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Dom Minasi: Vampires, Chaos in Time, and Total Control

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Dom MinasiEven in the notoriously difficult jazz music business, Dom Minasi's had a rough time of it. The 63-year-old New-York-born-and-bred guitarist/composer was playing in a jazz trio by the time he was 15 and had an extremely full teaching/gigging schedule up until 1973, he was signed to Blue Note Records. Unfortunately, the George Butler-led 1970s Blue Note was a conflicted and faded label with a lust for commercial grandeur and an almost total lack of conception about how to achieve it. In any case, it wasn't an ideal time to be signed to the company, and after 1974's pretty-good-if-cautious When Joanna Loved Me and 1975's just-plain-bad I Have the Feeling I've Been Here Before, Minasi left the label. And, for that matter, the business—he concentrated on teaching and writing almost two decades.

Minasi rather cautiously reentered the jazz world in the early 1990s as the principal composer for MICE, the Manhattan Improvisational Chamber Ensemble (he had gotten a degree in composing a few years before). Soon enough he was gigging again and the close of the decade saw the release of Finishing Touches, a trio recording on CIMP Records, and the first record under his name in 24 years. Determined to follow his own artistic path exclusively, Minasi and his wife Carol Mennie founded their own CDM Records imprint, which released the Dom Minasi Trio's Takin' the Duke Out CD in 2001 and has continued to release Minasi product (and Mennie's own I'm Not a Sometime Thing) to this day.

None of the CDM records is bad, but the new double CD The Vampire's Revenge is both very good and very strange—it's utterly sui generis and altogether other. To put it simply, it's a vampire-themed concept album that manages to fuse ambitious composition and burning free improvisation. Its huge ensemble of musicians comprise a who's-who of improv greats who combine in just about every grouping imaginable. No one, however, is playing more marvelously than Minasi, whose percussive, masterly attack is both technically frightening and utterly focused on serving the music. I telephoned Minasi at home to discuss all sorts of things—but mostly The Vampire's Revenge.

All About Jazz: You took a long hiatus from recording after your somewhat unhappy Blue Note period in the 1970s. Since 1999, though, you've been recording under your own name with some regularity and since your 2001 Takin' the Duke Out album, you've been releasing your own stuff on your own CDM Records label. What inspired forming your own label and releasing your music this way?

Dom Minasi: To have total control. I wanted to have total control over everything that I did, everything I put out—the covers, the liner notes, the tunes, the musicians, every note. I didn't have that at Blue Note, and it was not a good experience for me. Even though guys are being signed now when they're 18, or 22, I was 31 when I signed with them. But I still didn't know anything about the recording business; I was kind of naive. So I learned a lot then by not having control—I just did what they told me to do. When I came back into it, first I recorded for CIMP, and that was good. Then when we decided to do something else, some people suggested to me that a lot of artists now are starting to form their own record companies; they've been doing it themselves. That was the wave of the future. So in 2000, we formed CDM Records, which stands for my wife Carol; me, Dom; and Mennie/Minasi. So we put a whole team together, got some investors, and now it's a whole enterprise. We have a promo guy, a radio person, lawyers, distributing companies, the whole works. It's a full-time job, besides trying to write and play.

AAJ: This ties in with CDM, Inc, your nonprofit organization, right?

DM: Yeah. I'm very much into education; that was the whole purpose to form that. So it's for teaching, doing workshops. I had done a lot of workshops for young audiences for an educational company and I wanted to continue that. We do things in schools to get the kids more aware of music and jazz. My wife comes from a theatrical background, so she's involved in the theater end of it. And because I'm also a songwriter, we do workshops where we can write an original theater piece, with her handling the acting end and me handling the music and lyrics. It's a whole thing that we do.

AAJ: This brings us to your newest release, The Vampire's Revenge, an enormous, epic double CD inspired by the novels of Anne Rice. This is a remarkable, unique album that's good and interesting in so many ways. It's also rather different from your previous CDM albums. In any case, I think it's something only you could pull off. I know the seed of the project was the title cut, which you wrote back in the 1990s, but why don't you give me an overview of how this album came to be.

