Blake Lyman: News

Exciting news on the Anthology, For Now front: both it and I made our radio debuts today courtesy of Matt Fleeger and his program on KMHD, Portland’s local jazz radio station.  In truth, this was not my radio debut, per se, but if we don’t count playing on other people’s music or the interview I gave to a Japanese radio station when I was 17 (yes, I was in Japan), this is the first time music released under my name was played on the radio.

Because Matt’s show takes place during the noon hour I was listening via internet stream at my desk, and while my reaction was tastefully contained, it was very cool to hear my music coming out of speakers because someone I didn’t know put it on.

One aside: I decided against grabbing the one laughably outdated boom box we have in my office to hear the broadcast (aren’t all boom boxes outdated, anyway?) but soon thereafter realized that it may have been one of my last chances to hear myself on an actual radio.  Oh well.  Just wait until I release my iPhone app a la Bjork…

Last night was the Anthology, For Now release party at Vie de Boheme.  Foremost, I’d like to thank everyone who came and everyone who, in absentia, sent their support.  We had a fantastic time celebrating the album and its release with old and new friends, and played a few tunes from Anthology, For Now (and a few new ones).  As I said last night, the opportunity to perform and record this music is entirely due to the support of everyone listening, and that alone is worth more thanks than I can express.

I'd also like to send my thanks once agian to Andrew Jones and Jonas Oglesbee without whom Anthology, For Now would not have been possible. Both Andrew and Jonas dedicated a lot of time, energy, and creativity to Anthology, For Now and it's been their unfortuante burden to be known only as members of the Blake Lyman Trio for the past few years as we've played around town.

As I write this it’s been five days since the official release of Anthology, For Now, and already, its reception has been phenomenal, and well above what I would have ever predicted.  From what I can, tell the album peaked around 14 on Amazon’s most popular jazz albums last week (not sure where it was at its highest or where it is now since the updates were mostly coming from my wife’s frequent checking of their rankings - see the image below for proof).  In addition the album was very well reviewed by David Sumner of eMusic.com (check the “press page” of this site for his review), and has been getting some good comments from users of Amazon and iTunes (some of whom I may or may not know).

Unfortunately, not all of the news this week was so great: we received notice that the jam session at the Tea Zone will be changing hands and formats after next Wednesday’s session.  This jam has been going on for a few years with my involvement only covering the last two (see my post from February 6, 2010), but in that time we had a very positive impact on the local jazz scene, welcoming in a great range of players, styles, abilities, instruments (I’m looking your way, melodica guys), and perspectives.  It’s been a real treat to run this with Akila Fields, Sam Foulger, Jim Prescott, and Noah Bernstein.  I’m not sure if we’ll find a new location for ourselves or not, but check back for further news in that regard.  In the meantime, we wish all the best to the Tea Zone and their new fusion jam session leader, Errick Lewis.

Anthology, For Now, my debut album was released today onto the (hopefully not) unsuspecting internet through a variety of distributors.  Check out myself, Andrew Jones on bass, and Jonas Oglesbee on drums on:

• BlakeLyman.com (in the "Buy" section)
• CDBaby.com
• Amazon.com
• iTunes

Don't forget to join us also for a special release party at Vie de Boheme (1530 SE 7th Ave.) on Friday, January 13 at 8:00pm.

Once again, here's the cover art (it's supposed to be blurry):

Regular readers of this section of the website (right...) will recall that Superbowl Sunday, 2011 was spent recording material for a then-yet-to-be-release album.  Well, after nearly a year of recording, mixing, more mixing, mastering, designing, and, oh yeah, getting married, I'm very happy to announce that "Anthology, For Now" will be officially launched on January 13 with a performance at Vie de Boheme in Portland.  Jonas Oglesbee and Andrew Jones, two incredible musicians who make the album worth listening to will be joining me as we perform some of the music from the album.

Look for more information here on how to purchase the album via the internets and the cloud.

A few more recent items of note:

First, the full-length Mobile Music Festival video is available online, take a peak below, or here.

Many, many thanks, once again, to everyone who organized this and allowed us to take part, including, but not limited to the New~Railvolutionaries, Women's Transportation Seminar, Benna Gottfried at PDX Pop Now! and SQWare LLC  It was a fantastic way to participate in some of the great things happening in Portland and, on top of that, a lot of fun.

Here's Ben & I playing a whole song (note the attentive audience):

Also, Ben Graves & I are featured (in picture only) in the November 2011 issue of Washington County Review for our recent performance at Tigard's Third Friday at Live Laugh Love Glass.  Full issue here. 

A short video & article about the Mobile Music Festival was published on OPB's site.  It features Graves|Lyman playing 1.24 choruses of "Bye Bye Blackbird."  Here's the video:

You can read the full article here.

Like it or not, it looks like the summer is about to be done for another year. And, after a long period of inactivity in updating this site, I figured now was as good a time for an update as any: think of it as a summer retrospective/fall prospective.

