Dan McClenaghan at All About Jazz has included my record Little Played Little Bird on his Best Releases of 2012 list. He had this to say: “Drummer Todd Bishop is an underground treasure. He doesn’t boast the highest of profiles, but he has put out two consecutive great CDs for the Origin Records label: 2009’s 69 Annee Erotique and now, this nod to alto saxophonist/free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman.” Thanks Dan!Read More →
Photo by Jazzques Here’s a review of our Brussels show at Café Belga in November, written in French by Jacques Prouvost, AKA Jazzques. Google Translate certainly distorts his original meaning, but is rather poetic: “This Sunday, November 4, [Todd Bishop] was Café Belga Brussels. The world, the noise, the usual deal of the place. So Todd Bishop slams the first shots on the snare. Must be heard. His game is tight, bright and dry. The pulse is strong. And it works! The quartet starts like clockwork.Very quickly, the soloists take their brands and Méreau Martin embarks on a solo feverish Check Up. Then it’s GuineaRead More →
Rehearsing jetlagged at Jazz Station in Brussels, with Martin Mereau and Olivier Stalon A little tour documentation here. These are the tunes I had in my book on our 2012 outing, along with some notes on how our actual performance rep shaped itself. The gigs were all two to four hours long, mostly for listening audiences, with one regular restaurant gig at which we were mostly playing background music. The group consisted of trumpet, vibes, bass, and drums. I set out with a big pile of tunes, not knowing what was going to work best with this collection of players, who, except for bassist OlivierRead More →
Another Best of 2012 list for my CD Little Played Little Bird, this time on the Bird Is The Worm blog, written by eMusic contributor Dave Sumner. We’re in the number 12 slot: So, take obscure compositions from the songbook of a challenging artist and perform renditions… the math for that equation should result in something resembling a didactic lecture of music theory and not the refreshingly listenable Little Played Little Bird. Todd Bishop tackles the music of Ornette Coleman, and without watering down the source material, has created a recording that was both tuneful and a fun listen. It’s an impressive accomplishment, and aRead More →
Funny little tour story: Being from the Pacific Northwest, I’ve never felt we projected any kind of cultural identity to the rest of the world. Even within the region all we ever had to latch onto were Prefontaine, Henry Weinhard’s beer, Nirvana, and Drugstore Cowboy. Usually when I’d go overseas if people knew where Oregon was, all they would know about it is that “it’s rainy.” So I was kind of happy to actually be able to live up to a stereotype when we were performing in Europe in November. A friend of one of our Brussels musicians, who was familiar with Portlandia, heard whereRead More →
Among the last civilized moments of the trip, despite the automatic weapons. Got up early on our last morning in Paris to go see the Eiffel Tower at dawn and then hustle with our luggage from our hotel in the Bastille to St. Michel to meet Casey’s friend and mentor Mario Sprouse, who arrived in town that morning for his own tour. Straight to Gare du Nord on faith that our train to Brussels will be running despite the raging austerity strikes happening there. Made it to Brussels for mussels and champagne, and then white box wine at Olivier’s house with Casey, Catherine, Bram, Teun,Read More →
A few shots from our rehearsal at the Jazz Station (who were kind enough to let us play on the premises) in Brussels on our second day in Belgium. The band is myself with Jean-Paul Estiévenart (trumpet), Martin Méreau (vibes) & Olivier Stalon (bass): More after the break: Martin et Olivier Jean-Paul et moi Jean-Paul Storage Read More →