sure that there’s a book for everyone. I plan on releasing a few volumes of unconventional scales, a volume dedicated to intervalic improvisation, and a system of improvisation that based on the harmonic series for the trumpet.

Stay Tuned,

Jason Palmer

Lenny the 25th

I’d like to introduce you to a very good friend and mentor of mine. I consider him to be one of the last living masters of this music that we call jazz. He plays drums and I place him in the same category of a Tony Williams or Roy Haynes (he actually knows both of them and would go over to Tony’s house and play drum duets with him when he was younger). Chick Corea considers him to be one of the world’s greatest drummers. I saw that quote in a magazine a few years ago. He taught at Berklee College of Music and he continues to educate and inspire many musicians worldwide via his vast collection of instructional/inspirational drumming videos.

His name is Lenny “The 25th” Nelson. He’s one of the nicest, humble, down-to-earth individuals that you probably have never met. I’ve known him for about eleven or twelve years. He frequents Wally’s Café on the weekends and every time he visits, we talk and I always asked him to play. He kindly refused up until about 3 or 4 months ago. We played Just One of Those Things and it was FAST!! Lenny’s a master at the uptempos. Here’s a video of one of his earlier videos, he has over 1,000 of these in his library:

Why is Lenny known as Lenny “The 25th”? I’ll tell but it’s a long story! I’ll give it to you.

Let’s go back to the opening of Spike Lee’s The 25th Hour in the theatres. So my wife (then girlfriend) Colleen are standing in line waiting to buy tickets. I look over my back and see Lenny with his wife and I asked him what they were going to see. He said they were going to see The 25th Hour. He was excited because he calls himself the 25th. I was a bit confused so I asked him why. He then gives me his business card. It has his name “Lenny the 25th”Nelson on it and nothing else. I chuckled a bit because I think that’s the first and only time I’d received a card with no number on it!

Now fast forward several years to this past Friday night. Lenny came down to Wally’s and I hung out with him on our set break. We started a conversation that somehow got to the subject of his childhood. He then tells me that he is the 25th BORN OF 26!!! The 26th child passed away at 1 year so Lenny got all of the attention. When he was born it was headline news here in Boston. President Roosevelt contacted Lenny’s parents because he wanted to send a TV crew to their home and document their home life. This would have essentially been the first reality tv show (forget John and Kate plus 8, lol). But Lenny’s mother declined. He then described living in a household of this size. Imagine sitting at a dinner table 20 yards wide every meal!!

Lenny was a celebrity here in Boston. He was recognized everywhere he went and a social magnet to all creeds and colors. Needless to say that after all of those years of living in the public eye, Lenny now enjoys a little solitude, but when he gets on the set, he brings everyone together.

Here’s a big CHEERS to Lenny “The 25th” Nelson!!

Jason Palmer

Jam Session Ethics Insight #3: A Slight Diversion

Alright I’d like to tell you a story of a very interesting situation that I experienced at my session at Wally’s about 8 or 9 years ago on a hot July day.

So the session is going along quite smoothly. The front door is open to get some air circulation in and out of the club. A lady walks in who seemed to be my age or few years older than me. She approaches the bartender as I’m soloing. When I’m done with my solo the bartender tells me that this lady would like to perform a spoken word piece. I said that this was cool because every once in a while we’ll have some decent spoken word artists perform with us at the session. So I invited her to the stage after we were done with the tune we were playing. She told me that before she was to begin she would need us to close the door and that there was to be complete silence. I found this to be a rather odd request but we went along with it anyway. By this time, all eyes are on her because I’ve introduced her and she asked for these things on stage in front of the audience and the musicians.

So now it’s time to begin the piece. I asked her if she would like any backing from the rhythm section and she said that she would do a solo piece. So I said cool and stepped to the side and gave her the stage. She closed her eyes, put her head down, and started to scream at the top of her lungs!! It was the loudest scream that I’ve ever experienced in person. I, along with everyone else in the club was completely stunned for the next 30-45 seconds. The screaming went on and on and I didn’t know whether to interrupt her or let it go on. Before I even had a chance to act, the bartender had already come from the back of the bar and grabbed the lady and escorted her out of the club and told her not to come back.

