Roque Cordero: Panama's gift to the world

Roque Cordero

Pop quiz, name three Panamanian musical greats.

Let’s see there is Billy Cobham, the drummer who played with Miles Davis.

There is Danilo Perez, the pianist who played with Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Wayne Shorter.

Oh, and let’s throw in Igmar Thomas, the trumpeter who played with Lauryn Hill and Esperanza Spalding. (Thomas is really from San Diego, California, but of Panamanian descent.)

In a pop quiz, few people would come up with the granddaddy of them all Roque Cordero, ‘universally acknowledged as Panama’s finest composer’, according to his biographer Marie Labonville.

That’s why it is fitting that Texas Christian University is paying tribute to Roque Cordero during its 11^th Latin Music Festival, October 9-12, 2017.

‘Roque Cordero successfully captures the essence of Panama’s popular musical culture and at the same time transforms it into something more enduring, Marie Labonville said about him.

‘He gave Panamanian flavor to his rhythmic materials by incorporating rhythms of folk dances such as the mejorana, the punto, the cumbia, the pasillo, and the tamborito.’

‘He was an energetic and visionary man of multiple compositions based on the twelve-tone technique to which he imparted Panamanian flavor to many of these works by use of folk rhythms and careful choice of pitch materials.’

His mature works include approximately twelve pieces for piano, 14 for orchestra, five for string

orchestra, three for soloist and orchestra, 32 for chamber ensemble, five for chorus, one for chorus

and orchestra, two for ballet dancers, and one film score.

He worked as a professor of music in the United States and also served as a music editor of sheet music. In his capacity as music editor he recruited a lot of Latin American composers to be published.

His success in America made him a legend back in Panama. He would always sign his letters, ‘Roque Cordero, Panamanian composer.’

While the world is thankful for Billy Cobham, Danilo Perez and even Igmar Thomas, Roque Cordero may be Panama’s greatest musical gift to the world.

Boost music sales: innovative, digital techniques

Teddy Goff, digital guru, innovative maketing consultant.

Great business ideas come from unexpected places. Say you are a musician – you want sell music, or you want more people to come to your show. (Or, any business: non- profit, selling widgets, church.)

This being the elections season, a lot can be learned from political campaigns. Politicians and political parties have hired tech-savvy young people who have created ground-breaking techniques on identifying voters, how to get out the voters to the polls, and how to raise money.

Business schools call these techniques marketing and the techniques can be used by anybody or any business. These innovative techniques involve using the internet and social media and some of their buzzwords are ‘data’, ‘micro-targeting’, ‘targeted communication’, ‘analytics’.

What they found effective is to hire people who are not involved in politics and have not run campaigns before. These data geeks, techies and digital gurus get experience by reading and studying the data and working on the campaign. At the end of the election, they form companies and during the next election cycle the new political candidates hire the companies to run online marketing.

The candidates hire pollsters, ad-makers, researchers. They give people titles like digital director, chief tech officer, chief innovation officer, director of analytics, and they hire software engineers, number crunchers, digital designers, video producers.

Of course, American politics is a multi-billion-dollar industry; a musician, a nonprofit, or a small business may not be at that scale. It might be more feasible to consult with a single marketing point person or maybe even a university student in a related field.

The politicians and candidates have been able to collect voter lists, donor lists, volunteer lists – this is what is called the data. These same people on the lists can be found on social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

How does that translate? Say you are a musician, for example, you have a list of people who buy tickets to a show, list of people who buy CDs. These same people might be found on the musician’s Facebook friends’ list.

By ‘mining the data’, musicians can increase turn out to shows and sell more CDs, nonprofits can increase fundraising. The possibilities are endless.

Charley Crockett: In The Night (2016)

Leon Bridges, Charley Crockett. Photo by Brittni Jesse.

Charley Crockett has captured a vintage sound for his new CD, In the Night (2016). He travelled to Fort Hort Studios, studio home of the late Nick Curran, and co-produced In the Night with Jay Moeller who plays drums on In the Night and played with Gary Clarke Jr. and The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

In the Night is also the title of the opening song a funky, upbeat piece which features the trumpet of Charles Mills Jr., who guitarist-singer Charley Crockett was playing with for years, starting out on the streets of New Orleans.

