We’re back!
Finally, after a complete hiatus during Covid and erratic, schedule-dodging rehearsals for a year after that, we made our debut appearance with this lineup in front of an enthusiastic audience on 29 June 2023 at the Sigal Music Museum in downtown Greenville. We played some arranged standards and some originals, some of which were premieres. It was not without glitches, but there were lots of good things happening and we are pumped to polish it all and add some more tunes to the book. Big thanks go to all the folks who came out and to the Sigal Music Museum for hosting the performance. Stay tuned for the next one!
Upcoming performances…
• Tuesday, 22 May 2024, 7:30 PM, Sigal Music Museum 516 Buncombe St, Greenville, SC 29601
Check out these fairly handsome rogues, left to right:
Vee Popat, saxes
The Wizard of Woodwinds is the Artistic Director of the Greenville Fine Arts Center
Duane Malphrus, drums
Duane is veteran of many jazz and rock groups around the Greenville area and teaches a large studio of drum students at the Guitar Center
Yours Truly, keyboards
Retired from the FAC in 2019, the dog refers to me as “The Bum”
Ian Bracchitta, basses
Ian performs extensively in classical, jazz and popular idioms, and has served for 33 years Assistant Principal Bass with the Greenville Symphony; presently, he teaches at the SCGSAH and Furman University
Go to the NewerTube page to hear three tunes from the June 29 concert at the Sigal Music Museum
Oracle, a blast from the past -
In September of 2020, with all rehearsals cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I posted these old videos of performances with the fusion band Oracle from the late ‘80’s and ‘90’s. We definitely had our moments, though it seemed like every time we got up a head of steam, something interrupted our progress.. I don’t think this band ever quite realized its full potential. The videos are from a concert given in 1996 at UNC Asheville during a brief period in which the band re-constituted; the video was done by a UNCA student who was obviously trying to make a fancy music video. Tim Haden, guitarist, composer, and UNCA faculty member at the time, sadly succumbed to cancer in 2008.
This piece - by guitarist Tim Haden - was a commemoration of the loss of the seven astronauts of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. We performed this many times over the active years of the band. We have recently reworked this, and in memory of Tim will be performing it regularly.
One day, after again expressing my frustration with the conservative, unadventurous ears of much of the audience, Tim said, "Jon, it's a pentatonic world." So, the subtitle of Monkey Wrench is "How to be a Chromatic Band in a Pentatonic World." The opening section - featuring the sequencer and marimba sounds in counterpoint - is in a pentatonic scale; the contrasting bridge section is highly chromatic.
My arrangement of the famous Thelonious Monk tune. I have re-worked this arrangement and it’s in the Edgewise book.
Here are some studio recordings of other tunes I wrote for Oracle. We have re-imagined Friday Solitary and Marigold for Edgewise.