This was one of those instances where I felt totally helpless in a situation that I was supposed to be in charge of. It was definitely a learning experience for me. From that moment on, I made it a point to emphasize the fact that it’s called a jam session for a reason…we are supposed to play with each other…

Keep Swingin,

Jason Palmer

Ethics at Jam Session Insight #2

Alright this issue is for the players that lead the jam sessions. I am certainly not casting the first stone on this one because I have been guilty of this in the past, but I realized these faults and I’ve done my best to avoid them.


If you are regulating the session please be proactive. Communicate (vocally) with the audience and the musicians who have come to share to let them know what’s going on. If you are going to play a few songs out front before you open the bandstand up for players to sit in, let them know. If a very special guest shows up at the beginning of the session and you would like them to join the house band before you open it up, let everyone know. If you don’t use a sign-up list, be mindful of who arrives and in what order they arrive in, just in case drummers show up and you don’t know who entitled to sit in first.


When it’s time to open the session up, do your best to be cordial and stick around to check out your fellow musicians. Everyone that plays/ed in my band was first heard at the jam session at Wally’s…EVERYONE. When I get calls for recommendations for other gigs I recommend players that I have heard at the jam session (and sometimes from school). I went to a late night session in NY not too long ago and experienced the leader, after playing a long set out front, proceed to put on headphones and partake in some billiards, and didn’t come back until the session was over. I would not have known whom the leader was if I wasn’t there in the beginning. I know that some folks need to get away, but I think there are other ways and other times for this….

Keep Swinging,

J.P.

Ethics of the Jazz Jam Session…

I am contemplating writing about the ethics of running and participating in a jam session. I’ve been running one every week here in Boston for about 10 years and I’ve pretty much seen and heard it all. Here’s the first tip:

It’s considered kosher to not play (blow) on a tune if you don’t know the melody to that tune. If you walk into a session and the band is playing a tune, it’s not polite to just pull out your horn and get in line to start an epic solo (unless the leader asks you sit join in). Wait until the next tune. When I experience a cat coming up to solo after we’ve already played the melody, 7 times out of 10 the cat is playing by ear, “skating” over the chord changes. This is rarely done successfully. When I was coming up I made it a point not to blow on a tune if I wasn’t there to play the melody with the band when they started….

Keep swingin!!

J.P.

Piggyback

I’d like to talk about an issue that I’ve seen come up a few times over the years that I think every musician who is ever endeavoring to travel and work abroad might experience. Let’s take a musician and we’ll name him John Smith. Now John Smith lives in Ny and has been called to do a festival in London for a week. Now John’s going to be there for a week for only 1 gig. That leaves for a lot of downtime. John has plenty of musician friends in Europe, one of them being a pianist that lives in Paris who happens to be a real aggressive hustler for gigs and he’s successful at it. John calls the pianist (let called him Jacques for now) and lets him know that he’ll be in London for a week for a festival and that he has a few days free. Jacques has some good paying gigs lined up already in Paris and would like to have John on those.


Now here’s where it’s gets tricky. John agrees to do these gigs. The festival organizers in London have already spent 900+ dollars to fly John over the Atlantic to the gig. So now all Jacques needs to do is buy a round trip ticket for John from London to Paris, which is relatively inexpensive (certainly cheaper than footing the bill from NY to London and back). This is called piggybacking on the behalf of Jacques. Now Jacques is ethically obligated to compensate the organizers of the London gig for the initial flight from NY.
Over the years, festival organizers have really started to crack down on this. Most agents work in a network and they all talk to each other so they know who’s playing where. If two agencies are presenting the same act during the same tour for that act, they’ll share the cost of airfare, especially for the U.S. based bands playing abroad (the cost to bring over a quartet or quintet is very expensive and it’s killed every prospect of me bringing my band abroad anytime soon, so I gave up trying to find work for my band abroad). Most acts that perform abroad from the U.S. have to have an “anchor” gig(s) (a gig(s) that covers for the plane tickets) to have any chance of making a profit on the tour.


