Max Perkoff: Max's Blog

Since late '07 I've enjoyed a terrific steady gig every Monday & Tuesday night at O'Reilly's Holy Grail in San Francisco. It's a sextet with vocalist Darlene Langston on Mondays, instrumental on Tuesdays. With my father Si playing every other Tuesday, I play piano most of the time, trombone when Dad's on the gig. We play Great American Songbook standards and jazz standards that only jazz fans know and love.

Last night I was playing trombone with Joel Ryan, trumpet; Harvey Robb, sax; Dad on piano; Michael Burr, bass; & our leader Greg Gotelli on drums. Two police officers came in and began questioning one of the patrons, a man about 40. They went back and forth for quite a while, the man apparently pleading his case. Finally they took him out of the restaurant, though it was unclear if he was being arrested or just brought outside for some reason.

As they left, Michael said: "But he was the only one listening!"

Ah, the jazz life.

Last night I played with bassist Tom Shader & drummer John Mader. We backed up Linda Kosut at The Octavia Lounge in San Francisco. The Shader-Mader rhythm section was such a delight to play with, it allowed me to mostly ignore the terribly bright and out of tune piano I had to play on!

Seriously though, I am so grateful to be playing music with these people. Linda continues to touch people's heart and soul. While playing "My Life" - a tune we've been doing together for almost 3 years - I played directly to my recently departed dear Mother: "But I know I gave joy to my mother..." It's difficult to even accept that good music making can come from mourning the loss of my mom, but I know it's the natural order of things...and Mom would certainly have wanted me to make the most beautiful music I could for the rest of my life.

Shader-Mader swung their touches off for us! And the pop/rock tunes had exactly the right feel - the right amount of air in them. I was able to float, fly around the keys, stay in one place when I felt like it. Musical freedom. Same thing as spiritual freedom.

Happy New Year everyone!

Tonight is my last gig in New York City this year. 3 of my 5 out of town tours this year have been to Manhattan. This place has a hold on a piece of my soul. There are so many seekers here...artists, musicians, crazy people. The streets cross eachother and create a mosaic of names, history, dreams, sounds, and non sequitors. It all seems to make perfect sense if you don't look outside of New York for answers.

Thanks to Terese Genecco for asking me to play with her again, the Little Big Band is truly a musical family now.

So goodbye New York, hope to see you soon. Hope to taste you sooner!

Anyone need a trombone player who doubles on piano for their next NY gig?

I'm sitting in my friend's lovely Upper West Side condo on the 11th floor, looking forward to our performance tonight at Barnes & Knoble and to going home tomorrow. Two terrific days in Chicago: Gigs with marvelous musicians, Frank Parker Jr. & Stewart Miller. A day at the Chicago Art Institute. So inspired by Max Beckmann, Picasso's The Guitar Player, Seurat's Sunday In The Park, and many others. It's the clarity of their vision that excites me. I want to play with that clarity, with clean lines and deep colors.

New York is quite a phenomenon. The density of humanity is quite intense. I've been eating Jewish soul food every day: Hammentaschen, kasha knishes, bagels. (Gotta get another knish before I go!) Linda, Norman Curtis & I went to Harlem Sat night and sat in (1 song) with Maggie Brown, OBJ's daughter. Lovely club, historic site, yet they play loud pop music in the bar during the jazz sets. The jazz room in the back is separated from the bar by nothing more than two swinging doors. Remarkable. Maggie sounded superb - as a jazz singer, an interpreter of songs, she was fabulous. I hope you all get a chance to check her out.

June 29th brought a marvelous concert by my band with special guests Saskia Laroo, trumpet & pianist/vocalist Warren Byrd. Saskia is from The Netherlands, Warren from Connecticut, USA. They've been touring the planet for years with their high-energy funky jazz. What a high it was to play with them. Everyone in the band had a great time.

Saskia has the ability to combine "burning" lines with musical humor and a relaxed approach - much easier said than done! Her tunes are wonderfully funky, hip, and fun to play on.

Warren has a harmonic concept that is very exciting, rich, multi-layered, full of rhythmic drive. At one point Randy Vincent had to go to the piano and see what the heck Warren was playing!

I have to mention the venue: The Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley. It's simply a dream to play in. The audience and musicians are treated royally. What a pleasure.

