Marc Urselli

Blog

  • Richie Kotzen and Bernard Fowler live

    Again, not together, but I saw them both tonight. Richie played to a packed Highline Ballroom crowd that seemed like a mix of metal heads and strangely “normal” looking people (and of course, I’m sure, a ton of guitarist). Of course he kicks ass when he shreds on his axe, but his songs and lyrics are not the most original I have to stay. Nevertheless he’s a great player and he plays and sings his ass off. Reminded me a bit of Sambora vocally and you can hear echoes of Jimi and others in his playing, it’s just so fast and precise that it’s mindboggling.
    Later my buddy Robby Angelucci (on tour with Frankie Valli, coming through the tristate area) walked over to Canal Room where long time Rolling Stones background singer Bernard Fowler and a great supporting band were giving their all to a nostalgic r’n’r crowd. Bernard’s voice is great (there’s something special when a black man signs rock’n’roll… like with the Livig Colour guy…) and his energy is uncompromised and dedicated. Keith Richards was in the crowd and was rumored would sit in but ended up not doing so. Great sound (mixed by the legendary Night Bob) and show nevertheless!

  • Bridget O’Neill and Oz Noy live

    No I didn’t see the two of them live together. I spent the first half of the night at BB King’s to see The Moth’s finalis, where Bridget (whom I blogged about before) kicked ass with her stand-up comedy style storytelling and closed the night with a grand slam story about getting her mom stoned.
    Then I ran down the West Village to see the Bitter End’s weekly installment of Oz Noy. I got there early and caught the second half of Lizzy Loeb’s set (if memory serves me right), a talented young singer songwriter who enlisted Shawn Pelton on drums for her record and this one gig tonight. After her Oz was up and was killing it with his riffs, licks, solos, sounds and pedal switching… The Oz Noy Twisted Blues Band tonight featured the great and fun Will Lee on bass, Rocky Bryant on drums & Jerry Z on keys (that was a first for me). Of course they killed it and when they were done it felt too short a set! Great musicianship.

  • Steinway & Sons piano manufacturing factory tour

    Thanks to my AES membership I’ve had the chance to take a tour of the factory that produces one of the most beautiful instruments around. Seeing how 12’000 parts come together over the course of 9 months to create a single grand piano was definitely a treat and was worth getting up at 7am and taking 4 trains. It was fascinating and amazing to see it all happen in real life and equally interesting were other facts, such as that the original founder created the US-based company at age 50 as a European immigrant; that he was illiterate and yet his son created one of the largest libraries in the US; that his grandson helped design the NYC subway system to help the workers get to the factory (now remotely located near La Guardia airport, but once spread around in Manhattan).

    During the tour I was able to observe all the stages of the making of a piano, including the wood carving by Santos and the final inspection by Willy Boot (picture), who’ve been with the company for 31 and 48 years respectively.

    The artistry and craftsmanship that goes in a Steinway piano are incredible and truly make it a work of art, which is why by the end of the tour it was pretty clear why at Steinway they refer to the mass-produced instruments of the competition as “piano shaped objects” ;-)

    I strongly recommend taking a tour of the facilities when you get a chance. I believe the tours are free and take place once or twice a week.
    Even if you are not the lucky owner of such a gorgeous instrument you are sure to appreciate the process.

  • Mary Halvorson live @ the Kitchen

    My good (and corageously fasting) friend Kaoru and I went to see Mary Halvorson tonight. She performed with a great band comprised of the great Trevor Dunn on bass, an impressive Tomas Fujiwara (subbing for Chess Smith), Jon Irbagon on sax (rumored to be a world champion at Dr. Mario) and Jonathan Finlayson (whose playing is almost as cool as his vintage Kellog’s fruit loops t-shirt). The quintet played great and it was the first time I got a chance to appreciate her compositions (although I had seen her playing before with Marc Ribot at Le Poisson Rouge). With long horn lines and harmonies punctuated by written free-jazz guitar structures leaning on the solid foundations of such a great rhythm section, the quinted effortlessly spaced from improv to form flirting with moody and delicate atmospheres and bursting flames in full on full out pieces! All the solos were killer! This young and humble composer is definitely one to follow and one whom I hope to work with sooner rather than later.

