I ran across
Paul Cantrell's piano blog via
ClassicCat a few nights ago, and he's doing a very cool thing over there (even if there ain't much jazz ;-). The music is all released under his own license that predates the
CreativeCommons efforts, but is practically the same. He's got a fantastic Mason & Hamlin piano he gets to record with and Paul does a great job
capturing the instrument.
Many of the recordings he posts are
improvisations, and after listening to a few, I decided to see what inspiration they might be to my own fingers. I don't normally dink much with a modern classical sound, but it's not my first attempt (if you were wondering what happened to improv sessions 2 through 6, well ...) and I think they turned out okay. Paul was even gracious enough to give them a listen and
give them a thumb up as well. You can check ‘em out here:
ImprovisationsVol1.
The other bit of interest to me is that Paul's blog has recently shifted into listener support mode. A bout of unemployment fueled by a savings account has enabled Paul to put a sizeable effort into his piano blog for the last several months, updating it twice weekly with new recordings. But the savings isn't limitless, and now Paul is experimenting with a
VoluntaryEconomy setup to see if he can keep it going. I hope he's able to make it work.