DM: When I came back into it in the nineties, I never really pursued any jazz gigs. I had played with [bassist] Dominic Duval in the eighties, but I was just into doing my workshops with kids; I enjoyed that. I wasn't really looking to get back into the recording end of it. But I got a call sometime in the early nineties from a guy who had a big-band group, like ten, twelve pieces. He said, "the guitarist can't make it. You want to come on in and sub? I said, "I'm really not interested in doing any big bands unless there's something in it for me to play. I do read, but I just didn't want to sit there and play chord changes. He said, "no, there's stuff for you to play. So I went down and lo and behold, there's Dominic, and the drummer was Jay Rosen. So we hooked up again, and Dominic was involved in all kinds of things. One of them was this group named MICE [Manhattan Improvisers Chamber Ensemble], which had bass, drums, an opera singer, violin and a reed player who doubled on everything.

I was not with the group, and there wasn't any guitar in the group, but Dominic knew I could write, and said, "why don't you come in and write some stuff and play with the group? That's how I started to develop this whole writing for bigger ensembles. I wrote a lot of things, a real mixture of classical music, jazz, free improv. John Gunther was the last person to play with the group, and John could read anything, and he could play all these different instruments—it was great writing for him. That's why, when I did The Vampire's Revenge, I wanted him on it. So that's where I honed my writing skills. Also, in 1988 I went back to school and two years later, I got a degree in composition. I studied with [composer] John Corigliano, who was very much into contemporary writing, and who is a great writer. When I saw his score to Altered States [the 1980 Ken Russell film], it just rang a bell in my head: I thought, I need to learn how to do this. I'm the type of guy that, once I decide I want to learn how to do something, I pursue it and pursue it, spend a lot of time with it, and teach myself. I taught myself jazz harmony and theory when I was a kid, because no one was teaching it then.

So I wrote for this group, and eventually everyone parted ways, but Dominic and Jay and I still played together; we had a quartet with [altoist] Blaise Siwula. Dominic wanted to submit something to CIMP Records, and at the time, I was reading a lot of Anne Rice. So I wrote this kind of sinister melody and named it "The Vampire's Revenge. We didn't record for CIMP, but it became part of the regular repertoire of the different groups I had. And I had it in the back of my head that someday, I would love to do a vampire series.

When the time came to do a new one after Quick Response [Minasi's 2004 organ quartet CD], we were discussing it—we discuss every move we're going to make and bring it to a committee, the whole thing—and Carol suggested, "why don't you go for the vampire thing? I said, "well, I'm not sure how big a project it is, but let me send out some emails and get in touch with people, see who wants to do it. Well, everybody said yes. The only people who turned me down did it because they were too busy, not because they didn't want to do it.

Anthony Braxton was in the middle of all kinds of stuff—and he and I hooked up a couple of months ago, so we may do a recording together soon. I was going back and forth for a year with Peter Brötzmann, and finally, I thought I had him, and his schedule changed. It just didn't work out. David S. Ware said he just wanted to concentrate on his quartet. But of everybody else, 25 people, 22 of them said yes. I looked at my wife and said, "this is going to be a really big project because I can't have players like this and come in for a minute or two! It would be disrespectful to what they do.

Once I had the schedules and I had the players, I started with a couple of tunes I already had—I just needed to rearrange them. Then I started thinking about titles, how I would do the album, and its order. Then I started writing. The way I write, I don't use the guitar or the piano. I just write everything in my head. Sometimes I think about if for weeks before I actually write a note. Then things just started to flow and come out, and it worked out. The guys came in and left their egos at the door.