So for all musicians looking to work abroad, when you do find work please be honest if you are playing elsewhere during your stay if you are questioned about it. Our reputations rely on this…

Until next time,




Jason Palmer

In Door Ants

I get a number of emails inquiring about how I was able to build my chops up. So instead of answering each one individually, I thought that I’d speak a little on how I got to where I am in this blog. As I get older I realize in order to do what I have to do day in and day out, taking care of business, working, home duties, etc, I often find myself unable to answer all of the emails that I get daily. If I haven’t gotten back to you, please forgive me as it’s not done purposefully, I’m just too busy oftentimes to remember to respond and when I do respond, I’m usually long-winded. So I’ll try to make this short and to the point.

I’ll start by talking a little about my history of playing the trumpet. I started off playing in the 6th grade. I passed the “ear test” in 5th grade so I signed up for band going into the 6th grade because at the time it was the cool thing to do. My first choice was the saxophone, but because my last name ended with a “P” and saxophone was everyone first choice, I got stuck with my 2nd choice, the trumpet. My mom then went out and bought me a cornet, thinking it was a trumpet, so there I was.

In my band class throughout middle school (grades 6-8, in NC), the band classes were 60+ students, about 15 of which were trumpet players. We had monthly playing tests to see who would sit in the 1st chair. I was consistently the last chair all of 6th and 7th grade. After my 7th grade year going into the 8th I decided that summer to learn more about this piece of metal. I wanted to be able to actually play songs that I heard on the radio. So I spent that summer trying to learn the popular R&B songs that were playing on the radio. I quickly learned that the songs on the radio had different sounds and shapes to them (which I later found out to be keys) and that each song, in order to be played as it sounded on the radio, had to be played with a specific set of valve combinations. By the end of that summer, I had learned all of my major, dorian minor, and chromatic scales by ear. 8th grade year rolls around and I think to myself that I’m ready to make some music.

In my eighth grade year of band 2 significant things happened to me. First I made first chair of the all-city band in High Point, NC. It was a concert band of winds and percussion that consisted of the best students attending middle school in High Point. High Point’s a fairly big city so when this happened it was a boost to my confidence with the trumpet. The second thing that happened to me was towards the end of the school year a gentleman by the name of Mr. Morton visited our school to tell us about a music camp that was taking place in the summer. Mr. Morton turned out to be a great patron of jazz music and the local musicians that were on the scene in NC. The camp that he spoke about was a jazz camp that was named after saxophonist John Coltrane (who grew up in High Point as a kid). I attended that camp that year and that was my first introduction to jazz music. Two years would pass before I would being to study jazz music on my own.

Fast forward to my 9th and 10th grade years in high school. I was considered a quiet nerd who played the horn, and also had a deadly jumpshot. I was one of the best point guards in my region at the time and I was really starting to get into basketball. My high school won the state while I was there and I also played AAU. In the fall season I played trumpet in the marching band. Now that consisted of a lot of dancing and playing trumpet really LOUD. The result of those years of hard overblowing left me with a calloused lip (which I still have to this day).

My junior and senior years of high school found me more involved with music than with basketball. I eventually started attending the Greensboro Music Academy about 3 nights a week. There I was about to take private trumpet lessons, theory, and I also participated in a small jazz combo with a rhythm section and another trumpet player. I consider myself very fortunate to have started out playing with a small group that featured another trumpeter because now I’m really into that, where as there are not many trumpet players on the scene now that are. You see small groups with two saxophones, two trombones, but rarely two trumpets. Maybe that’ll change.

So I ended up being awarded a scholarship to New England Conservatory in 1997 to major in jazz trumpet performance. I was really excited to be in a big city, studying this music with peers who were just as enthusiastic as me to learn to play. So I go into my first lesson with my trumpet teacher and he asks me to play a C scale two octaves. So I play it and he notices some issues with my embouchure and suggests that I deal with them with his guidance. I essentially put all my trust and faith in him and I learned how to play the trumpet from scratch in the span of a year.

