Nov 05 2008

November 2008

Hello everyone,

I hope that all is going well and that you had a great summer. It’s time for another long-overdue update.

Musically, my summer can be best described as being involved in a variety of projects. I did quite a few gigs and recording sessions with different people. I am playing three songs on an album called “Héros - Songs for War Child”. This is an album released on Quebec whereby the profits from the records sold will be given to the  War Child foundation. I played on three songs with three different Québec singers - Annie Blanchard, Anik Jean and a third singer who’s name I don’t remember (she wasn’t there for the session !) I think the album will be released in late November on the Musicor label. I also finished one song with Corneille that will be released on the Motown label. And finally I played on two songs on the Christmas album from Québec singer Michaël. On one of those songs, I got a chance to play with an idol of mine, Jim Corcoran. I have included the song in the Music page on the site. That album is called Michaël - Hymnes à la Beauté du Monde. Lastly, the Daniel Iorio Group album, Hike is finished and available on iTunes as well.

Gigs were also with many different artists. I played Gospel with Jennifer Meade, adult-contemporary pop with Nicola Ciccone, R&B with Slim Williams, and some Blues with Dawn Tyler Watson.

Probably the most exciting event was a concert with Corneille in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in Africa. We had such an amazing time and played definitely one of the loudest concerts I have ever done. We played an outdoor venue for 5,000 screaming people. It was so great to be able to play Corneille’s French songs again to an adoring public. We were in Abdijan for about 3 days and we were treated extremely well by the people there. We were even invited have dinner at the home of the UN ambassador for Côte d’Ivoire. There were many other ambassadors present at the dinner, so we were on best behavior. No eating with your hands at this one…I have put up some photos on the site. On that gig we had Sam Harrisson on drums and the great Gregoire Morency on bass. Some videos filmed by the fans are here.

I got to play at a few record launches this Fall. I played with Nicola Ciccone at his launch of his English album “Storyteller”, Sofia de Medeiros for her album “Bliss” and Gage’s album “Changer Le Monde”. All three were successes in my opinion. Some photos of the Gage launch are here.

November will also see the start of the Nicola Ciccone “Storyteller” tour. We will be doing 12 nights at the Montreal Casino to start off the tour and then we have many dates across Quebec in the Winter of 2009. I should be putting up some photos of those gigs soon.  

In other news, I was asked by the fine folks at Godin Guitars to shoot a small video explaining and demonstrating their new electric/acoustic guitar called the Spectrum. I will be shooting it at the end of November and it should be on their website shortly after that. I used the Spectrum in the concert in Abidjan and it did extremely well. I am happy to have one of these guitars in my repertoire. 

Besides that, all is going well at home with the family and the twins. Between the many gigs and the work taking care of the girls, it feels like the Summer and Fall lasted a weekend. 

Enjoy the Winter !

 

Andy

 

P.S. In my iPod: John Coltrane - Giant Steps, Hiram Bullock - Manny’s Car Wash, James Taylor - One Man Band, John Scofield - Up All Nite, Babyface - Playlist, Gage - Changer Le Monde, Ed Bickert - I Wished On The Moon, Dan Faenle - Ohio Lunch, Chaka Khan - Classic Hits Live, Diana Krall - All For One, Toots and the Maytals - True Love, Mark Knopfler - Sailing To Philadelphia,  Wynton Marsalis - Marsalis Standard Time, Wes Montgomery - Boss Guitar, Lee Ritenour - Wes Bound, Prince - The Rainbow Children, Andreas Oberg - My Favorite Guitars, Al Green - Lay It Down, D’Angelo - Voodoo, George Benson - Temderly, Jim Hall Quartet - All Across The City, McCoy Tyner - Guitars, Miles Davis Quintet - ‘58 Sessions, Richard Bona - Bona Makes You Sweat, Tal Wilkenfeld - Transformation, Zoot Sims - Zoot Sims and the Gershwin Brothers, Oscar Peterson - Night Train, Joe Pass - Virtuoso