The biggest problem was getting it organized. The second problem was how to get from free-form playing to reading, and back and forth, and back and forth, and have the transitions work smoothly. And for that, I decided to use a conductor for the big group, when there were ten or twelve pieces. I had a guitar part, and I couldn't play my part and conduct and make sure everyone was doing what they should be doing. So I called Byron Olson; we've been friends since my Blue Note days. I asked him if he was interested, and he said, "well, I'm not into avant-garde, free-form playing. I said, "well, there are arrangements, and new, written music. So he came over and said, "yeah, let's do it.

I told him exactly what I needed him to do, how to conduct the players: he would decide who would solo when, and how to get the people back into the written parts. We had one rehearsal with the big group, and he came in, and he knew the music. It was amazing how much time he'd put in and studied, and I was so happy. He was even there for the mix of the big-group stuff. He's such a professional, and a great composer himself.

The biggest problem with the big groups was really just how musicians naturally are. It's the same thing with me—when I'm playing music, I close my eyes, I'm not looking at music or at anyone. So we had to be able to get them to come in on a dime; they had to look at the music. So at the recording, we gave Byron a microphone with his own track, so everyone could hear him say, "okay, letter B is coming up, so get ready—one, two, three. Like that. Otherwise, it would never have worked. And the transitions were so smooth.

AAJ: Those transitions are hugely important; they're one of the elements that make the record good.

DM: "Vampire's Revenge, that piece, was the last arrangement that I wrote, and I'd thought about what I wanted to do on it for a really long time. I had to come up with some new language. Everybody got notes on everything, and one of the notes said, "each instrument has its own particular sound, so when I want sound effects, it's going to say 'sound effects.' Improv means musical notes, not sound effects. So when we rehearsed "Vampire's Revenge, the first run-through on that tune, there was so much the guys had to be attention to. They had to count time, they had to know when they were playing free, then they had to go back into time. So the first rehearsal was a total disaster! I didn't say this to the guys, but I told my wife, "I'm ready to jump out the window. I can't believe I wrote this so badly.

But the next day after the rehearsal at the recording, they came in and nailed it the first shot. Right on the first shot. They'd gotten it. I was so happy—I can't tell you how pleased I was.

AAJ: And relieved, I'm sure.

DM: Oh yeah. I always have a plan when I'm recording. With my smaller group, it's like two or three rehearsals. We're going to go in and do the whole thing in four or five hours; I'm not going back. Whatever we get, we get, and that was my attitude for the big group, too. I planned for sound checks to get the guys' levels, and then we were ready to record. We went in there at eleven and I wanted to be out of there by four o'clock. And we were—we were finished at a quarter to four. It was amazing.

AAJ: There are moods to this music—you used the phrase "sinister melody just now to describe one of the songs, but it works to describe a great deal of the whole recording. Your wife Carol Mennie's "one more bite lyrics on "Just One More Bite and Peter Ratray's spoken-word stuff on "Where You Gonna Go? Where You Gonna Hide? do provide some specific vampire-related information. But does this music have a narrative? Is there a story that goes from "The Seduction all the way to "The Vampire's Revenge? Or are the songs sequenced to make the best presentation of these long pieces over two discs?

DM: There's a story. When I'd written the titles and was almost finished with the arrangements, I wrote the words for "Where You Gonna Go? Where You Gonna Hide? and I showed them to Carol, and she said, "you have to be kidding. I said, "don't worry. I got an actor who happened to live in this building who's really terrific and told him what I wanted him to do. The rehearsal process was a riot for all the small groups because I couldn't get anybody together at the same time. [Soprano saxophonist] Joe Giardullo and I got together once for ten minutes and he looked at his part and said, "fine.

I called a rehearsal for four of the pieces on the Saturday before the recording. [Bassist] Ken [Filiano] was working; he couldn't make it. [Drummer] Jackson [Krall] had something else so he couldn't make it. So we only would have one or two guys at the same time. The original actor who was supposed to do "Where You Gonna Go? Where You Gonna Hide? overslept and never showed up. So I got Peter Ratray to come in in the middle of the week and we did that set of lyrics. As for Carol—just before we recorded, she said, "I have an idea. Remember, she comes from a theater background. She said, "if you like it, great. If not, we'll take it out. And all of a sudden, she's huffing and puffing and doing "Just One More Bite, and it worked!

