RVANews

Amazing May

Aaron Williams — Fri, 27 May 2011 10:00:24 +0000

Photo by Lauren Serpa.
Cameron Ralston (bass) is a member of Ombak, Fight the Big Bull and Glows in the Dark in addition to other groups.

In December RVAJazz always recaps the events of the previous year. This May, so much awesome stuff has happened that it is worth looking back now.

Goodbye Dean – May 2011 began with a two part interview officially saying goodbye to RVAJazz founder and editor Dean Christesen. (Part 1/ Part 2) After Graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in jazz drum set performance more than a year ago, he is moving to Chicago to attend Columbia College. There he will study artist management and undoubtedly do some big things for jazz in Chicago. His spirit will remain in the city as he continues to work with Spacebomb Records.

Ombak – On May 4th, Ombak released their much anticipated sophomore record: Fan Bricks. Almost two years after Framing the Void caught the ears of everyone in Richmond and beyond, their newest record has certainly disappointed no one.

Sounds of the South - For the second time, Richmond's Fight the Big Bull teamed up with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, Megafaun and Sharon Van Etten to perform Sounds of the South. Originally performed at Duke University, their second performance found them performing for a massive crowd in Cincinnati, Ohio. The collaboration resulted in a re-imagination of songs recorded by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in his early travels.

ASTW Presents | Sounds of the South @ MusicNOW ft. Megafaun, Fight The Big Bull, Justin Vernon & Sharon Van Etten from A Story Told Well on Vimeo.

Glows in the Dark @ Friday Cheers: Friday Cheers is one of the largest music events in Richmond. On May 20th jazz took over as Glows in the Dark went electric and played their Mondo Italia Dance Party music.

Glows in the Dark - On May 24th, Glows in the Dark released their 2nd full length album: Beach of the War Gods. Months ago, Dean Christesen sat down and talked over the entire album with Scott Burton creating RVAJazz's second Deep Dish.

No BS! Brass music video - If a picture is worth 1000 words, No BS! Brass' new music video is worth a million:

Bryan Hooten launches website - Yesterday Richmond slide hero Bryan Hooten launched his website in preparation for his solo trombone album. This is in addition to the Ombak website.

No BS! Brass @ Friday Cheers - Tonight No BS! Brass takes the stage on Brown's Island from 6-9 as part of Friday Cheers. Only a week after Glows in the Dark performed, it is safe to say Richmond jazz musicians are making things happen on the big stage.

With still a few days left, May 2011 is a month to remember in Richmond.

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Farewell Part 2

Aaron Williams — Thu, 05 May 2011 10:00:44 +0000

Aaron Williams taking photos at the most recent RVAJazz Fest. Photo credit: Patrick Jarenwattanon of A Blog Supreme

You can read the first half of this interview here.

Williams: You mentioned RVAJazzfest. What gave you the idea to put it on and the confidence to put it on? Can you give some insight as to how much work there was to make it successful?

Christesen: The reason I did the first one is because I believed for all of the talking I did on the blog, it didn’t matter unless I brought it into the real world and actually provided live music for people to hear. I was doing a lot of reviewing and recapping of live performances for people who weren’t able to be there, but it’s like hey, why don’t I put on an event that people can come see?

The goal from almost the very beginning was to do something like that. When I finally decided to do it in September/ October of 2008, Matt White came to me with this grand plan of having Steven Bernstein down and how I was going to be part of that plan.

I was like, “hell yeah!” How can I not be part of that plan? Fight the Big Bull was one of the reasons that I started the blog because of seeing their successes. They were just signed to Clean Feed Records for their first album (Dying Will Be Easy). Fight the Big Bull with Steven Bernstein fell into my lap and that’s how the first event started.

Yeah, it was a lot of work but that was also my first taste of that and how much work it is going to be. As musicians, all of us put on events: we are all booking our own gigs and promoting them. I think this was actually more work than just putting on a single event.

With the blog, a lot of our sponsorship money came with the underwriting on the blog. It was, "Help pay for this event, I will write an article about you." So that became not only articles about the three bands and Steven Bernstein, but now five sponsors. That became a lesson for me on delegating work and being editor as well as all of the basics like time management and basic fundraising, that kind of thing. That first event was a big lesson in many ways and I think it was a huge success.

The Camel was still in its early days of that ownership and it was exciting to see them so ecstatic about the business. It is tough to see them ecstatic like that again because they see great business all of the time, especially with bands like No B.S. and big punk festivals. That first time, it was great seeing them celebrate a good night of business and knowing I had a part in it. The second RVAJazzfest, in 2010, had an unfortunate turnout because of the weather and everything.