That is followed by the bluesy, fast-paced Baby 1-2-3 with some horns, including the saxophone of Jeff Dazey who plays with Leon Bridges.

I’m Working shows off the drumming skills of Jay Moeller and displays the great timing and intricate relationship of Charles Mills Jr. and Charley Crockett. Charley Crockett always says Charles Mills Jr. defines the sound of the band.

What’s Made Milwaukee Famous is an old, fun tune that features Kullen Fox’s boogie-woogie piano and Nathan Fleming’s pedal steel guitar.

Out of Bad Luck, a song originally done by bluesman Magic Sam, to whom Charley Crockett dedicated the CD. Out of Bad Luck features the trumpet echo of Charles Mills Jr. and a nice guitar solo by Alexis Sanchez.

After the Laughter has an hypnotic, vintage sound. After the Laughter and Downtrodden Man features the organ of Matt Ferrell who plays for the Greyhounds and has written songs for the Tedeschi Trucks Band.

Addison Frei: Transit (2016)

Addison Frei, with Tahira Clayton. Photo by KPR.

Addison Frei has put together a varied and well-balanced jazz CD, Transit (Armored Records, 2016), with a touch of classical, a pop and country standard, and a famous guest singer.

Transit opens with Many are the Nights with Addison Frei’s easy piano and his collaborators, Perrin Grace on bass and Matt Young on drums. All of them including Addison Frei are graduates of the University of North Texas jazz studies program.

The song Transit is a tender, slow number featuring the trumpet of Wayne Tucker and the singing of Tahira Clayton. The song was inspired by the New York transit system.

Impromptu Op. 90 No. 3 is recommended for those who don’t understand or don’t ‘get’ classical music. Like other jazz musicians (Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis) who have interpreted classical music, Addison Frei took a stab at this Schubert composition. It is a haunting rendition featuring the violin of Rachel Koblyakov.

Addison Frei invited Manhattan Transfer singer Janis Siegel to be a special guest. She lends her beautiful and elegant voice to the song Know You and holds a back-and-forth conversation with Wayne Tucker’s trumpet.

Addison Frei brings out his inner Duke Ellington with a piano rendition of Good Morning, Heartache.

The album has great variety and stretches the boundaries of the traditional ‘jazz album’. Addison Frei includes the Nat King Cole classic Mona Lisa, and Janis Siegel returns to do a version of Dolly Parton’s Jolene.

Addison Frei continues to turn out serious work. He recently won the prestigious American Jazz Pianist Competition and the UNISA International Jazz Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa. This is Addison Frei’s follow-up to Intentions (Armored Records, 2014) and his band AMP Trio’s M(Y)our World (2015).  

Horace Bray is in a Dreamstate

Horace Bray and trumpeter Thaddeus Ford

Horace Bray, the guitar player and composer from the famous University of North Texas jazz school, has put out an outstanding album Dreamstate with Colin Campbell on keyboards, Mike Luzecky on bass and Matt Young and Connor Kent on drums.

Many would be surprised to learn that drums were Horace Bray’s first instrument. ‘I started out playing drums along with Nirvana and Foo Fighters and Blink 182,’ he said on the Lane Garner Guitar Podcast. ‘I think I was 13.’

His mother introduced him to the guitar. ‘My mom taught me like some John Denver song on her old acoustic guitar and then I just started noodling on the acoustic guitar. And one day she bet me $100 that I couldn’t learn Stairway to Heaven. So I did it. I remember getting really into it. I basically learned everything on this acoustic guitar that was possible. Like the middle of Jimmy Page’s solo where he goes up so high…The beginning, the end, everything I learned and then got the hundred dollars. And then pretty quickly after that I just started mainly playing guitar.

‘I quickly had the urge of wanting to be good at it. In the eighth grade I got super, super into it, playing all day, doing it like six or seven hours. I pretty much dedicated an entire summer to it and then I started taking lessons from a really great guitar player named Corey Christiansen.’

Horace Bray listens to and was influenced by a number of artists including Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Brad Mehldau, Gerald Clayton, Animals as Leaders, Drake, Radiohead, Chan, Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge.