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I guess I will have the honor of opening the January Piano Bar.

For Christmas this year, my wife Celia wrote me a beautiful alpha poem that she put in a Christmas ornament. An alpha poem is where the first letter of each line, when put together, forms a word that defines the subject. In this case the word was "Soulmate". It was my favorite present. It applies as much to her as it does to me. I made a video of her poem and added my jazz piano cover of "Always On My Mind" as my heartfelt yet paltry contribution. I should make sure that she knows that she is always on my mind....

Soulmate

Such love is not

Often found, but somehow I have

Uncovered, in a brief chance meeting, a

Love for the ages, and a

Multitude of riches which multiply,

Arriving daily like gifts,

The precious devotion present

Every day of my life.



Always On My Mind blog post

What a great poem and slideshow Ken!! Your piano music works very well for it. I always find your music to be very relaxing. I can tell you play with a lot of emotion. Great job!

Here is my own piano arrangement of Vavilov's Ave Maria. I made this video for the piano bar but I posted it in the Holiday Music thread a couple of weeks ago once I was done with it. Sorry for the double posting for those of you who were active in that thread too.

[video:youtube]_QJbWgRhhNI[/video]

Ken,

That was just perfect. Can't say any more.

Ken - Hardly a paltry contribution, you nailed this one to the wall, it's just about perfect in every way.
You made some wonderful music here and the sentiment behind it shows,congratulations and thanks for sharing.
What a great way to start 2014.

Amaruk - The excellent music/video production aside , the Piano playing is top notch, just beautiful.


Edit: Just heard your other version with the Piccolo trumpet, wow great stuff and kudos to the piccolo player, if anyone thinks Piano is hard, well piccolo trumpet is something else

Very nice and cool, Ken! Lovely stuff here.

ken and amaruk,

what a great start to the new year and this month's piano bar.

Ken, nice playing and so clearly heartfelt. I bask in the love of a tremendous woman as well. We've been a couple for 34 years and married for 28. Your photo ode really touched me.

Amaruk, I always enjoy your contributions. In this case extra much. Relative to the several threads lately about the limitations of digitals, you show us that beautiful music comes out of them when handled with skill.

Kurt

Amaruk

Really excellent stuff here man! What`s wi the red goggles? Like the bowler hat . . .

Happy January to all!

kenjazz - Thank you for sharing your beautiful, romantic piece.

Amaruk - Another enjoyable production!

Well, folks, I wandered in here thinking I might like a drink or two, but geez, I'm sorry, I gotta leave. The high class piano music I'm hearing tells me this place is way too swanky for me, way outa my price range.

But 'ere I depart, let me just say:

Ken, Amaruk, my hat's off to you both. Wonderful playing!

Ed

Amaruk,JimF,Jazztpt,Peterws,kurtz,Scorpio - Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I greatly appreciate it.

kenjazz, great playing, you really captured the emotion

amaruk, I missed this on the Holiday thread. As always, great video and solid playing.


Maybe I can lower the standards enough for Riddler to feel comfortable. Here is my attempt at Honeysuckle Rose from lead sheet.


http://soundcloud.com/doriandave/honey-20140101

Ken, that was just so lovely to listen to and very sentimental. thank you for sharing.

Amaruk, you always know how to wow us. And what a quirky outfit...love it!

stumbler

Liked the walking bass. Good interaction between LH and RH; both doing pretty well unrelated things . .not easy is it?

Amaruk - The production and performance of Ave Maria were wonderful! I had the notion of Amaruk-izing (yes, that is a word ) some of my video. I wanted to have myself playing, but opaquely in the background the way that you do it. I really only have this little Zoom H2 recorder and an ipad though. I got so far as to download the video-in-video app. It sorta kinda worked, but there is no sound quality or syncing up of the full mix and images. I came to the conclusion that I need a lot more software and hardware than I have to pull off such a thing.

Your works are an inspiration to shoot for though! Keep up the good work.

Stumbler - Walking bass on solo piano -done well- is also an inspiring thing to shoot for. And you did just that. I loved that ending too...

Thanks for all the kind words regarding my piece. As for the red goggles I have on my hat, they are welding googles and they are handy when my piano sounds too bright...

Stumbler - I loved it! You really nailed it with your walking bass in the left hand to this lead sheet. You maintain the beat very nicely throughout! Well done!! I wanted more... Thanks for sharing!

Happy New Year everyone!

Kenjazz: That was such a lovely and touching video..beautiful poem and music put together so well.

Amaruk: Dreamy arrangement and playing..still trying to figure out how you put that all together so smoothly, but it's beyond me.

Here's my arrangement of a classical theme..

Full Moon and Empty Arms (Rachmaninoff)

Elssa Seems like I've wandered into a very posh joint. Classy!


peterws, kenjazz, Amaruk, thanks for the encouragement. I tried simple LH chords but couldn't rise above "awful"; I haven't the chops to play stride (Fats Waller is amazing); so I tried to apply some info from Dave Frank's video on walking bass.

Elssa From the film "Brief Encounter" which put Carnforth railway station on the global map (a long time ago). The film director wanted a speeding express through the station, top speed and all that. Instead, the loco crew slowed the trains down almost to a walk . .waving at the cameras as they passed. . . Nice work, young lady!

Here`s one to tickle yer fancy . . or not as the case may be!

https://soundcloud.com/peterws7/give-me-a-reason