Williams: But now it is in April!

Christesen: Yeah. That was a good lesson too. The lesson wasn’t: don’t make anything happen in the winter. The lesson was how to deal with extenuating circumstances like that and having a back up plan. That second year, I didn’t really have a back up plan. I didn’t expect that to happen. I didn’t really have a choice. The Camel is a business and they needed something to happen that night. It had to go on and I didn’t have a back up date or anything. That is why the third year was a little more of a success. I was more prepared.

How do you feel about maybe one day producing RVAJazz fest?

Williams: That is maybe one of the most memorable nights during my time in Richmond. Steven Bernstein had come and done a workshop at my high school that had seemed at one point like it wasn’t going to happen. Seeing people that don’t ever listen to that type of music so excited was incredible. I walked in there and usually when I go into The Camel, I at least recognize everyone in there. When I walked into the RVAJazz Fest, I was like, “wow, who are these people?”

Christesen: A lot of that has to do with the title of the event and making a big deal out of it. It was like, hey musicians, you want people to show up at your gig? Maybe try making a big a big deal out of it. Don’t treat it like just another gig for you, because it is not. I've seen Richmond musicians get better about that in the past few years.

Williams: Steven Bernstein has one of the personalities where you just wanted to be there. You just want to listen, whether he was talking or playing. It is important to have those events to get people excited about the scene as a whole. That introduced a lot of people to Glows in the Dark, Fight the Big Bull and Boots of Leather. To have that opportunity in the future would be incredible.

It brings people from, I don’t want to say the circle, but outside the circle in and make them feel a part of it. That event certainly helped Richmond as a whole even the second and third times. It also cool to do that while seeing someone from out of town.

Christesen: I have in the past done other events too. So it is not about limiting yourself to one event a year. You can do this as much as you want. We have presented Glenn Wilson, helped sponsor Matana Roberts coming to town and Jason Ajemian a couple of times and things like that. As many times as I can put on an event and bring the music off the computer screen into people’s lives, I’m going to do it. Especially when you find a band that you believe in and music that moves you, try and spread the word.

Williams: Do you have any parting words?

Christesen: Yeah, you’re going to do great.

Williams: Thank you.

Chrsitesen: I have faith. That is why I have chosen you.

Williams: Well, Chicago is in for a treat. It’s a little bigger scene, but it won’t take you long.

Richmond will certainly miss Dean when he is gone, but it certainly won't be long before we hear from him again.
Now it's back to the important stuff: jazz music.

Farewell

Aaron Williams — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:56:48 +0000

Its 9 o'clock in the morning. Early for jazz musicians. Dean Christesen and I sit in the RVANews office. Artifacts from Richmond line the walls of the old principals office turned conference room. Dean and I reflect on his three and half year journey with RVAJazz while talking about my past and my future with music, the website and Richmond.

Williams: What inspired you to start RVAJazz and how did you start it?

Christesen: I started RVAJazz in December of 2007, which puts me as a sophomore at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) in the music program. I didn’t necessarily feel like I had the authority to do something like this but I did feel like it was needed in the community. Not just for the community or the musicians, but for myself. I was often wondering what was going on any given night of the week. I would have to go from website to website to website, go from MySpace to MySpace, when MySpace was still the key ingredient and find out who was playing where.

It was starting to get really annoying for me and I wanted it all in one place. So that’s kind of how it all started, as a calendar for what was going on. Then I figured I would try out my writing chops and write news. Basically keep everyone up to date with the scene. That’s how it started.

Williams: You just put up a calendar?

Christesen: Yes, it was a BlogSpot blog. I used a picture that my dad took of a brick wall and I overlaid white text and that was the masthead and that was it. Not too long after that, I got the domain name RVAJazz.com. It was really just an experiment of mine to write anonymously about the scene and the main players in the scene.

Williams: It was anonymous at that time?

Christesen: It was anonymous for a long time.

Williams: When did it stop being anonymous and what made you stop?

Christesen: I’m not sure exactly when it stopped, we would have to check the books on when it stopped being anonymous. Again, the reason it was anonymous is because I didn’t feel like I had the authority. I was just a young kid documenting…not just documenting, critiquing and criticizing the scene. So it was like, “who is to listen to this kid?” So that is why I was anonymous. I guess when I became not anonymous…It’s not when I realized, “Oh yeah I’m now an authority, now I can speak under my name.” Who cares if I am an authority or not, this is a resource that is needed and it is more work to be anonymous than it is to actually fulfill this goal.

