In 2008 I participated in a series of interviews with writer Eric Liu for an upcoming book about the role of imagination in creativity and life. The book, “Imagination First: Unlocking The Power Of Possibility”, has officially been published by the Lincoln Center Institute and I will take part in a panel discussion with the authors and several other participants on October 8, 6PM at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center. Hope to see you there (and at Deadra Hart’s CD Release Concert at Cornelia Street Cafe immediately after!).

A lot has happened since the last newsletter. Thank you to everyone who attended our concerts/gigs this summer and helped to make them so enjoyable! I will attempt a brief recap of the summer for now and I’ll send another newsletter with more details about the new season’s upcoming gigs next week. Please check the new calendar listings because there are a multitude of exciting shows coming up in the next week. But first…

This Friday, September 11, I will be giving a free concert at the south end of Union Square with Matt Wigton and Fred Kennedy. The show starts at 1PM (we’re only playing for about 40 minutes), it’s “rain or shine”, and there will be other great groups playing before and after us. The September Concert is a not-for-profit event staged worldwide with a mission “to bring communities together, to reaffirm our hope for peace, and to celebrate life and our universal humanity.” I think that’s something that we can all get down with.

And now, back to the recap…

Many of you know bassist/composer Matt Wigton from The Coffee Achievers. He has a new band, Falls, and I started playing with them in July. Very exciting.

Mad Juana had two crazy shows: one in July at Greenhouse (dig the pictures of this place) and one more recently on Sami Yaffa’s birthday at The Bowery Electric.

On July 7th & 8th, the Mahavishnu Project staged another “Vishnu Fest.” This year we introduced more music from John McLaughlin’s extensive catalogue including songs from “Extrapolation”, “Devotion”, “Electric Guitarist”, and “Electric Dreams.” Melissa Stylianou sang with us again, both as part of a full recounting of “Visions of the Emerald Beyond”, and in a performance of some very rarely heard choral pieces by McLaughlin.

I had the distinct pleasure of getting to play two concerts with the wonderful pianist Eric Doney and his wife, the equally enthralling Vicky Doney. Stay tuned for an upcoming recording.

I spent my birthday this year with singer/songwriter/wildman Al Rose at the new Galapagos Art Space. Al and his wife Rhonda also own and operate the famous Kopi Cafe in Chicago where I could be found eating Tuna Pesto Melts back in the day.

I met pianist/composer Steve Hudson at Banff in 2005-ish. We played in Princeton, NJ with his chamber-jazz group and we will be playing some more dates together this fall.

The world lost some legendary musicians this summer. Most of you probably heard about the passing of one of recorded music’s greatest innovators, Les Paul. At the same time, we also lost Rashied Ali, John Coltrane’s last drummer and one of the seminal voices of experimental jazz. Gregg Bendian, the leader/drummer of the Mahavishnu Project, has assembled a new project called Collective Language that includes myself, Peter Brendler on bass and last year’s Monk Competition winner Jon Irabagon on saxophones. We presented a tribute concert of late-Coltrane repertoire in honor of Rashied Ali at Le Poisson Rouge.

I must sign off for now. Please note the upcoming performance calendar. Thank you to all of the inspiring musicians that I’ve been playing with and thank you, fellow musicians and music fans, for supporting our endeavors.

Drummer and percussionist Gregg Bendian (Mahavishnu Project/Interzone) has formed a new band with Jon Irabagon on saxophone (2008 Thelonius Monk Award winner), Zach Brock on violin (Stanley Clarke Band/Mahavishnu Project) and Peter Brendler (John Abercrombie Band) on acoustic bass. The group, called COLLECTIVE LANGUAGE, will perform for the first time on September 5th at Poisson Rouge in NYC in a memorial tribute to the great jazz innovator Rashied Ali. The concert will feature music from the classic Coltrane/Ali duets “Interstellar Space” as well as other music from Coltrane’s later period.