Anyway, there's a whole storyline. I wrote a whole story just before I wrote the music. It's called "Tales of C.B.G.B's: the True Tale of the Vampire's Revenge. It's a 2000-word story with all the song titles in bold. So there was a storyline that I had in mind.

AAJ: You produced this record, but I think the first person we have to mention is Jon Rosenberg, who recorded and mixed this album. He somehow managed to make this dense music clear and audible, so everything fits. It's a brilliant mix.

Dom MinasiDM: That 18-minute piece "Blood Lust took eighteen hours to mix. There was so much going on. Plus, I couldn't get [flugelhorn player] Paul Smoker, [tenor man] Joe McPhee and [trombonist] Steve Swell in at the same time with the big group. So I recorded that section that they do on that piece separately, and inserted it. I also recorded [pianist] Borah Bergman separately and inserted that. There was a lot going on! So for the song, in the recording studio, we recorded the melodies and the free-form parts with the big groups, and then I inserted these smaller groups. I had to splice everything together because it would have never worked out live.

AAJ: So actually, it was all even more complicated than I imagined.

DM: Yeah. You wouldn't believe how long the score is

AAJ: But these are mostly first takes.

DM: Oh, yeah. Borah is a first take. Everything is a first take. That one with Matthew Shipp ["The Dark Side ] is one of the few tunes that has real jazz chord changes, even though it kind of has this dark thing happening. I sent Matthew the music months before. He walked in for the recording and said, "what do you want me to do? I said, "just do your thing. Don't worry about it. We did a little warm-up to get the sound and then we just hit it; 13 minutes later, we just had it.

AAJ: There's an enormous group of musicians on this album: lots of guests in addition to the core band of you, bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Jackson Krall that plays on all the tracks. For all that, there are all sorts of groups playing at any given moment on the record—a cappella individuals, duets, trios, quartets, large ensembles—did you write each piece with the players and the combinations of players in mind?

DM: Each piece was written that way. In fact, there were notes—suggestions for Byron. For example, the letter A would be cello, guitar and trombone. So it was written that way. I hear everything in my head, so when I'm writing, I know exactly what I want.

AAJ: You've used the phrase "chaos in time to describe some of what happens on The Vampire's Revenge. Care to elaborate?

DM: Yeah, there are sections that say "chaos in time. That means that you're going to be able to count four measures—and it's not going to sound like four measures, but it is. Everybody's playing at the same time, and this is where you get chaos: nobody's going to listen to anybody. They're just doing their own thing. But 16 beats later, they're going to hit on the downbeat. It's not easy to do!

AAJ: None of this stuff sounds particularly easy to do.

DM: No, it really isn't. I wanted to challenge myself as a writer and then I wanted guys to come in and bring it to another level. Because a lot of the time, with free music, everybody comes in and plays, they edit it, and then they give the songs titles. I didn't want that. I guess this is a concept album. I never really wanted to do a concept album, but it had to be done this way.

AAJ: You beat me to my question about Byron Olson, the conductor. I think that besides yourself, he's the most important person here. His leading the ensemble freed you up to play at the level of everyone else, and made the transitions so tight as to make me think initially that there were a lot more edits on the pieces than there actually were. I think it's mostly real-time performance.

DM: Yeah, except for that one piece where we had to do Borah and myself separately and Joe McPhee, Paul Smoker and Steve Swell separately. Everything else was real time. And the third-most-important person was Jon Rosenberg. He had to do a lot of work—he'd walk out after an eight-hour day with his head spinning and we'd be laughing about it. It really was an enormous undertaking. My biggest worry was whether, when I had all the pieces down, I had enough for two CDs. But it just worked out perfectly; one is about an hour, and one is a little less than an hour.

