It's New to Me!

I'm a little late to the game on this, but James Kibbie has recorded all of Bach's organ pieces and offered them via his website ... for free! Not only can you download these great recordings for free (I started checking out a few last night), but he has them smartly-organized: "popular" pieces and in groups. He also has information listed about the organs used on the recordings. (I admit I'm organ-ignorant so some of that information goes over my head.)

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Pianist James Rhodes has burnt up the YouTube charts lately with a mini-documentary about him (you can afford the 6 minutes to watch it). He's also releasing a new CD, and is giving away a track for free via his website. It's a refreshing, upbeat take on Ravel that you shouldn't pass up.

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Jason Parker and his quartet - based out of Seattle - have started a Kickstarter project to help fund their new album, a jazz tribute to Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left. (If you don't know the original, download it ASAP, listen to it, then contribute to Jason's project!) For only $10 you can get digital download of the album; $20 gets you a physical copy; if you live in the Seattle area, you should probably take advantage of the other options to help fund his project - I unfortunately live too far away!

If you're not sure about Kickstarter, here's a good blog post that Jason wrote, with a nice video by Christopher Pappas made for his own Kickstarter project.

I'm new to supporting Kickstarter - and someday it'd be great to have a project worth funding through here! My first (and, until Jason's album, only) project I supported was Kait Kerrigan's & Brian Lowdermilk's album, which was an incredible success, and I wish Jason the best of luck with his project!

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I won a CD last week from Naxos Records: a recording of Duke Ellington's unfinished opera Queenie Pie. I've only listened to about 2/3s of it, but it's worth hearing. It has all the traces of Ellington's great writing, and it's unfortunate that he passed away before he could finish exploring this art form.