This Friday, Jan. 16th, Sveti @ BND!!! January West Coast Tour!! 2014 Recap! Read on, please:-) If you are in NYC, please come hear my band this Friday, Jan. 16th at Bar Next Door. Sets at 7:30, 9:30 and 11:30 Featuring Julian Pollack on piano and Carlo De Rosa on bass. Bar Next Door is located at 129 Macdougal st. in Manhattan, 12$ For those of you in CA and WA, here are the dates of my upcoming tour - do stop by and please spread the word!!! Fri, Jan 23rd 4PM @ Musician Institute clinic/performance - Los Angeles, CA; Featuring Jeff Ellwood - sax and Julian Pollack - keys; Sat, Jan 24th 8PM @ Sonoma Cultural Center - Sonoma, CA; Featuring Julian Pollack - piano, David Ewell - ac. bass Sun, Jan 25th 11AM @ California Jazz Conservatory - Berkeley, CA; (same band) Sun, Jan 25th 4PM @ Jazz Chez Hanny Listening Room, San Francisco, CA; (same band) Mon, Jan 26th @ EWU Artist in residence - Spokane, WA Tue, Jan 27th @ EWU Artist in residence concert, featuring Brian Ward - piano, Michael Waldrop - vibes and Scott Steed - ac. bass Wed, Jan 28th @ Hanford High School solo performance/clinic, Richmond, WA So, after updating you about the upcoming NYC show and the tour, below is the annual email i send as a review of the past year. Hope you enjoy the read :-)........ You have grown accustomed to the annual musings by yours truly which have been finding their way to your inbox around the start of a new year for, oh, about 7 or 8 years now... Well, this year is no different... What will be slightly different, at least in part, is the tone of this one. I would like to begin, as I always do, by letting off the hook those of you who are not inclined to read any further; but not before I wish you A VERY HAPPY AND HEALTHY 2015 & ALL MY BEST!!! Now, to those who enjoy reading my reviews (and judging by the emails I usually get back, that is quite a few of you), here we go on another journey through the year we just left behind - though I am sure old 2014 would prefer to think of herself as the year that just let us go! Hey, nobody likes to be dumped:-) I usually begin by talking about home and family, but this year my lovely wife and daughter will have to wait a few sentences before they actually get their turn... Musical interlude :-) https://youtube/watch?v=ZGoeFwBUL18 I have been blessed to have my career follow a slow but steady rise ever since I can remember... As I look back on the nearly a quarter of a century as a performing, recording and touring musician, band leader, educator, author, etc. there are certainly many nights of beautiful music I remember with great fondness as well as other accomplishments and momentous occasions I can be proud of. My annual emails have been largely focused on these successes, small and large which I am fortunate to experience year after year. At their very core, these experiences are about two things: my personal growth and the interactions with musicians and music lovers the world over. This has certainly continued in 2014. But 2014 also brought what I would call the biggest disappointment I have experienced on my path up to this point, and I have to admit that it took quite a bit of strength on my part and a lot of love and support from my loved ones in order for me to come out of it a better and stronger man. Ah, yes, the loved ones :-)... before I go on any further, let this serve as a perfect segue and introduce yet again the lovely Svetlana (still thirty something :-) and Andjelija (three years and nearly two months now). To come home to them everyday makes my life joyful beyond words; to have had them at my side through the most trying time I have experienced in my career was the equivalent of having to walk across a desert for many days in a row and always be lucky enough to happen upon an oasis at the end of each trying day. I have never doubted Svetlanas ability to be the rock the house is built upon! All I can say about Andjelija is that I hope I was able to treat her in a way that shielded her from the turmoil I was experiencing and gave her a sense that even though daddy was not OK at the moment, the ship would weather the storm and sail again on the winds of enthusiasm, away from the perilous cliffs of disappointment (Cliffs Of Insanity, Princess Bride modification:-). Simply put, Andjelija and Svetlana are the light of my life and I love them more with each passing day. So, what is this gloom and doom scenario I keep hinting at? Well, I never pretend when I jovially share the significance of all the good things which happen on my journey - my joy is not just for show - I am as excited as I seem to be, and there will still be many lovely things to recount from 2014 if you keep reading... However, I feel it would only be fair to address something I consider a notable setback which has brought me considerable distress and anguish. I realize life is not meant to be a path strewn with roses, but even so a thorn here and there can be taken in stride... What happened to me this year went far beyond getting pricked by the proverbial thorn, hence my decision to write about it. All of you who know me well enough realize that I am talking about my two years at Berklee: this was something I wanted to do for a long time, absolutely loved doing for the last two years, but dont get to do any more as of May, at least for now. Without dwelling on the specifics I will say without a second thought that I gave it my absolute best for the entire time I was there and the students recognized this by vocally supporting me and my work which I am very thankful for! Now that the dust has settled and with some distance from it all, I can easily put my finger on what was at the core of the distress and anguish I mentioned as I distill my experience down to its essence: I KNOW I did uncommonly good work while at Berklee, with all my love, enthusiasm and expertise. I gave all I had and then some - and also got back more than I could have hoped for: beautiful interactions with my students, mountains of inspiration and unprecedented growth as a teacher and a musician! What ultimately brought me down to my knees was that the outcome turned out to be in such stark contradiction to actual merit: just imagine pouring water in a kettle, setting it on a burning stove to make some tea, then coming back a few minutes later to find the water frozen instead of boiling. https://youtube/watch?v=wrtDyLvylfE After this cathartic experience of not circumnavigating the bad stuff for the sake of keeping up appearances, I will get back to my usual month to month highlight reel - despite the setback, 2014 was certainly another good year in my