A quick note to those of you who don”t follow my events calendar but do read this blog: I will not be playing with Ed Englerth and the band at The Intersection tonight. We were supposed to open for Monte Montgomery, but I got word that Monte is sick and the concert has been postponed.\r\n\r\nA new date will be scheduled. I will post an announcement as soon as I learn more.

Anyone who has followed music and entertainment in the West Michigan area for any length of time is familiar with Francesca Amari. She”s an immensely talented vocalist/song stylist, cabaret performer, and front woman. She”s also one of the sweetest gals you”ll ever run into. Francesca is as genuinely, flat-out nice as she is lovely, which is to say that she”s a very nice person indeed.\r\n\r\nShe is also richly rewarding to work with in a musical context. So when she asked me to do a vocal-saxophone duet with her on her debut solo CD, Better Days, I felt singularly blessed. The tune, “Good Morning, Heartache,” is the first of eleven on an album that reflects the broad range of Francesca”s musical interests and influences. The selections range from jazz to show tunes to pop, and, besides Francesca”s vocals, they feature the keyboard artistry of producer Wright McCargar.\r\n\r\nVocally, Francesca is superb, and her personality and humor shine through. This is more than a well-crafted, tightly produced CD–it”s fun! From the melancholy irony of “Stars and the Moon,” to the sassy, blues-dipped “The Best Is Yet to Come,” to the hauntingly lovely title cut, “Better Days,” Francesca has served up an engaging and rewarding fare. Spotlighting Wright on piano as the primary accompaniment, the CD is a superb example–and, in this age of overproduced studio gloss, a rare one–of how less is more, and of how a minimalist approach can maximize creativity and musicality.\r\n\r\nFrancesca is in New York as I write these words. I hope she”s having a blast. I”m pretty sure that at some point, she”ll read this post, so I”ll just personalize it here and say, “Well done, Lady Day.”\r\n\r\nAnd to the rest of you: If you live in West Michigan, come to Francesca”s CD breakout gig on October 14 at One Trick Pony in downtown Grand Rapids. Hope to see you there!

As the remnants of Ike kept the South occupied Saturday, a stalled warm front and a sixty-knot 500 millibar jet max brought ample shear and helicities to lower Michigan and northern Indiana. My friend Kurt Hulst and I decided not to waste the opportunity. I don”t think either of us had high expectations, so I”m glad we took the risk of a late-season storm chase, because our decision was rewarded with a couple of very nice supercells.\r\n\r\nOur initial plan was to head down US 131 to northern Indiana, but a line of storms moving across Lake Michigan changed our minds. Watching the southernmost storm intensify on the radar, we did an about-face south of Constantine and headed back north. Good move, that. The storm developed a nice little hook with pronounced rotation, then backbuilt into a second storm which also went supercellular as the first one put down a confirmed tornado in Paw Paw.\r\n\r\nAs Kurt and I neared the new tail-end cell, we could see a nice wall cloud. This produced a squat, grayish-white funnel southeast of Portage as we tracked with it to the northeast. \r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nThe storm eventually crapped out around Battle Creek, at which point I was having connection problems and couldn”t access data.\r\n\r\nWe decided to abandon that storm and hook up with fellow-chaser Dave Diehl. We rendezvoused with him north of Coldwater, then headed south to intercept a new line of storms. By now, I had my data issues resolved, and I liked what I saw on GR3. Tail-end Charlie first showed rotation over–ironically (see my September 4 post)–Dunlap, Indiana, and it was heading into an area of progressively higher shear and helicity. Indications looked good that the storm would continue to organize.\r\n\r\nDropping south on I-69, we headed west on Route 120 for a few miles, and intercepted the storm east of Orland. It had a nice wall cloud and an elephant”s trunk funnel that extended about halfway to the ground. In the following shots, you can see what”s left of the funnel as the vigorously rotating meso starts wrapping in precipitation.\r\n\r\n

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\r\n\r\nWe wound up backtracking ahead of the meso eastward to Clear Lake, at which point the storm gusted out.\r\n\r\nAll in all, a very enjoyable mid-September chase–late in the season, but hopefully not the last chase of 2008.