Williams: Were people catching on?

Christesen: Not really, but it made it really hard to do interviews. Everything was email based. Even people like Skip Gailes, we would be talking in class and he would be like, “Who is this RVAJazz?” It kind of hurt a little bit to not be able to tell Skip that it was me. “I don’t know Skip, (laughs), I don’t know who it is.” Eventually, I just became not anonymous. That was right around the time that I began planning the first RVAJazz Fest. So I was like, “this is going to be impossible if I am still anonymous and there is no need for it anymore.

Are you excited?

Williams: I am very excited. I love this city. People in this city are why I am into jazz and why I am into music. Its not because I discovered some recordings of some people from the 50’s or 40’s or 30’s, its because I met people in this city and heard people in this city play. Taylor Barnett was my brother’s high school jazz band director and he has such a magnetic amazing personality. He is one of those people you just want to be around because he is so passionate and amazing at what he does.

Then I met Bryan Hooten and I had the same experience as my brother at my high school. I just started meeting people. It is so different to experience something live than it is to listen to recordings, and I have a passion for original music. Richmond has all of that. It is so approachable. I was just a kid and I had the ability to meet people who I really looked up to. Now to be a part of that, sometimes as a player, and to document that is amazing.

Christesen: Well you are a young guy. You are a freshman at VCU and you are one of the few people that as a high schooler in the area, already had a reputation, especially with your band High Noon. So what was your high school experience like? Did you study with Bryan and you were in the Greater Richmond High School Jazz Band?

Williams: Bryan was my high school band director at James River High School. We met once a week after school. Freshman year, his and my first year, the saxophone section was so weak. This was the first year we had a jazz band and the saxophone section was so strugglin! The band was super young. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. He brought in John Lilley because no one had an idea of what saxophone was really supposed to sound like. So I approached John Lilley and asked if I could take lessons with him.

He kind of hesitated for a minute. I think I even asked, “Do you teach lessons?” He responded, “Well yeah, of course I do.” (Laughs) He has some other students now but I was his only student for a really long time, which was amazing. I learned a lot of great things.

The cool thing about Richmond is that there is a lot of emphasis put on original music and building bands. For me, I started writing music, put a band together and recorded a record. For me, that was just obvious. High Noon, for me was, “duh.” I talk to some people from other towns and they have played a lot of standards gigs and different things but its not quite as obvious to do that. I really love the creative process and the process of working with other people towards a collective goal. High Noon is probably one of the most rewarding things I have done in my life.

The Greater Richmond High School Jazz Band was really amazing. I was a member for three years. VCU seemed like the logical decision on where to go to college. That is where I met most of the guys in High Noon and a ton of other people. It is cool that even on a high school level those connections are being made.

Christesen: Yeah, you aren’t excluded because of your age. Everybody is welcome and you especially because you assert yourself. You are there hanging out. You are at the Matt White parties (the leader of Fight the Big Bull). That is certainly part of it. Being friends with everybody, so you know what is going on. Friendship is part of the music making community here in Richmond. Everyone is in bands together and they all learn from each other.

Williams: Absolutely. Everyone has been super welcoming even though I am a lot younger than everyone else.

Can you talk about your departure from Richmond and RVAjazz.com? How has your experience building this website from scratch influenced what you want to do?

Christesen: I am going to Chicago in August to study arts management at Columbia College. RVAJazz prepared me for that. My career path has become less of that of a performing musician. Even though I was a performance major during my undergrad: jazz studies, that is ok with me. It doesn’t hurt me that I am not going to be playing music professionally for the rest of my life because I have discovered other strengths of mine. I did that because of RVAJazz.

I discovered that I could put on these “bigger than small scale” events because I am organized and I think I can see the big pictures enough to put on things like that. I have also realized that a lot of musicians need help. That goes back to the very beginning of RVAJazz when I was just creating a calendar. A lot of these people didn’t even have a calendar of their performances, which tells you they aren’t even promoting their events to their fullest potential. That is really a shame because that is what it comes down to for musicians. Maybe they are promoting their CDs a lot or maybe they are not but these club dates maybe go totally under the radar.

Facebook has changed a lot of that and people are talking it up as much as possible on Facebook but it goes so much further than that. People are embracing this new media but are totally forgetting about traditional media. I think I can help with that. I think I have tried to help with that and learned more from doing it through RVAJazz.