First, the big event of the summer was my wedding. I'm officially married to the most amazing woman of all time (and don't you forget it). Wedding planning is unlike anything else, I've been assured, so it's great to be on the other side of all the logistics, though I no longer have the event to look forward to anymore. I guess I'll have to console myself by looking forward to the rest of my life with my amazing wife.

On the music front, Graves|Lyman had some fun performances at AlexEli Winery in Molala, Koji Osakaya restaurant in Portland, and, most recently, on the Portland Streetcar as part of the Mobile Music Festival. The Streetcar gig was a lot of fun as we had a surprisingly large and captive audience for a 45 minute ride through SW and NW Portland celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Streetcar. Though we were expecting a few surprises from the movement of the train we managed to do okay, not making too much of a spectacle through the performance. I've posted some photos in the galleries of this site from our performance, courtesy of Cheryl Juetten. Here's one now:

The Streetcar gig followed my debut at the Blue Monk's Ninkasi Jazz Series the night before. That gig, the first by the Sorta Bison Quartet since a March performance at the Camellia Lounge, was a great performance and a really fun time playing with three musicians I enjoy very much.

The Blake Lyman Trio will be playing in the series on Sunday, October 18. That performance, like the Sorta Bison one before it, will be the first performance by the BLT in a few months, and should be a lot of fun.

Aside from my regular groups, I've been working hard with Art Resnick on his Sonata for Soprano and Saxophone, which we'll debut at a concert of Art's compositions on Friday, November 18 at Sherman-Clay Moe's Piano in the Pearl District. This should be a very special concert, and I'm very excited to be a part of this amazing piece's debut.

I also had the pleasure of playing with the Darren Kleintet for the first time this summer. It was tremendous fun and a great way to get my wedding nerves a rest (the gig was the week of the wedding) while playing in front of my parents for the first time in years. This is a great group and I hope to have more announcements about playing with them in the future.

For those of you in the know, the other big project of the summer (late-spring/early-summer, actually) was the mixing and mastering of my as-yet-unreleased, as-yet-untitled debut album, which was recorded in February. That project got sidelined a bit for wedding preparations, but I hope to have an announcement soon about its release. Three tracks have been added to the music section of this site for you to enjoy.

Finally, watchers of my calendar will note that the Camellia Lounge Jam Session will move from its Tuesday night slot to Wednesdays from 8-10pm beginning in February. Come on out, bring your horn/guitar/sticks/polite request to play bass or keyboard, and sit in.

Frequent viewers of these infrequent updates will note that in February we launched a website for the Sorta Bison Quartet.  In much the same spirit, I'm very happy to announce the launching of a new website for myself and Ben Graves, GravesLyman.com.

Ben and I have been performing duets all around for the past few years and, with increased demand for our performances, we thought it appropriate to carve out some web space all our own.  Go to GravesLyman.com and take a look, have a listen, and let us know what you think.

We had a little difficulty selecting the URL since most options were either too long or too abstract.  When we finally settled on our last names we realized that the inverse of our final choice ("LymanGraves") sounded too much like it might be a mortuary service.  So, we made our choice.  Easy to remember, right? 

As announced in an earlier post, and on the calendar page, I had the honor of performing at the Cascadia Composers' Winter Light concert on February 26 at Sherman-Clay Moes Piano.  My performance marked the world premiere of Art Resnick's Jazz Sonata - or at least the second movement of the whole piece.  A video of our performance is available below (just click on the picture):

Here's Art's description of the piece from the program:

This is the second movement of a sonata in 4 movements, a "waltz" in 3/4 time. It contains characteristics of the entire sonata such as compound rhythms like 5:3, 4:3 etc (the first movement is predominantly in 5/4 as is the final movement). While not atonal, it does not hold to a harmonic system either. The entire piece will be presented in a concert of jazz and classical compositions performed and written by the composer later in this year.

As the name and Art's description imply, this is only one part of a larger work.  Hopefully there will be an announcement here soon about a performance of the rest of the piece.  Stay tuned.

Big thanks also to Cascadia for the opportunity to perform and for putting on the program.  It's a very talented group of local composers and I'm looking forward to hearing more from them soon.

Since it had an overt reference in my last post, I don't suppose it can be called foreshadowing, but true to my word the Sorta Bison Quartet now has its very own website.  Take a look at www.sortabison.com and marvel in how nearly buffalo-like it is.

In sadder news, I took this opportunity to reexamine my links page and have decided to finally kill my blog, "Can't Think of Anything."  There is some sadness in seeing it go and finally coming to terms that I will never update it again and that no one ever read it anyway, but everything has its time.  It was born on the tail end of the blogging craze of a few years ago and helped me fill a lot of time while I was unemployed and looking for work.  No longer can I anger cat-lady-bloggers by calling them inane, nor can my sister's friends tell her they "don't get it."  Goodbye, blog.  Goodbye.