It was John McNeil who first introduced me to the Carmine Caruso technique in 1997. I’ve been doing it every day ever since. What was great about John’s teaching method was that he gave me exercises that catered to where I was chop wise at the time. He really took the time to monitor and document my progress from week to week. What was even more remarkable about my lessons with him was that he was able to deal with these issues in the lessons as well as issues in music. We spent a ton of time working on repertoire, dealing with playing with good time, playing a capella, dealing with substitute chord changes, analyzing transcriptions, intervallic modes, etc. I’ll always treasure my time with him and I consider him to be one of the premier trumpet instructors in jazz alive today.

The Carmine Caruso Techinique was the deal breaker for me. When I started to really get into this method I noticed a sudden ease in the effort it took for me to execute my musical ideas in a live situation for an extended period of time. This method assisted me in getting my muscles in sync involuntarily in order to play the trumpet with the least amount of effort. As soon as the results from doing these exercises everyday and really paying attention to the timing (and not the sound) of them started to kick in, all of my embouchure issues started to dissipate. The only issues that I noticed that were hindering my playing then were insufficient breathing and posture. I found those issues to be easier to deal with than the embouchure.

For me the Caruso Technique, coupled with hours of personal practice time, hitting up as many jam sessions, and playing with as many cats on the scene as I possibly could allowed me the opportunity to build and maintain my IN DOOR ANTS…..

Keep Swingin,

Jason Palmer

Stories Behind the Song

We all know that songs take on a deeper meaning to the listener if they know what inspired the tune to be written or just in the name of the tune itself. I’ve written a lot of tunes that have weird names and I play at a club which is frequented by rowdy patrons, so I don’t usually get a chance to talk about the tunes and what inspired me to write them. I thought that I might take this time and blogspace to clue you in to a few (I’ve to date written a little over 200 compositions that I consider complete and record-ready) of the titles and where they came from.

Velvet Hammer- Last summer I did a mini-tour of the beautiful country of Kyrgystan with bassist Curtis Lundy. We were on a 3 or 4 hour bus ride out of Bishkek to some other city to perform, when I decided to strike up a conversation with Curtis about the business side of the music. So we were talking about networking and he tells me how it should be done. He said that you have to be persistent, whether it’s by email, letter, or phone (preferably by phone). He mentioned that it’s best to let clients know who you are and let the music be the last thing that hits them. And when the music hits them, it’s like a VELVET HAMMER.

Takes Courage to be Happy- I wrote this song for the beautiful, human nightingale, Abbey Lincoln. I was a student at NEC when I heard her live for the first time. I love the albums she did with Max Roach, Kenny Dorham, Booker Little, Coleman Hawkins, etc. She is also a wonderful actress, starring in Nothing but a Man and For Love of Ivy (alongside Sidney Poitier). She’s probably most known on screen for her appearance in Spike Lee’s Mo Betta Blues, where she plays Bleek Gilliam’s (Denzel Washington) mother.

After one of her Valentine’s Day concerts in Boston, I was able to meet her backstage for an autograph and to chat a little. She gave me her number and asked me to call her sometime to talk music, etc. It took me about a year to gather up the courage to call her but I finally did. In the course of this conversation, Abbey suddenly says to me, “You know Jason, It Takes Courage to be Happy”. A song was born.
Be Aware- I was inspired to write this tune after reading the liner notes of Wayne Shorter’s album Night Dreamer. In the notes when describing the song Oriental Folk Song, Nat Hentoff and Wayne explain that:

“In this, as in all the numbers, there are various repetitive devices which serve to accentuate the overall theme of the set. “There an attempt,” Wayne explains, “to keep telling the listener that ‘Judgment is Coming’. The word, however, is not ‘beware’ but rather it’s ‘Be Aware’!”

This tune was also an attempt to write in a harmonic style that mirrored Wayne’s style, but not any one of his songs in particular.

It’s a Brand New Day- I wrote this song for brother Paul Poindexter. Paul is a manager at the club I play at, Wally’s Jazz Café in Boston. At the end of most nights in an effort to clear out the place, Paul has several phrases that he likes to use. One of those is, “From the table to the bar, from the bar to the floor, from the floor to the door…it’s time to suck em down, pack it, stack it….It’s a Brand New Day in the neighborhood….

