Cuban Jazz Pianist & Composer Manuel Valera Makes Impressive Recording

Cuban jazz pianist Manuel Valera makes his impressive recording debut as a leader with the release of “Forma Nueva” (MAVO Records 1101), an authoritative set of post-bop jazz with Latin overtones that showcases his impressive skills as an instrumentalist and composer. The self-produced session of original material — which features the all-star line-up of bassist John Patitucci, drummers Bill Stewart and Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and saxophonist Seamus Blake — heralds the arrival of a notable new jazz talent in no uncertain terms. In his liner notes to the CD veteran jazz journalist Howard Mandel writes: “It‚Äôs an unalloyed pleasure to discover a young man so accomplished that his potential seems boundless‚ĶManuel Valera promises, and indeed delivers, throughout “Forma Nueva.”

Born in Cuba on October 17, 1980, Valera, who is the son of the noted Cuban saxophonist Manuel Valera, Sr., lives in New York City where his gift for integrating stylistic elements of his homeland‚Äôs rich musical tradition into a modern jazz context has earned him a prominent place at the forefront of the current generation of emerging artists active on the scene there and is establishing him as rising star on the international stage as well. It‚Äôs astonishing ‚Äì upon listening to the mature and original playing and writing displayed on “Forma Nueva” to realize it was only in 1994, after he emigrated to the US, that Valera switched to the piano from the classical saxophone he‚Äôd studied at Havana‚Äôs Conservatory Manuel Saumell. It‚Äôs equally remarkable ‚Äì hearing the CD‚Äôs dynamic fusion of modern jazz with various Latin music styles — that Valera only began composing in 2000 while enrolled in the jazz of the New School University in New York from which he graduated in 2003 with a degree in performance. He has also studied with Reggie Workman, George Garzone, Jane Ira Bloom, Gerard D’Angelo and Richie Bierach among others. In April 2004 Valera won 2nd Prize at the Great American Jazz Piano Competition in Jacksonville, FL

Read more (Moneyplans.net)

Celebrate historical pianos’ 200th anniversary

When pianist Gayle Martin Henry first visited the Frederick Collection of Historical Grand Pianos last year, she was fascinated and a bit overwhelmed by the variety of tone colors and keyboard responses represented by these European instruments built between 1790 and 1907.

Gayle Martin Henry will return for a performance at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 5, at the Ashburnham Community Church, Main Street.

As sole American laureate of the sixth International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, the third American woman ever to reach the finals, Ms. Henry is not one to shrink from a challenge. She left the Frederick Collection yearning to play a concert on the beautiful 1805 piano by the London firm of Clementi & Co. What could be more appropriate than to celebrate the ¬† piano’s 200th anniversary in 2005 with a recital of music by Haydn, Clementi and Field, all of whom had some connection to the instrument — First, however, she needed to learn a new kind of touch, eschewing arm weight in favor of lightly dropping the fingers into the keys, from arms suspended above the keyboard. Ms. Henry located owners of early piano replicas in her area, and arranged practice time to familiarize herself with this technique. Returning to the Frederick Collection last month to prepare for her June 5th concert, she was delighted to discover she no longer sounded like (in her words) “a galumphing elephant” when playing the delicate older pianos.

Link (SentinelandEnterprise.com)

Klass act to raise funds for cathedral

Myleene Klass is bringing her classical music talents to East Anglia for a debut concert in aid of Norwich’s Roman Catholic Cathedral.‚Ä®‚Ä®Since her success on ITV’s Popstars and her time in Hear’Say, her solo album of piano music reached number two in the classical charts. She has now agreed to headline a concert in aid of the Cathedral’s development fund. ‚Ä®‚Ä®Father David Ward, who has been a friend of the Klass family, from Gorleston, for almost 20 years, persuaded her to appear.

Link (EDP24.co.uk)

Ableton Announces Live 5: Press Release

Includes a wealth of new features and enhancements that cater to the entire musical process

Ableton is proud to announce Live 5, the team’s broadest-ever development effort of their award-winning music software solution, Live. Live 5 presents a wealth of new features and enhancements that cater to the musician’s entire musical process – creation, production and performance.
“Version 5 adds our users’ most sought-after features,” says Ableton CEO Gerhard Behles, “along with an abundance of innovative new sound-shaping and organizational tools. Most importantly, Live 5 strengthens every aspect of Live while making the program more fun and easier to use.”