I just got home from a gig a little while ago, and as I write, Hurricane Ike is making landfall, with Houston the dead bullseye. I”ve spoken several times today with my friend Adele, who lives there and has weathered many a hurricane. It”s reassuring to know that she”s in a good, sturdy new home. She tells me that at her location is beyond the reach of the storm surge, and her most serious concern is hurricane-spawned tornadoes.\r\n\r\nHere is a GR2 image of Ike, taken at 3:30 a.m. EST.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nGalveston faces a far more imminent danger than tornadoes as the eye passes overhead and the storm surge breaches the sea wall. My understanding is that around 35 percent of the island”s inhabitants have ignored the evacuation orders and remained on the island. After Katrina, this news leaves me feeling stunned and incredulous. Granted a certain percentage of extenuating circumstances, still, with all the strongly worded advance warning and well-organized evacuation efforts, how can that many people be so incredibly stupid? The loss of life is sure to be enormous.\r\n\r\nI just don”t know what to think. I feel angry, sick, and not ready yet to believe that a catastrophe is happening as I write. I hope that”s not the case. Many prayers are being said for the Texas coast. I add mine to them. God help the residents of Galveston, and preserve the lives of the emergency personnel and other authorities who do have business still being there.

He”s been rated one of the “Top 50 Greatest Guitar Players of All Time” by Guitar Player Magazine. He does things with an acoustic guitar that you simply won”t believe. He”s Monte Montgomery, and if you”ve never heard him play, you owe yourself an earful without further delay. Check out Monte”s version of Jimi Hendrix”s “Little Wing.” You”ll be more than convinced–you”ll be mesmerized.\r\n\r\nMonte Montgomery is appearing at The Intersection in downtown Grand Rapids on Tuesday, September 23, at 6:30 p.m. It”s a concert you won”t want to miss if you live anywhere in the West Michigan area.\r\n\r\nAs a member of the Ed Englerth Band, I”ll have the honor of opening for Monte. Please make it if you can. I flatter myself in thinking that our little unit is worth hearing. And as for Monte Montgomery…well, if you”ve clicked on the link and remain unmoved by “Little Wing,” you”re either deaf, depressed, or dead. Do come. It”ll be the best $10 you spend that week.\r\n\r\nSee you at the show!