Black Beauty - This 8-bar waltz has a rubuato intro which is also used as an outro. I composed the melody and all of the ideas in the intro only using the black notes on the piano, and upon hearing it I thought that it came out quite beautifully, hence the name Black Beauty…

Crash- I wrote this tune after the melody came into my mind when I was watching the Academy Awards ceremony several years ago. It’s named after the movie that won “Best Picture”, which I didn’t think should’ve won.

3rd Shift- I wrote this tune for my mom. For over 20 years, my mom worked the 3rd Shift in the textile industry. This tune is a waltz that’s a contrafact (a tune that’s based on the chord changes of another tune) of Wayne Shorter’s tune entitled Night Dreamer. But my mom isn’t someone to be sleeping on the job!!

Blue Grotto Parts I and II- I was inspired to writes these two tunes after visiting the Blue Grottoes of Malta while I was on tour with Greg Osby’s band a while back. We were taken in small sailboat into these gorgeous caverns which I found to be stunning and serene. These tunes came pretty fast to me after this experience.

It Only Takes One- This tune in 5/4 time is a concept piece. The premise is pretty simple. I just took one note (a concert D) and changed the underlying harmony beneath to fit the note of the melody. When we perform this tune, the players playing the melody are encouraged to play the concert D in any rhythmic configuration or duration. We usually play off of each other when we play the melody. The solo sections to this tune are split into three parts, with each soloist cueing for the next soloist to begin at the next section. The complete name of this tune is It Only Takes One Note to Make a Song…

Six to Three- This ditty is also a concept piece of mine written about 3 years ago. The idea for this one is that I took two intervals, and major sixth and a minor third and used those as the distances of the notes in the melody. It gives the melodic lines a diminished quality. The song’s in a major key so when you combine the melody with the harmonic function of the piece you get a really quirky piece. This song somehow reminds me of one of my earlier compositions Hoop-ti-Du.

That’s Just Lovely- I wrote this tune while I was on my honeymoon in 2008. It’s a ballad that I composed with the help of any instrument at my disposal (I actually write tunes in this manner quite frequently). When I wrote it I had a pretty clear idea of what it would sound like when the band played it. When we played it, the song sounded just as such, and that happens half of the time. The other half of the time I have to do some tweaking of the feel from the rhythm section to get things to settle in.

Sway- I also wrote this tune on my honeymoon last year. This tune is very tricky and we’ve only played it a handful of times thus far. The tricky thing about this tune is that is in 13/8. There is a melody, a counter melody (made up of 13 eighth notes, which keep the song together because they’re played throughout the song), a bassline, and harmony. The title comes from the movement that took place in my body when I tried to feel the rhythm of what I was hearing. What’s funny about this is that when I had the rhythm in my head I thought that it was in 15/8 time, but when I wrote it out it ended up being in 13/8, which doesn’t make it any easier, but it a fun, groovy tune nonetheless.

Sudoku Suite- Now my Sudoku suite is a series of 12 songs that each have their own titles. Those titles together form this phrase: Beauty n Numbers; Obsessive, Compulsive, Disorder, Is, Now, Under, Control, Thanks, (To The), Guidance, (Of Fun and Games) .I wrote this piece at a time in my life when I was dealing with a serious OCD issue involving numbers. I was obviously obsessed with doing Sudoku games but in addition to that I had a compulsion for adding up the numbers on a license plate in my head as I walked down a street. When I would ride on the subway, I would add up number in all of the ads on the trains (usually involved phone numbers). So writing this suite out somehow caused this serious disorder to subside to the point now in my life that it’s not an issue.

If any of you readers out here would like to hear some of these tunes in their entirety send me an email to pogo56@hotmail.com requesting the sound files and I’ll gladly send you some live tracks.

Keep swingin,

Jason Palmer

J the Plumber

So I was playing at a club in NY not too long ago which shall remain nameless (you’ll probably recognize it through further description though). From what I hear, one of the attractions is the MC for the shows in the evening. This person shall also remain nameless also (but you may know this person by now if you can put two and two together).

I arrived at the club early to look over some music with the band and one of the managers comes up to me and asks me what I’m doing here so early. I told her what I was there for and she took my name down for the MC later that night. About an hour later the MC shows up with the list. He asks me how to pronounce my name and I tell him and we’re cool.