Since it appears to have been almost a year since I posted anything in the "news" section of this website, it's fortuitous that I actually have some news:

• First of all, I'm very happy to announce that the big project for 2011 will be my debut, as-yet-to-be-titled album.  Since this is my first trip down this path I'm not sure how long it will be before I'm able to announce a release date, but so far things are going well: last weekend the Blake Lyman Trio layed down some tracks at Indigo Groove Recordings here in Portland.  Thanks to my friend and co-worker Ronnie Nelson there are some great photos of the event, a few of which have been added to the site.  Take a look and contain the anticipation you must surely be feeling for this album.
• I'm also happy to point out the Cascadia Composers Concert currently on my calendar (February 26).  This event is notable because it will mark the premier performance of the Jazz Sonata for Soprano Saxophone and Piano by Art Resnick.  When I first moved to Portland this piece was one of the first projects I started to work on, and Art, as a result, was one of the first people I started to play with.  Since then Art's become a great friend and his already formidable piano and composition skills have only grown and enhanced this monster of a piece.  We'll only be playing the second movement at this concert, but it will not disappoint.
• Those of you who spend a lot of time here (which I think is just myself and the various seo companies that spam me) a few other changes have been made to the site.  Notably a little more verbage on the "Contact/Booking" section (previously just "Contact") and the removal of the link to my long-since-defunct MySpace page.  Sadly, Rupert Murdoch and his cronies couldn't keep me interested in that part of my life for too long and updating two sites was just to much (recall that this is the first news update in a year).
• Finally, I'm excited to announce that a new Sorta Bison Quartet website should be up and running shortly.  At the moment it's being hosted on my desktop and only viewable on my computer, but it should be up and running soon.  There may be an announcement on that soon.

That's all for now.  Hopefully it will be sooner than a year from now when I next check in, but one never knows.

If any of you had doubts as to the existence of the Sorta Bison Trio, there's now photographic proof on the photos section of this site, taken at our last gig at the Camellia Lounge on February 18.  No, I'm not talking about blurry Big Foot photos, or under developed Loch Ness photos.  Please - photographic technology has evolved light years since then.  What I'm talking about are blurry, under developed photos taken with a cell phone.  Check them out.

If you've seen the Bison in action, prepare to be underwhelmed.  If you haven't, prepare to be intrigued.

Looks like it's been about seven months since anything's been added to this section of the site.  Actually, aside from the calendar, not much happens to this thing other than those obnoxious emails everyone's been getting from me*.  There's not much reasoning behind this, other than there hasn't been much to update: gigs have been going strong, the Blake Lyman Trio and the newly named Sorta Bison Trio have been gaining traction, solo gigs at Iorio Restaurant are going along as well, and a few smattering of duet gigs with Ben Graves have been coming up here and there.

Now there's something else: the Camellia Lounge Jazz Jam.  Yes, we all know the Camellia Lounge from Sorta Bison Trio gigs and emails detailing a location that seems like a Russian nesting doll (Camellia Lounge: Tea Zone: Pearl District: Portland).  And once you'd figured out that the Camellia Lounge was a cool place, you'd have to decipher their schedule of biweekly jam sessions hosted by the esteemed Noah Bernstein.  Well no more!  Starting February 9, Camellia Lounge Jazz Jams will be happening every week, with hosting duties alternating between Mr. Bernstein and myself.  So come on out every Tuesday to play.  I'll be there sometimes; sometimes I won't.

Since I seem to be a neglectful web host (see: 7 months between posts), I've also taken this opportunity the music section of my site.  A few new tracks from the December '09 Vinideus gig with the BLT have been added.  After boosting the volume in the ol' computer they've come out prettier than ever (sound quality, not performance or composition [let's not kid ourselves]).  So enjoy these three new tracks.  They're songs I wrote for no one or thing in particular.

Frequent visitors (apparently only my family falls into this category) may have noticed a rotating group of event posters in the upper left of this website.  Necessity has lead me to learn Photoshop a little better (though not much), and I've been practicing/applying by putting up some fliers for upcoming gigs.  It's not much, but it's something.

Finally, I want to somewhere and somehow say thanks to everyone who came to the Big Brothers Big Sisters Wall of Wine event on January 29.  It's a great organization, and having been to this event now as performer and attendee, I can vouch for this event as well.  Though I don't know the final numbers, I think we raised some dollars and support for what everyone can agree is a great organization.

So that's it, check back in seven months or so, or just come to a gig and hear the music.  I'll say hi.

*Are you not receiving obnoxious emails from me?  Join the email list: fill your email into the box on the left side of the site, or send me an email through the contact page.

• Song, recorded at the Vinideus Wine Bar at another trio gig. Not the greatest title, I'll admit. Sorry for the audience noise on this one.
• The End of the Search, recorded at The Tea Zone on First Thursday this June. This was the first outing for Ben Graves, Sam Foulger and myself as a band, and it came out well. The microphone was behind the guitar amp, so plenty of Ben on this one. But it's okay - he sounds nice.

• "Persephone," something I wrote at CalArts just "because." As I said on the music page, it's just about the most obvious title for a jazz song you can find.
• Also added is "Natalie's Song," which I wrote for my girlfriend who is amazing, and coincidentally named Natalie.