How about you? Linda Kosut and I spent a marvelous week in Manhattan, June 1st - 8th. Two shows at The Triad on 72nd & Broadway...sitting in at Birdland and Cleopatra's Needle...ate at Zabars, H&H, and soaked up the air and heat of it all. There's just no place like New York City!

Our tribute to Oscar Brown Jr. was very well received by audiences and reviewers alike. We're going back in October, so stay tuned New York!

A special thrill for me was playing with Norman Curtis, a man of great heart and talent. Ben Bacot sang two numbers with us and brought down the house. His rendition of "People of Soul" still send chills through me when I think of it.

I really got into the city this visit, walking miles up and down and across Manhattan Island. The Sunday Broadway street fair (Upper West Side) was a relaxed, vibrant, full of good music, food, and crafts.
Central Park was postcard - perfect. A hot summer day, children playing stick ball on the Great Green, tourists paying respect to John Lennon at Strawberry Fields. Reading the NY Times and eating good deli on the bench, breathing in the warm humid air really gets your bones into place. Felt so good.

Took a long leisurly stroll through the Natural History Museum - saw our Homin ancestors staring back at me through a hollow skeleton's eyes. Had a truly uplifting, inspiring day at the Gugenheim - Kandinsky, Picasso, Pissaro, Rousseau, Modigliani, all really knocked me out! Franz Marc's 1911 "Yellow Cow" was simply marvelous - so life affirming. The art I saw that day was just as exciting and energizing as the best concerts I've attended.

I'm looking forward to returning and exploring new small corners of that great city.

I've been playing with my cousin Ben at The Saloon since 1989. There have been many magical sets, moments, entire evenings of music and energy there with the King Perkoff Band. Tonight was our last for this year. Ben returns with his wife to Berlin, presumably to return early in '08. I do hope so.

The magic the band has is difficult to describe, and very easy to hear and feel in person. People aren't just dancing, they are transcended, moving like they are compeled to move. Men and women, and tonight several men in particular, were propelled into an intense, hypnotic state. It was like watching someone's very personal story being revealed in movement alone. Amazing.

The band reached new heights of the Sound Wall That Is Rhythm & Blues. You had to be there!

Played piano tonight with the HJO, lead by trumpet master Fred Radke. What a pleasure to play the book of one of the great Big Bands of the Swing Era.

My group name has dropped the words "jazz ensemble." This simple change allows my band the freedom to play anything without restrictions of category. That freedom is at the heart of what it means to be a jazz musician, as well as a creative person. Don't get me wrong, jazz is not a dirty word (despite having four letters), but at this point in my life, it can be restrictive.

I grew up listening to Count Basie, Ellington, Monk, Bird, Billie Holiday, Miles, and so on. At the same time, our house was also singing and dancing to Weather Report, Woody Guthrie, The Beatles, the joyous Jewish music of Shlomo Carlebach, and all of the great funk, rock, & pop of the 1960's & '70s.

The Max Perkoff Band will play music we like regardless of style. What a joy it is now to just be a musician - to play for fun like I did as a kid! It is a true blessing.

I'm nearly done mixing our new CD, and can't wait to share it with everyone! It's 12 of my own tunes, most written within the last year. The grooves cover a lot of ground: Swing, free, latin, hard bop, ballad, funk, samba, and what I'll call floaty-dreamy. My dear friend and musical cohort Cami Thompson sings the one vocal tune, and wow does she sound georgeous!

So stay tuned, it's due out April 1st. In the meantime, when you come to hear my band, come with open ears, with your dancing shoes on.

Thanks to all who came to Jazz At Pearl's Nov 16th for our Tribute to Oscar Brown Jr shows. What a marvelous evening it was!

not only do people pass me on the sidewalk, but after swiping my metro card in the subway's automatic turnstile, it says "too slow swipe again." I got back last night, thank you Jet Blue (definitely the best way to go in and out of NYC), and am still going through withdrawl. It's so stimulating, tiring, magical, crass, it's all that.

Thank you everyone who came to the 4 gigs at the Metropolitan. Each show went very well, the band and audience had a blast!

Till the next time - can I have just one more knish please..?