Can”t believe I”ve let an entire month slip past me without posting something. This summer has been a busy one, and rather than try to cover it all here, I”m going to just toss out a couple items of interest.\r\n\r\nOn the musical front, I”ve done a number of big band and small combo gigs with Paul Sherwood et al, and I just returned from a couple Labor Day weekend gigs in Alpena, Michigan, and Kalida, Ohio, with accordionist Dave Slivinski. Those who have read my previous account of my three-day gig with Dave at the Hofbrauhaus in Panama City Beach, Florida, have gotten a little of my take on the place of jazz saxophone in polka music. Stylistically, the two genres are worlds apart, but in terms of technique, interpretation, and form, I have to say that polkas are as demanding as anything I”ve come across.\r\n\r\nNot that we played purely polkas. Rather than just Dave and me, this time we had a foursome, with Dave”s son Aaron playing drums and, alternately, a guitarist and another accordionist/trumpeter rounding out the sound and expanding the musical options. Tim, the guitarist, was simply superb, and brought in a whole new sound for the variety crowd in Alpena. And down in Ohio, for an older audience, Chris provided the lead horn lines and I filled in behind him.\r\n\r\nBut enough about music. Let”s talk about storms. While Gustav bruised the Gulf Coast and gave New Orleans a scare, there hasn”t been any weather action to speak of here in Michigan lately. Harkening back a couple months, though, the following is a little incident I”ve been meaning to write about.\r\n\r\nThe SWODY1 update issued at 12:06 EST for June 13, 2008, read as follows:\r\n\r\n…OH VALLEY INTO GREAT LAKES…\r\n AREA AHEAD OF OUTFLOW BOUNDARIES FROM IND INTO SRN MI IS RAPIDLY\r\n DESTABILIZING AHEAD OF MID LEVEL WIND MAX WITH LITTLE REMAINING\r\n CINH. THUNDERSTORMS WILL INCREASE IN NUMBER AND INTENSITY ALONG AND\r\n AHEAD OF SURFACE CONVERGENCE FROM CENTRAL IL NEWD INTO SRN LOWER MI\r\n THRU EARLY/MID AFTERNOON. DEEP LAYER SHEAR OF 35-40KT WILL SUPPORT\r\n PRIMARY MULTICELLULAR STORMS EVOLVING INTO LINE SEGMENTS/BOWS AS\r\n COLD POOLS DEVELOP DURING THE AFTERNOON. HOWEVER WITH MLCAPES AOA\r\n 2000 J/KG THERE WILL BE POTENTIAL FOR SUPERCELLS WITH AN ENHANCED\r\n SEVERE THREAT OF BOTH WINDS/HAIL AND ISOLATED TORNADOES INTO THE\r\n EVENING HOURS. WHILE STRONG THUNDERSTORMS WILL CONTINUE INTO THE\r\n NIGHT EWD ACROSS THE OH AND TN VALLEYS…SEVERE THREAT WILL\r\n GRADUALLY DIMINISH BY LATE EVENING WITH LOSS OF SURFACE HEATING.\r\n\r\nStorms were in the area, as I recall, and steamy, gray turrets of cloud were visible from my window to the southeast. Not expecting much out of the system–which, indeed, wound up offering little more than a sneeze in Michigan–I was dinging away on my computer when I happened to glance out the window and saw this.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nZooming in for a closer look…\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nThis shear funnel persisted for several minutes. It was pretty cool, and a nice bonus on an otherwise bland day.\r\n\r\nThe funnel turned out to be the first of two almost-severe-weather-related vortices I”ve seen this year. I spotted the second a month or so later as my best friend and homebrewing buddy, Duane, and I were heading east down M-6. Beneath the updraft base of a small, very low-topped storm (if you could even properly call it a storm) hung a distinct funnel cloud. We pulled aside and watched it, and I snapped a couple photos with my cell phone, which unfortunately didn”t turn out. The funnel weakened to the point where I thought it was going to dissipate. But it got its second wind and strengthened into a fairly stout, robust vortex that descended maybe a sixth of the way to the ground and lasted another minute or two before finally disappearing.\r\n\r\nAt no time did I ever think the funnel posed a danger. I would have been extremely surprised had it evolved into an actual tornado, as ground-level conditions didn”t seem conducive to surface-based storms. My guess is, the funnel was a product of adequate helicity interacting with the updraft near the cloud base. Not particularly dramatic, but unusual, pretty, and fun to watch.

Wednesday was a double-header for me, weatherly speaking. Round one took the form of a reporter from Grand Rapids Magazine, who came over to interview me about storm chasing. It was fun, but I”m afraid I may have overwhelmed Tom with my ramblings. I fell victim to the loose firehose syndrome: too much to say, and it all came cascading out in a torrent of technical information, chase anecdotes, radar and forecast model demos, names of fellow chasers, random chasing insights, blah, blah, all thrashing around in different, loosely connected directions. I hope Tom is able to make sense out of it all.\r\n\r\nWith the interview over, I left to go practice what I had just finished preaching. Michigan lay under a light risk area, and the radar showed storms firing to the north along a stationary front, and a squall line blowing in across Lake Michigan from Wisconsin. I called my buddy Kurt Hulst, and we hooked up and took off for the Lake Michigan shoreline south of Douglas. The storms weren”t particularly severe, but they were breathtakingly photogenic, and in addition to some great shots of a spectacular arcus cloud, I got some of my first captures of lightning with my new camera.\r\n\r\nEnough talk. Here are some images. Pardon the tilted horizon line in the last two. I didn”t know the lake could slant like that; no doubt it has something to do with the gravitational influence of the moon. Some may suggest that the photographer was the root cause. Don”t make me laugh! How on earth can little old me create a seiche of that magnitude in one of the Great Lakes? No, the more I think of it, the more certain I am it was the moon.\r\n\r\n

\r\nShelf cloud over Lake Michigan south of Douglas\r\n\r\n

\r\nA minute later\r\n\r\n

\r\nView to the northeast\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\nChaotic skies behind the gust front\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\nLooking south along the shoreline\r\n\r\n