  • Recording studio legend Walter Sear passed away at 79

    Walter Sear Sad news for industry professionals came today when it was announced that the legendary Walter Sear passed away. I had the pleasure of meeting him briefly at AES in New York a few years ago but unfortunately I never had the chance to work at his beautiful facility.

    In the news: Studio Legend Walter Sear Passes at 79

  • The future of music distribution IS cloud-based streaming

    Those who’ve read my post called “The New Now of Music” know how I feel about the future of music. Although I’d like to believe in Sandy Pearlman’s “paradise of infinite storage” and his 5 cents ownership solution, I believe that the people will instead opt for cloud-based streaming even if that means embracing a non-ownership based model.
    I have always contended that I would LOVE to pay for a music service that offered me ALL the music of the world, at HIGH quality, available ANYTIME & ANYWHERE (including the NYC subway, which has no wifi or 3G coverage).
    I’ve tested some services like Last.fm and Pandora and I like their music discovery features however the quality of the streams and/or the lack of caching support in their iPhone apps were deal breakers for me. I’ve had a chance to test the desktop version of Spotify (whose iPhone app does support caching) but as we all know they are not yet available in the US. As of last week I started testing out MOG. Although their 7 million strong catalog is not as ‘total’ as they like to claim and I’ve already managed to query artists or albums that aren’t available through MOG, I am fairly (not totally) happy with their streaming quality AND they are allegedly releasing their cache-supporting iPhone app later this month. At $5 or even $10 per month I could go for that until the competition (and the technology) in this field becomes such that more offerings will become available (everyone is waiting to see what the recent Lala-acquisition by Apple and their plans to offer a cloud-based iTunes version will turn into). I still think that Google might at one point sweep in strong of their technology and marketing presence, but what I am really waiting for right now is how MOG will compare to Rdio, the new (and still secret) service being launched by the founders of SkyPe. When those two do something it’s always big and so I think for now the battle will be between MOG, Rdio and Spotify (if they ever enter the US market). We shall see.
    In the meantime my MOG player is streaming all sort of music at 320kbps and the discovery slider already helped me discover some new artists I didn’t know. There is of course room for improvement but right now I really just wanna see the iPhone app and keep testing this until there’s more to test.

  • amazing video of New York City attacked by 8bit pixels

    I just was sent this by a friend and thought it was pretty amazing and felt like sharing! Same thing from YouTube:

  • Protected: James Brown’s bassist Fred Thomas and some random thoughts

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  • Black Sea Hotel & others at the Delancey, NYC

    Thanks to Zorn’s amazing graphic designer Chippy I found out about this balkan vocal quartet called Black Sea Hotel that I went to see with her today at the Delancey. I was impressed by Black Sea Hotel: perfect pitch, great vocal areangments, haunting and beautiful, as long as you like Balkan melodies of course. Check out their latest CD for a taste of that or catch them live on May 21st uptown. This weekly Monday event is called Small Beast and is organized and hosted by Botanica’s Paul Wallfish (another NY musician who sadly is moving to Germany) also featured Paul himself on solo piano and vocals, Edison Woods and legendary producer/engineer Martin Bisi’s band The End Credits.
    Also tonight I hooked up with drummer extraordinaire Jojo Mayer (who’s back in town and playing a Nerve gig at Le Poisson Rouge on May 16th; don’t miss that!) an together we went to Nublu to check out a band called Twelve, from Trinidad, who played some sort of stoner reggea-rock. They were ok and ex-Brazilian Girls/Scofield bassist Jesse Murphy sat in but reggea has never really been my thing, I guess you have to be a stoner for that and I’m definitely not at all.
    Love NY.

  • JG Thirlwell’s Manorexia live at Le Poisson Rouge NYC

    Mr. Foetus is back as Mr. Manorexia with his ensemble of four strings, piano, percussion and laptop. The new CD just came out on Zorn’s Tzadik label and tonight I had the pleasure to see him perform this material live for the first time (my first time that is). Although I have recorded the CD myself and knew all the pieces (except one that hasn’t been officially recorded/released yet) it was great to see it all come together as one cohesive performance. Check out the record, it’s great!