All posts tagged: gela

I Lied to Myself – a Song & a Story (Gela Part 2)

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When you have a long-term goal, and you are actively working towards achieving this dream, it is one thing knowing that everything happens at its own time, it is quite another having the adequate amount of patience for long periods of gestation, or the stamina to keep up when the pace suddenly spins out of your control.  Last month I wrote a little about my most recent trip to Italy and I would like to say a bit more about my time in Gela, Sicily, and to talk about Angelo Di Leonforte, a musician I met there. He helped me get one step closer to achieving one of my long-term goals.  One of my dreams is to have proper lead sheets and clear demo recordings of all the viable songs I have written. This may sound like a very simple goal but I have found it to be quite challenging due to my limited notation skills. This is embarrassing, but true, and since I cannot go back now and learn all the things I need …

The Gela Jazz Festival

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Last month I was fortunate to be able to travel to Italy for a couple of weeks. So many wonderful things happened there! Yes, too many cool things, so I will break up my account of the trip into several posts here at “Moments, Memories, & Jazz”.  GELA 2015 The first leg of this trip was a week in Gela, Sicily, to attend the Barry Harris / Stjepko Gut jazz workshops, held September 14-18, 2015,  and to participate in the 4th Annual Gela Jazz Festival held each evening at the Teatro Eschilo. These two interconnecting events were organized by Loredana Melodia, a singer, “super-jazz-woman”, and someone I am lucky enough to now know as a wonderful friend. Professional and amateur jazz musicians from all over the world traveled to be students in Gela. Each weekday we gathered at a school near the center of town to take jazz theory, rhythm, vocals, and improvisation classes. The first class in the morning was with Stjepko Gut, trumpet player, conductor and internationally recognized teacher of workshops and masterclasses. He got us all in …