Hardcoretet has received news that our album “Experiments in Vibe” is nominated for Best Mixed Genre Album in the Inside Out Awards! Presented by Lucid Jazz Lounge, and taking place for the very first time on Monday, May 31st at the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium at Benaroya Hall, The I/O Jazz Awards show will […]
Category: Bands
Robert Glasper at Jazz Alley
I’ve been a Robert Glasper fan since I first heard Canvas, his first Blue Note record, years ago, and since then I would say he’s gotten as close to “blowing up” as a jazz artist can get, releasing his third album, garnering a fair amount of press, touring with Maxwell, and continuing to play with his […]
Speak
Speak is a 5-piece band that plays creative instrumental music drawing on a wide variety of influences. Some of the members, like Chris Icasiano and Luke Bergman, I’ve mentioned in this blog before from their work with other groups like Bad Luck and Motorist, and I work with Aaron Otheim in Hardcoretet. I’ve known saxophonist […]
Crossing Stylistic Lines
I went to the Sunset Tavern in Ballard last night to watch Motorist, a rock band that includes musicians Jared Borkowski, Chris Icasiano, and Luke Bergman, who I met at the University of Washington, and Garrett Sand, who I met through the guys more recently, as well as frontman Robert Dale. I really enjoyed the […]
Roy Hargrove Quintet at Jazz Alley
A couple of weeks ago I went to see Roy Hargrove at Jazz Alley. I knew beforehand that this was going to be straightahead, post-bop type stuff, not his neo-soul band RH Factor, which I would love to see live someday, but I realized that it had been quite a while since I had seen […]
Congratulations to Bad Luck
Bad Luck is a drums and saxophone duo with Chris Icasiano and Neil Welch, two classmates of mine from the University of Washington days, who have taken off on an amazing path of music-making since then. Chris has gone on to work in a diverse range of settings, from free jazz to rock to West […]
Hardcoretet CD Release
What a ride it’s been for the last month or so… After sweating and working hard for our tour, we had a couple of days to great ready to present our hard work to Seattle at the official CD release at Tula’s as part of the Earshot Jazz Festival. The vibe there was definitely different […]
Hardcoretet Tourblog, day 5 and Conclusion
So after Skinny’s Lounge in NoHo we headed home to Jon’s house. Jon had already left for the East coast, because Slumglum was playing over there to participate in a program where they may become music ambassadors to another part of the world! Very cool. Anyway, we had already said our goodbyes, but Erin left […]
Hardcoretet Tourblog, Day 4
With one more full day in L.A., and a set time of 11:30 pm, the band had some time to bum around the city a bit. First things first: TACO TRUCK! Jon showed us to his personal favorite, which was, of course, amazing, and even more so because of where we went to eat them: […]
Hardcoretet Tourblog, days 2 and 3
Bocci’s Cellar Monday night began as possible tragedy but ended in triumph. We arrived to the gig to find another band set up inside…the gig had been double booked! Fearless leader Abouzied was on the case: Eventually it was determined that the other band would play a set, and we would follow, so we settled […]