Live 5 includes advanced and creative DAW features to satisfy any audio professional.
• Clip Freeze serves two purposes: freeing up CPU power and easing the transfer of projects between computers. Unique to Live 5, “frozen” clips retain their real-time launch capabilities, allowing for improvisation, performance or song arrangement. A project with frozen tracks can also be transferred from your main computer and run easily on one with less-than-optimal CPU specs.
• Plug-In Delay Compensation automatically delays tracks to compensate for latencies caused by effects and plug-ins, including those on the return tracks. In addition, both audio and MIDI tracks have a manual delay setting to compensate for human, acoustic, hardware and other real-world delays.
• Launchable Arrangement Locators offer arrangement/song-position markers with MIDI mapping and quantized recall. Using the mouse, computer keys or MIDI messages, you can drop locators on the fly during playback or recording. Each locator can be named and assigned to a computer key or MIDI message. Jumping to a locator is subject to real-time quantization, just like launching Session View clips and scenes. Previous/Next buttons allow you to jump from locator to locator.
• Mackie Control Support enables full implementation of compatible mixer surfaces such as Tascam’s FW-1082/1884, Yamaha’s 01X and Mackie Control, allowing for mouse-free program operation. Easily navigate arrangements and the Session View grid; launch clips, scenes and locators; and access instruments and effects.

Get ready to remix! Live 5 ships with a host of new remix-minded features, assuring instant remix and mash-up gratification.
• MP3 support makes your entire music library available for use in Live.
• Automatic Tempo-Matching tracks the tempo of imported songs and sets Warp Markers for you—instantly synchronizing your files to the project tempo.
• Complex Warp Mode is a frequency-domain warping method specifically designed to accommodate composite signals such as mixed- down music.
• New Clip Transport allows for performance-enhancing looping, editing and shuffling on the fly for any clip in Live. Click anywhere in a waveform to jump there—in sync and subject to real-time quantization.
‚Ä®Never lose ideas again! Live 5 features simple tools for saving, previewing and accessing any idea on your hard drive .‚Ä®‚Ä¢ Live Clips. Clips can now be exported to disk for easy retrieval and reuse in any project. The exported Live Clip not only retains MIDI, audio, envelopes, warping and other clip settings but also the associated instrument, effects and plug-ins. In Live‚Äôs Browser, Live Clips are as easy to browse and preview as samples.‚Ä®‚Ä¢ Better Browsing. Live’s built-in Browser now features a search field and standard file organization capabilities such as creating folders and dragging files into folders. In the Browser, Live Sets (.als files) can be ‚Äúunfolded‚Äù to reveal their tracks and clips‚Äî which can then be selectively previewed and dragged in. It is also possible to drag a Live Set from the Browser into the currently open Set to merge the two.‚Ä®‚Ä¢ New Preset Management. Presets for Ableton instruments and effects are now managed through the Browser as well. You can organize presets in folders at will and search for presets across folders using the search field. A new ‚Äúbrowse‚Äù button on every device temporarily links the Browser to the device, allowing for easy preset recall.‚Ä®‚Ä¢ Device Groups allow you to save powerful multi-effect creations, effectively adding all the capabilities of Ableton‚Äôs MIDI and audio effects to Simpler, Impulse and Operator presets.

Live 5 introduces a selection of innovative new effects, bringing even more creative possibilities.
• Beat Repeat - An inspirational, expressive and addictive audio effect useful for subtle-to-extreme reorganization of beats and vocals. Create short loops on the fly and control their lengths either manually or via random functions for endless variations of grooves and stutter effects.
• Phaser and Flanger – These are both modeled after popular ‘70s guitar effects and augmented with a beat-synced LFO (with variable waveforms) and a unique envelope follower function. Results range from classic phasing and flanging to drastic sound manipulation.
• Auto Pan - Offers LFO-driven manipulation of amplitude and panning. It can create everything from automatic panning with various curves to tremolo and amplitude modulation and beat-synchronized chopping effects.
• Saturator – Add dirt, punch or warmth to your sound with five different shapes and a set of powerful tone controls for creating subtle-to-drastic distortion effects.
• Arpeggiator – Offers all the classic arpeggiator applications and more—strum notes like a guitarist, morph velocities and create scale-corrected pitch progressions.

Other new Live 5 features
Count-in recording 
Right-click context menus 
Change settings in multiple clips at once 
Resize tracks in Session View 
VST MIDI effect support 
New Live Clips sound library 
New preset library for Live devices 
New and improved Live 5 lessons 
Simpler now includes independent envelopes for filter, pitch and more.

Live 5 Pricing and Availability 
Live 5 will be available for 499 EUR/USD (MSRP) from dealers worldwide and from the Ableton webshop. The release is scheduled for late July 2005.
Buy your version of Live now and be among the first to own Live 5! All customers who unlock Live 4 for the first time from June 1, 2005 until the final release day of Live 5 will receive a version 5 serial number on release day at no charge.

Upgrading from Live 4
• For customers who purchased Live 4 before May 1, 2005, downloadable upgrades to Live 5 will be available for 119 EUR/USD from the Ableton webshop.
• Boxed upgrades will be available for 149 EUR/USD (MSRP) from dealers worldwide and from the Ableton webshop.

Accommodation for recent buyers of Live 4
• For customers who purchased Live 4 between May 1, 2005 and May 31, 2005, downloadable upgrades to Live 5 will be available for 49 EUR/USD from the Ableton webshop.
• All customers who unlock Live 4 for the first time from June 1, 2005 until the final release day of Live 5 will receive a version 5 serial number on release day at no charge.