AAJ: I want to talk about bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Jackson Krall, who play, as do you, on every single track. They're your working trio and they've played with you for a while now. They're absolutely fantastic on this record. Ken's prominent and noticeable on every single song, whether playing arco or pizzicato.

DM: I depend on Ken. He's like my number-one guy. Ken can read anything and play anything—and when I say "play anything, I mean he can play free, he can play on changes, he can play on changes and make it sound free. Everything I write, he can play, and he can play it arco or pizzi. And Jackson's got this earthy energy, this kind of rumble thing, and I get into that. I love it. It gives me that kick. It's a whole different way of playing.

AAJ: The other person who's really important on this record is you—and on these songs with so much happening, your parts are as interesting as anyone else's, whether you're on one of your electric archtops or on the acoustic 12-string. You're really not sounding like anyone on earth on this album; you've got a sound that's percussive and deeply harmonically information-packed at the same time. Does your playing change depending upon the circumstance and setting?

DM: I think it changes constantly, because I'm constantly listening to what's going on. Even with the trio, it's always changing—if I play a phrase, Ken or Jackson will finish it. It just keeps going around. It's all about the interplay, so our playing constantly changes. To play the way I play, I'm always working on technique to be able to have the chops to be able to keep the energy going; it took me years to be able to do that.

I'm one of these guys who actually believes in playing the gig. When I work with my wife, who's mostly a straight-ahead singer, I play very tonally, very much in time, very straight-ahead. Right down the middle. When I work with DDT, it's a real combination of both tonal and atonal, in time, free, whatever. When it's the trio, we're here to rip—that's what we do. I spent my youth—when I was 14, 15 years old—hanging out in the original Birdland. They had a peanut gallery for kids, so you could spend four, five dollars get in and they always had two bands. I saw Coltrane with Miles; I saw everybody. And these guys played. Man, they created this music and they played hard. I learned that from them, so when I play, I play hard.

AAJ: Let's talk over a few of the tunes—which isn't that easy, because a lot of these songs have multiple sections including composition and improvisation and a lot of different events in one piece. "The Seduction starts the album off and has a very memorable theme that I've been hearing in my head for days. It also has some dazzling 12-string work from you and equally remarkable, effected clarinet playing from Perry Robinson. There's some interesting bass work from Filiano, too.

DM: Yeah, Ken is playing what's called a bass choir, a little effect that sounds like two or three basses at the same time. Ken is one of the few bass players who can do all of that, can use the effects, and still play normally. And you gotta hear him play rock and roll! I'm serious. He's an amazing musician. I told him, "bring the effects. I want the effects on this one. They're on three pieces, because I knew it would work.

The one really comes from the idea of the vampire. How do you become a vampire? Another vampire has to seduce you. So that's where the title came from. As for Perry—I've known Perry for years and years, but we'd never really played together. The first time we played together was here at my house when we had the rehearsal for this piece. But I knew how he played, and I had certain notes on his music that said, "bends, quarter tones, just play it very loose and very free, but when it came to that line [sings the melody], we play it all in unison, and that is the actual seduction—that bluesy thing.

AAJ: "Blood Lust is one of the big ones in terms of players. This one, again, has remarkable compositional elements and the great duo section between you and pianist Borah Bergman that's just scary-fast.

DM: Man [laughing]. You have to be physically and mentally in shape to play with Borah Bergman. He has this thing that comes out and just hits you between the eyes. It's nonstop. He said, "what do you want me to do? I said, "I want you to do your thing. Play fast. So he did it! He put a timer on the piano—he'd asked, "how long do you want it? and I said, "anywhere between four and five minutes. So I think he set it for four minutes or so, and I just put my head down and played. We stopped right on a dime, boom, because I've been playing with Borah for the last two years now.

AAJ: A bunch of people are fantastic on this track—Joe McPhee, Paul Smoker. But violinist Jason Kao Hwang and cellist Tomas Ulrich—Tomas is also in your group DDT—manage to sound like a much larger string section here and elsewhere on this album.