Arrived in Manhattan tonight about 14 hours after I left. Met up with my cousin, and we went to a nearby bar with a jazz pianist & guitarist. I sat in, tired but so grateful to be playing "I Remember You" and "Blue Monk" & "Caravan" in New York. We introduced ourselves. "Max Perkoff? Are you any relation to Si Perkoff?" the young pianist asked in amazement. "Yes, he's my dad." "Wow, Si was my first piano teacher!"

Now what are the odds?

"Off The Ground" & "Amazing Space" is now available on iTunes.com as well as a growing list of on-line sites. You can purchase just your favorite individual songs and/or buy an entire album in digital form.

Enjoy!

A few days ago I got an acceptance letter from the Marin Arts Council informing me that I was one of nine recipients of this grant. The funds will go towards paying for my upcoming CD project. I'm so grateful for their trust and recognition. Thanks to everyone at the Council.

The recording will feature my original compositions. More details soon!

Playing with Roswell Rudd and the Monk's Music Trio this weekend brings dreams to reality and inspires more dreaming. The notes are listening for the silence all around them.

When Thelonious Monk died on a Wednesday in March of 1982 I was studying his music in Styles & Analysis class at Indiana University School of music with Professor David Baker. David walked in, made the sad announcement, and we listened and discussed his music with intensity and love.

My parents befriended Monk and his wife Nellie in the early 1960's. I grew up hearing the stories, but mostly hearing the music. I always imagined I'd get to meet Monk one day. Spring break was coming up the week after that Wednesday class, and I was looking forward to my first trip to New York City. I had plans of looking Monk up.

The study, practice, listening, (all of which is ongoing) of his music since and especially over the last couple of years since being asked to join Roswell for Monk's Bones has been a true meeting. Coming together. What a blessing!

Thanks to you all who came to the sold out shows last night and tonight, what a great energy in each audience, which means so much to all the musicians.

Wow! What a marvelous night at Anna's Jazz Island in Berkeley. Thanks to all of you who came, family, friends, long-time and new fans alike!

My father Si & I have played hundreds of gigs together, but were never so musically connected and on fire. The music business can try one's patience and sense of good will sometimes, but this night will keep me goin' for quite some time.

Everywhere you go there is music. It's not all good, but it's all around you. In the subways I heard a young woman playing the Hurdy Gurdy - it was absolutely sublime. She was a very gifted musician, playing music of the middle ages in a 21st century subway station, in tunnels built at the start of the 20th century.

On another trip in another tunnel was a man about 60-something playing a Chinese violin. One string on a wooden neck connected to a metal box. Beautiful. He'd obviously been playing all his life. Before he started a tune he closed his eyes and concentrated. It seemed he was waiting for the right moment, and hearing the music before beginning. It was a privilege to hear this man as he competed with the 4, 5, & 6 trains.

The performances with Terese couldn't have gone better! The LIttle Big Band backed her up as the opener for the Mabel Mercer Cabaret Convention on Wed Oct 19th. Before the show started I had a chance to play the 9 foot Steinway on stage - a dream piano in an ideal concert space.

The same night we headed over to W. 47th St at 8th Ave for the full show at The Encore, a terrific cabaret club. The place was packed to the gills, with a line out the door. We started about 11pm and didn't finish 'til the next morning! What a joy.

The club has a bar and piano upstairs, with the cabaret stage downstairs. Great staff, sound & lights, and another small bar.

On the way out of the club, about 1am, I passed some unusually good looking homeless people. They were camped out in a nice sleeping bag, looked kind of young and clean. I felt sorry for them, but something seemed off. Later I found out they were not homeless folks, but ACTORS! They were in line for a cattle-call audition the next morning! New York is a great town, and a tough one too. Whew!

Vocalist Linda Kosut & I performed our cabaret show at The Encore in Manhattan (http://theencorenyc.com/) October 24 & 26.

I also played trombone with Terese Genecco at The Encore and for the Mabel Mercer Cabaret Convention in Jazz at Lincoln Center, Oct 19.

Sept. 28th, I was in L.A. for one night only at The Gardenia, a well-known cabaret known for it's intimacy and the high caliber of the national and regional acts that perform there.

Vocalist Linda Kosut and I performed "My Own Kind of Hat."