Upgrading from Live 1, 2 and 3
Downloadable upgrades from Live 1, 2 or 3 to Live 5 will be available for 169 EUR/USD from the Ableton webshop. Boxed upgrades from Live 1, 2 or 3 to Live 5 will be available for 199 EUR/USD from the Ableton webshop.

Live 5 Beta Test 
Beta testing for Live 5 will begin in June. This is a great opportunity for users to get a firsthand look at what Live 5 has to offer. Please sign up to receive the Ableton newsletter and keep informed of the latest details.

About Live 
Live is the only solution designed for each stage of the musical process, from creation to production to performance. In the creative stage, Live is transparent, intuitive and responsive, capturing inspiration and encouraging the flow of musical ideas. During production, Live provides all of the professional tools and studio compatibility required to complete and perfect projects. On stage, Live delivers the expressive control and stability that innumerable performing artists have come to rely on. Live 5—from inspiration to studio to stage. Create. Produce. Perform.

About Ableton 
Ableton develops modern software technology to inspire creative people. Since the company started in 1999, more than thirty-five developers and business professionals have joined Ableton—many of them active musicians or DJs. The company has received outstanding press, awards and customer feedback since the unveiling of Live in October 2001.
For more information visit www.ableton.com.

miniMusic Introduces New Krikit Audio Engine for the Palm Platform: Press Release

miniMusic has unveiled their new Krikit Audio Engine (or Krikit Synth), a software synthesizer that can generate rich audio on most Palm OS handheld computers without any additional hardware. First to incorporate the new audio engine is miniMusic’s NotePad music notation software, allowing many different instruments to be used together to play back songs. Also announced today is the new SoundPad application to design new instruments for the Krikit Synth that can be used in NotePad and future Krikit powered software; SoundPad will be released in one week, on May 24th, but a free preview can be downloaded now from the miniMusic website.

The Krikit Audio Engine is both polyphonic and multitimbral. “Polyphonic” meaning that it can play several notes or pitches simultaneously (for playing harmony, chords or counterpoint). “Multitimbral” means that it can play those notes using different instrument sounds simultaneously (maybe playing piano, guitar and drum sounds to simulate a band). Unlike an MP3 player or other music players, the Krikit synthesizer generates rich audio in real time without a pre-existing digital recording (e.g. an MP3 file).

“We designed the Krikit Synth specifically for handheld computers and the Palm OS. We used FM synthesis techniques to keep our sound files extremely small and kept optimizing the synth until it ran well on even the slowest CPUs,” says Chad Mealey, President of miniMusic. “It’s like having the best synth keyboard from the 80s in your pocket; and our sound design interface is far superior!”

The NotePad 1.3 upgrade takes what was already the leading music notation software for the Palm OS and adds a vast array of playback possibilities. Now most Palm handheld users can hear what previously required a built-in sound card or additional hardware. The Krikit Synth brings rich audio to a wide range of OS 5 handhelds, like the palmOne Treo 600 and 650, the Tungsten T, T2, T3 and T5, the Tungsten C, the Tungsten E and E2, The Zire 31, 71 and 72, Tapwave Zodiac 1, Zodiac 2, Sony Clie UX40, UX50, TJ35 or similar models.

The brand new SoundPad 1.0 application allows anyone to design new sounds. An innovative graphic interface lets you grab and manipulate any parameter of a sound. Quickly change oscillator frequencies, ratios, waveforms, amplitude envelopes and modulation. This easy sound design interface sets the Krikit Synth apart from any other handheld sound engine.

This Summer the new audio engine will be incorporated into miniMusic’s other products: BeatPad, SpinPad, BugBand, EarTrain, AxisPad and the new MixPad MIDI file player.

Pricing, Availability, and Distribution NotePad 1.3 is available for $29.95 and includes sample songs and a sample sound bank. Current NotePad owners may be eligible for a free upgrade to NotePad 1.3, others will be asked to pay a $5 upgrade fee (The fee may be applied toward the purchase of SoundPad). SoundPad 1.0 will be available on May 24th for $19.95, or both NotePad and SoundPad are included in the new Krikit Bundle for $44.95 (10% off). Educational discounts and site licenses are also available for all miniMusic products. Free demos of NotePad, SoundPad and other software titles are currently available for download from the miniMusic website at www.miniMusic.com and from other Palm OS software distributors. Developers may license the Krikit Audio Engine to add enhanced sound to their products.

About miniMusic

Based in San Francisco since 1999, miniMusic creates handheld computer software for music composition, education, performance, and entertainment so that musical ideas can be explored anywhere and anytime, giving individuals the freedom of musical expression on their own terms. Shipping applications include NotePad, BeatPad, SoundPad, EarTrain and BugBand. Upcoming products will tackle MIDI sequencing, multi-track editing and innovative new musical interfaces.

All prices listed are in US Dollars. For more information please visit the miniMusic website at http://www.minimusic.com

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