The last couple of weeks have been have been a bit of a new chapter in the AFP Young Adult Music Enrichment Program. In addition to our normal regimen of band coaching, vocal exercises and singing work, and getting into some jazz chart analysis; the fellas ventured out with me for the first times to check out some live music. They came to my solo acoustic set at the AFP hosted Déjà vu show at the NoOSPHERE Art Space on the Lower East Side and to see my band, Bad Faces play at a loft party in Bushwick, plus, AFP Executive Director Frank Jackson took Jason, Alex, and me to Harlem’s Apollo Theater to a fantastic show by Brooklyn’s TV On The Radio!

We had a few nice sessions since my last entry, and Statik Vision is sounding better and tighter than ever, with the new songs gelling and settling into themselves. We have mostly been working on locking in tempos and the timing of transitions. We’ve also been working with the vocals to find the best placement of the lyrics. Interestingly, the sound of the band is evolving to be more stylistically broad, while at the same time crystallizing into it’s own unique thing. It was a refreshing change last week to have T-10 guitarist Wesley Payano show up to do some shredding as well.

We also continued our journey down the rabbit hole of jazz theory as Alex and I pursued an in depth analysis of the chord chart for “At Last”, defining the function of each chord and identifying key changes in the song form. We have a lot more work to do on this stuff, but it was good to break the seal and start to get down to the inner workings of the chord voices in the progression.

As I said earlier; it was a pleasure to have the guys come to the Déjà vu art show for my acoustic set and to see Jeremy Dannenman work his solo tenor sax magic. It was, also, an honor and a pleasure to have them come to a party in Bushwick to see my band, Bad Faces perform live. We usually play in 21 and over venues so it was a rare treat for me to have them there, and made the performance more meaningful for the band as well.

Lastly, we got to go to the Apollo Theater! Frank let me know the day of the show that he had gotten better seats for us to see TV On The Radio, and wanted to know if any of the students wanted to come and use the pair of extra tickets he had bought earlier. I texted the boys, and fortunately Jason and Alex were able to meet up with us and check out the concert. I thought it was a great show, and although I was only able to talk to Jason and Alex for a few minutes after the show, they seemed to have a good time despite some serious performance envy!