musical life: In January I got to perform and present twice in one day at the conference entitled Berklee Teachers On Teaching. One presentation was for the general faculty, the other specifically for those in the percussion department. To be selected to perform and share my knowledge and music with an audience made up of many who actually taught me twenty something years ago was truly an exciting opportunity and a validating experience! Gigs with my band and the Take Off Collective (feat Ole Mathisen and Matt Garrison) also figured prominently in the first month of 2014. The shortest month of the year was long on good music: highlights included some festivals throughout the north east with blues hall of famer Clarence Spady as well as the beginning of a Nublu residence with Ole Mathisens quintet which featured Julian Polack, Amir El Saffar, Francois Moutin and yours truly. In March I was in Japan for about 10 days, performing and teaching a jazz camp with a great Berklee band led by trumpeter Tiger Okoshi. During my stay there it dawned on me that I must be at least part Japanese - the respect shown to one and all and a serious work ethic, which seem to be hallmarks of the culture, made a serious impressions on me. There were also performances with guitar master Tim Miller in March. Aprils highlight was certainly a performance/clinic I did with my band (featuring the amazing Julian Pollack and Evan Marien) to a packed house at The Collective in NYC. As Julian likes to say, we were really goin in on that one!!! https://youtube/watch?v=vvSJsQwMOGw Sadly, May ended up bringing some of the worst flooding in recorded history to Serbia and the region. Though in no way nearly enough to remedy the situation, there were some beautiful shows of support for the ones affected, at various NYC benefits. Musicians did what they do best and I am grateful to Jan Kus, Dimitrije Vasiljevic and Dan Martinez for playing my music at these events! June was marked by my second performance at the annual Drum Dum festival in Leskovac, Serbia. Of course, I played with Trio Sveti featuring Vasil Hadzimanov and Branko Trijic, but augmented the lineup by bringing special guest Tivon Pennicott from NYC. I also played with vocalist Sofija Knezevic at Belgrades oldest concert hall on June 30th. What made the night interesting, besides the lovely music, was the fact I literally had to run out after the end of the concert, straight into my sister Majas car and off to a midnight flight to Barcelona, Spain So, obviously, July began in Barcelona, with a CD release by Dusan Jevtovic, some gigs with Mig i Mig duo with David Soler, and a performance at the Jamboree club which combined these two great guitarists + Bernat Hernandez on bass. It continued in Germany, where I did a clinic at Munich Drum School (Thanks Theo!!!) and then performed and recorded with Roberto Badoglios Trio also featuring guitarist Bjoessi Klutsch. The last stop for the group was a gig in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Towards the end of July I did one more clinic in Skofja Loka, Slovenia (thanks David!!!). After this it was a well deserved rest - a week on the lovely island of Krk, with my ladies and our extended family. August was marked by gigs with Trio Sveti in Serbia... https://youtube/watch?v=Ixbf-v5Sa4w Once I got back to NYC, shows with my band and The Kung Fu Masters rounded out the month. A great recording session I was happy to be a part of took place in September, led by trumpeter and composer Justin Mullens, featuring some great music and some of NYCs finest musicians: (Pete Thompson - guitar, Peter Hess - bass clarinet, Chris Cheek - alto, Justin Mullens - french horn, Ohad Talmor - tenor, Matt Ray - piano, Desmond White - bass). Also a truly memorable show at Whynot Jazz Room, with Sveti (feat. Julian Pollack, Tivon Pennicott and Evan Marien)... At times the audience reactions were louder than the music we were playing - thankfully they were positive and enthusiastic, otherwise we might have been scared into running away:-) - QUITE A NIGHT :-)! I was in town all of October, performing with my band Sveti - most notably the mid October performance at ShapeShifter Lab, as well as with blues greats Michael Powers and Clarence Spady. I also started teaching my new class entitled Contemporary Music Performance at The Collective Music School in NYC, along with the oldie but goodie Odd Meters elective class. In November I was at Long Island Drum Center where I performed at an event presented by my sponsor DDRUM. Also performing were Adelles drummer Derrick Wright and rock legend Carmine Appice! Speaking of DDRUM, this would be a great place to thank all my companies for supporting me throughout the years - MY THANKS also go to the good people at Evans, Vic Firth and Zildjian! At the end of November I did a recording of some very interesting electronica - what made it unique is that the tracks were built exclusively from analog sounds by bassist Mirko Lupis and guitarist Silvio Vega. December was the busiest month in terms of performing, with a total of 15 gigs. Shows with my group, Clarence Spady, three performances with old friend Toni Kitanovski and a recoring with Ole Mathisens Outlier were all lovely! The highlight was my groups concert at Gallery MC in Manhattan, with thanks due to Danijela Milic for organizing and promoting the event and to Bobby Avey and Pablo Menares for their great musicianship! And this brings us full circle back to Jan 12th and a good beginning to 2015, as you saw at the top of the email. If there is anything to be said in closing it could be the old Phoenix cliche, an uplifting story about rising from the ashes - and this could be fitting... I choose to go with the advice/observation from my teacher and mentor Miroslav Karlovic after he saw me at a sound check in Belgrade in June, while the wounds were still fresh... It was a scene with me on the drums and Svetlana in the wings of the concert hall, both of us watching our daughter running around the stage, dancing and swaying to the music... Karlo told me the love he witnessed would be strong enough to pull me through my trials, and he was right!!! So, do look around and acknowledge the strength you draw from those who love you and care about your well being! It is by far the most precious aspect of your life! I hope this email found you well and left you even better and that we get to cross paths in the year ahead of us! My best and thanks for reading yet again! MARKO
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 03:04:16 +0000
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