Williams: RVAJazz had a lot to do with my ability to get downtown and find out about these shows because I wasn’t a Facebook friend with these people. That was important to me. I remember going to check the calendar and I would run and talk to my parents, “this is the night, this is the night I HAVE to go.”

After more than three years with RVAJazz, there is a lot to be said! The second half of this interview will appear next week.

Photo credit: Lauren Serpa

Bryan Hooten Faculty Recital at VCU

Dean Christesen — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:31:00 +0000

copied from press release:

Bryan Hooten presents a VCU faculty recital:

The Music of Verbatim

Bryan Hooten is pleased to announce his faculty jazz trombone recital on Tuesday, September 8th 2009 at 8pm in the Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall inside the Singleton Center for the Performing Arts at 922 Park Avenue in Richmond, VA. The recital will feature the music of Verbatim, an experimental duo comprised of Hooten and drummer Dean Christesen. The recital is open to the public and is free for VCU students, $5 general admission for non-students.

In June of 2009, Verbatim recorded its debut self-titled album in Richmond composer/guitarist and Fight the Big Bull leader Matthew White’s sweltering attic, otherwise known as Spacebomb Studios. Recorded in only a few hours, the album consists of all first takes of original compositions that were mixed in one pass while using no overdubs or splices, fully capturing the group’s dynamic live-performance energy. In support of the album, the duo embarked on an east-coast tour earlier this year, hitting experimental music hotspots in Washington DC, Brooklyn, NY and Philadelphia, PA before returning home for a CD release party at The Camel in Richmond, VA. The album is available at all Verbatim gigs.

Verbatim’s music combines the sounds of jazz, math-rock, punk, salsa, Tuvan throat-singing, New Orleans street beat and the avant-garde to create an original synthesis of composition and improvisation. Verbatim grew organically out of conversations and jam sessions between Hooten and Christesen in 2008. After playing on a few one-off gigs and a steady opening slot in front of Alan Parker’s Connect Four, the duo began planning a summer tour during a post-gig hang at The Camel in Richmond, VA.

Bryan Hooten plays trombone and composes for Ombak and Verbatim and also performs with Richmond super-groups Fight the Big Bull and No BS Brass. He teaches Music Theory, Small Jazz Ensembles and Jazz Composition lessons at Virginia Commonwealth University and teaches music at Hanover High School and James River High School. He also serves on the faculty for the Virginia Governor’s School for the Humanities and Visual and Performing Arts.

Dean Christesen is a Richmond-based drummer, writer and creator of RVAjazz.com, a portal for Richmond’s jazz, experimental, and improvised music scene. He is currently studying jazz performance at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a member of Mason Brothers, Verbatim, and various local jazz and free-jazz concoctions.

www.mypace.com/verbatimrva

Adam Caine Trio at The Camel, Monday

Dean Christesen — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:49:00 +0000

from brooklyn: ADAM CAINE TRIO

from richmond: VERBATIM (bryan hooten + dean christesen)

at THE CAMEL

MONDAY, APRIL 6, 8PM
$5 all ages
1621 W. Broad St., Richmond, VA 23220
www.thecamel.org

ABOUT ADAM CAINE
Adam Caine is a guitarist, improvisor and composer. Adam fronts the Adam Caine Trio with Tom Blancarte and John Wagner and the Adam Caine Quartet with Nick Lyons, Adam Lane and John Wagner. Adam also plays in Johnny Butler's Scurvy and Eric Eigner's Mysterium.

Adam grew up in Rochester, New York and studied music at the University of Rochester. Since 2000 he has lived in Brooklyn, New York and has played in New York City and throughout the United States. Adam has performed with Connie Crothers, Paul Smoker, Daniel Carter, Ken Filiano, Phil Haynes, Glen Branca, Haale, and the New York Soundpainting Ensemble.

Adam's 2005 CD, "PIPE," received rave reviews in the Wire, Cadence, and All About Jazz. In 2008, Adam was awarded a grant from the Brooklyn Arts council for an improvised performance with visual artist Marjan Moghaddam. As a composer for video art, Adam's music has been featured in over 20 international festivals since 2006.

For More Info: www.caine.tv

ABOUT VERBATIM
Verbatim echoes a distress beacon from a distant galactic civilization. Drums hammer out the encoded coordinates of the home planet while the Trombone laments the battle between a peaceful people and the invading marauders. This is a story forged in the stars and told in sound.

Dean Christesen: drums
Bryan Hooten: trombone