\r\nLightning over Lake Michigan

Jethro Tull ROCKS!\r\n\r\nHeeeeey…what kind of thing is that to say on a jazz saxophone blog?\r\n\r\nSorry, all you purists in the crowd, but I unabashedly admit that I cut my teeth on rock and roll back in high school, and I”m a Jethro Tull devotee of long standing.\r\n\r\nA couple nights ago, I kicked back and treated myself to a smorgasborg of old Tull performances on YouTube. With years of music under my belt, I am more impressed than ever with the musical sophistication and excellence of vocalist/songwriter/flautist/accoustical guitarist Ian Anderson and his band of merry men.\r\n\r\nThis band could–and still can–play their butts off. And the songs! Tull”s music is inventive, wonderfully arranged, marked by literate and evocative lyrics and an eclectic approach that employs unusual and colorful instrumentations, polyrhythms, time changes, artful motifs, beautifully textured counterpoint, and other musical nuances, all covering the spectrum from tender lyricism to relentless, driving rock, often in the same song (e.g. the Tull classics “Locomotive Breath” and “Aqualung”). Particularly impressive is the fact that these guys were only in their twenties at the time.\r\n\r\nI submit as a case in point this 1975 performance of “The Minstrel in the Gallery.” With the wild-eyed, gesticulating Anderson in the forefront, this tune covers the gamut. I love how the lyrical introduction featuring Anderson alone on his guitar segues into the main body of the tune through a chaotic instrumental transition. Beginning with a sequence of descending arpeggios by lead guitarist Martin Barre, this section is well-knit, meticulously rehearsed pandemonium. But the payoff is still to come: the hard-driving main body of “Minstrel,” with Anderson”s nasal, piratical vocals–I”ve always admired the man”s unique song styling–weaving a story punctuated with bursts of the tune”s silvery flute motif.\r\n\r\nJethro Tull–here on a jazz website? You bet! Good music is good music, and Tull is multifaceted minstrelsy at its best.

I know the question that has been burning within you: what has Bob been practicing lately? No use trying to keep it from me. Your curiosity is eating at you.\r\n\r\nSo, generous soul that I am, I”m going to give you an exercise I”ve been toying with. No great secret, just a fun little chops-builder that I like because of its ready applicability to improvisation. It”s a simple, three-tone interval study. Picture a measure in 2/4 time with four eighth notes barred together as follows: root, major third, lowered third, root (i.e. C, E, Eb, C; Db, F, E*, Db; D, F#, F, D…and so forth).\r\n\r\nTake this little four-note cell up and down the chromatic scale. Then, as I”ve been doing lately, take it up by whole steps, starting, for instance, on Db, then, Eb, F, G…all the way up through the range of your horn, then back down in reverse order.\r\n\r\nWork the cell through the intervals of a fully diminished seventh chord and you”ll gain a nice tool to use in dominant seventh flat nine situations. This approach incorporates all the notes in the diminished scale.\r\n\r\nMove the cell roots by major thirds and you”ll have an exotic approach that sounds cool in a number of applications, though you”ll want to handle certain non-harmonic tones with care. That”s because you”re outlining the augmented scale, which is a man without a country, harmonically speaking. So you want to be careful to recognize the tension inherent in certain notes in respect to the chord you”re using it with. For instance, here is the pattern starting on C: C, E, Eb, C; E, G#, G, E; Ab(G#), C, B, Ab…all the way up, then all the way back down. You can use this with a C7b9 quite nicely–but watch the B. It”s a raised seventh, which is fine as an upper neighbor or a passing tone, but don”t stress it unless you intend to clash with the lowered seventh of the dominant chord.\r\n\r\nObviously, you can move this cell through other root movements as well. You can also expand it. Instead of going up a major third from the root and then dropping a half-step, go up a fourth and drop a half step (i.e. C, F, E, C), or go up a diminished fifth (C, F#, F, C).\r\n\r\nThis exercise becomes fun when you allow yourself to get into “the zone” of repetition, repetition, repetition. Play it over and over and over. Drive the neighbors crazy. That”s how it”s done. Make sure to focus on smoothing out awkward fingerings.\r\n\r\nHave fun…and keep practicing.\r\n______________________________\r\n* For you theoreticians: I”m choosing commonly recognized note names over theoretical correctness and consistency. There are pros and cons to either approach; in this case, I”m choosing simple, easy note identification. It”s easier to think of dropping down from F to E than from F to Fb, and in terms of fingering and technique, the result is the same.