So the show is about to start, the MC gets on stage and gets into his thing. This guy was pretty animated and from what I hear, he’s always like this. I feel like I’m being announced in the starting lineup to the NBA All-Star game. He announced each player in the band to the stage one by one and when he got to me he pronounced my name perfectly. We play the first set and everything is cool.

During the first break, I find myself standing in the front of the club near the bandstand, talking to a lot of folks that I haven’t seen in a while. This lasted for the full break. Towards the start of the break, the MC comes up to me and tells me to go and stand further away from the stage so he could announce everyone back to the stage individually. So I start to wrap up my conversations with my friends and move to the back of the club, but I obviously wasn’t moving fast enough for the MC. What ensued after that was hilarious…..

The MC announced everyone to the stage in his usual character. When he got to me he pronounced my name as “Jason Plumber”. The audience claps and those that actually know me begin to laugh. So of the band members go as far as to call me “Jason the Plumber” (in reference to Joe the Plumber). I don’t know if the MC made an honest mistake or if it was intentional, but it was funny. This situation reminds me of the stories that I use to hear about the Pee Wee Marquette, wee person who MCed at Birdland for years. If he didn’t like you, or if you didn’t share your smack with him, he’d mispronounce your name to the audience.

J.P.

After All, Everyone Needs Healthcare….Thanks CareFusion!!

All I can really say is wow!! Here’s some good news concerning the JVC Jazz Festival in NYC!! I think that this is great news for us musicians and I hope that they stick to the notion of presenting a majority of “real” jazz acts at the festivals that they sponsor. Thanks to Ben Ratliff for bringing us this great news via the NYT:

A Major Summer Jazz Festival Will Return to New York
By Ben Ratliff

Ruby Washington/The New York Times

George Wein has a new sponsor for two jazz festivals, including one in New York next summer.Times have been grim lately in what could oxymoronically be called the jazz business. Last month, Jazz Times magazine announced it was suspending publication; this summer saw the disappearance of the JVC Jazz Festival, New York’s biggest jazz event, after its corporate sponsor, JVC, pulled out. Now there is a positive surprise. George Wein, the longtime producer of the New York festival, announced today that he has a new sponsor for two jazz festivals, including a major one in New York next summer.

The sponsor is CareFusion, a medical technology company based in San Diego. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cardinal Health, one of the largest pharmaceutical wholesalers in the United States, and has developed products geared toward patient safety.

“It’s a miracle,” said Mr. Wein. “These people walked in the door. They decided they wanted to go with jazz and they got around to me.”

CareFusion’s one-year contract with Mr. Wein includes next month’s jazz festival at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, R.I., to be called George Wein’s CareFusion Jazz Festival 55, and the first CareFusion New York Jazz Festival, scheduled for June 2010. The company, today, is also announcing sponsorships of jazz events produced by others, including festivals later this year in Chicago, Australia and Paris and a stage within the Monterey Jazz Festival in September.

Unlike, say, audio equipment made by JVC, CareFusion’s products are not over-the-counter merchandise, or even anything a customer can knowingly choose. But the company is looking to brand itself among hospital clinicians, and found through market research that they care deeply about jazz.

“The research indicated that second to travel, music and the arts were the number two areas of interest for practitioners in health care,” said David Schlotterbeck, the chief executive of CareFusion. “At the same time, there has been a demonstrated link between music and healing, and jazz has been used as a metaphor for generating a harmony that is necessary in a group of practitioners.”

Jim Mazzola, the senior vice president of marketing for CareFusion, said that the sponsorship is essentially a “direct campaign to the decision-makers” — health care executives who like jazz. But he also saw a possibility for bringing jazz closer to the health care business, such as making programs from the jazz festivals available to hospital patients over closed-circuit networks.

“They’re putting no constraint on what we’re going to do,” Mr. Wein said. (He said that JVC’s multi-festival sponsorship ran to about $1.5 million per year, and that CareFusion’s contribution is close to that amount.) He added that he wanted to present festivals that were as “pure jazz” as possible, with only a few larger pop-oriented concerts in large halls.

Keep swinging,

J.P.