I was fortunate to be invited to a special advance screening of a new movie called “Crazy Heart”, followed by a PGA-organized Q&A with the actors and director. The latter admitted that he wanted to do a movie on Merle Haggard but that it was too complicated and so he turned to this novel about a “richly comic, semi-tragic romantic anti-hero Bad Blake, who is a broken-down, hard-living country music singer with far too many marriages, far too many years on the road and one too many drinks way too many times”. Bad Blake is a very well written character masterfully interpreted by the great Jeff Bridges. His co-star Maggie Gyllenhall is the younger journalist woman “who discovers the real man behind the musician” and falls for him “as he struggles down the road of redemption and learns the hard way just how tough life can be on one man’s crazy heart”.

Produced by Scott Cooper (who also directed), Robert Duvall (who also plays a part), Rob Carliner, Judy Cairo and the great T-Bone Burnett, this movie has a LOT of great AND original country music produced by T-Bone for the film and very well executed by Bridges himself (backed by the same great band who did the 5-time Grammy Winning Plant/Krauss rhyhm tracks)!

Great music film you should favor over other blockbusters this holiday season!

Only in New York can you take your pick of Gamelan concerts and styles. This weekend not one but three Gamelan concerts took place.
Saturday at 3pm as part of the series titled “The Allure of Refinement: Music and Dance of Indonesia” the NY based Gamelan Kusuma Laras ensemble with Guest Artists from Cornell University’s Gamelan Ensemble and from Seattle’s Gamelan Pacifica ensemble performed half a dozen pieces at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts of Lincoln Center Plaza, New York. The space filled up quickly and at least 20-30 people got turned away. An equal number of people where on stage singing and playing Javanese Gamelan music. If your cup of tea is rather Balinese Gamelan then the Indonesian Consulate in New York presented an 8pm concert on Saturday and a 2pm concert on Sunday on just that. In addition to that Cornell music professor Christopher Miller also gave a talk on Javanese music and dance on Friday.

Over the weekend I was honored to get into the studio with the amazing incredible viola player/composer/improviser Eyvind Kang and work on his beautiul new solo album. His wife Jessika Kenney (an Gamelan Pacifica member) is in town too and she lent her beautiful voice to the Javanese Gamelan concert above and is also doing a workshop on vocal techniques in Brooklyn.

Also Zorn was playing at 4pm in an art gallery.

Definitely a NY-style busy weekend. I love this city.

I went to see the great Lou and the the other surviving memebers of the Velvet Underground talk about their career at the NY Library on 5th and 42nd tonight.
Rolling Stone’s David Fricke was moderating/interviewing but was so nervously shaking and unusually unprepared that when faced with the fierce anti-press personality of the great Lou, barely managed to keep his head above. Lou attacked record labels execs and journalists alike and entertained the crowd like only he can do! Good times!