DM: I'm a better string writer than I am a horn writer, because I come from a string place and I love strings. And I love the way Tomas and Jason play. I met Jason when he came into that group MICE as a substitute. This was about 10, 12 years ago. I always knew that someday I needed to play with him because he was so good. So I wrote these specific things for those two to do. Not only does Tomas live in the neighborhood, but we've been friends for 10 years. He was part of the original DDT [Minasi's chamber-jazz guitar/bass/cello trio], we play together all the time, and I know what he can do. He understands what I want. It's so great when you have that mental thing happening. Sometimes you don't even have to say anything; they just know. And Tomas is one of those guys. So is Ken.

AAJ: There's plenty of polyphony all over this record—at least enough of it to be very effective. The songs have sections where various instruments are unleashing parallel solos, which since Albert Ayler has been associated with this thing called "free jazz. But it's also one of the original elements of the first jazz music, a connection made clear on the New Orleans polyphony on "The First Day, a tune on which, by the way, Ken and Jackson are especially fine. Any comments on this one?

DM: I should have named that one "The First Night. It's a tune that was written a few years ago, but I wanted it on the record because I thought it was apropos of what we were doing. I was playing that with the trio for the last year, so those guys were used to it. I had to rearrange it and I rewrote the melody. I'd never written the melody for that tune correctly, the way I wanted it to be, and I finally got it right. You're supposed to imagine it's like the first day, this march, the vampire's walking around, he's observing. And they got it. And the New Orleans sound is perfect for vampires—that's where they're all hanging out in Anne Rice's books.

AAJ: Yeah, that's the whole Anne Rice New Orleans thing. Any favorite songs here? Any you're happiest with?

DM: I'm really, really thrilled with "The First Day. I also love "The Dark Side and "The Vampire's Revenge, so I have three absolute favorites. But I'm really happy with everything. Sometimes I'll sit down when I haven't listened to it in a while, and I'll go, "oh, I like that one better now. There's so much to listen to; I have yet to sit down and listen to the whole thing in one sitting for two hours.

AAJ: Me neither. I like it a disc at a time.

DM: Well, I just spent so much time mixing it with Jon that I just had to walk away from it for a while.

AAJ: So you're performing this music live, and you obviously can't do it with all the people on the record. So I think you're managing it with Ken, Jackson and a guest or two?

DM: Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm rewriting the music for smaller groups. For one show, I rewrote it for guitar, bass, cello and violin. I take four or five pieces and rewrite it for the particular instrumentation. When I did something with Steve Swell, I rewrote it for trombone. I did something with Tomas and rewrote it with cello, and I did something with Blaise Siwula and rewrote it with alto. I'm rewriting everything as we go along. We're hoping to get a grant so at Halloween we can actually put on a performance with as many musicians as possible.

AAJ: The Vampire's Revenge has gotten a lot of attention and it's all been pretty positive. Are you surprised?

DM: Totally [laughing]. At the IAJE Conference, I ran into Dave Stryker and Vic Juris, two friends of mine, and I said to them, "I'm going to get killed on this one. Which I expected on Duke [Takin' the Duke Out, Minasi's 2001 trio set of Ellington compositions]. I really thought that one would be our first and last record. And I am surprised; I'm always surprised when people actually like my music.

AAJ: That's a funny thing to say. I suppose that's better than just expecting them to love it.

Dom MinasiDM: When Duke came out and the reviews started to come in, I couldn't believe it. With every record, I'm saying, "oh, they're going to hate this. This is how I feel. You have to understand, I come from a place where for years, I got fired. A lot. I held myself back from really playing because I didn't want to get fired and I had a family to support. So I always held back. But now my kids are all grown up; they're married, I have grandchildren. And I have a wife who's just so supportive: she says, "just do your thing. And I do. That's it. And I don't care anymore.

AAJ: I really cannot imagine what you're going to do next after this one.

DM: It's already happening. I just started to write the opening for an opera I'm working on with [writer/director/composer] Franka Fiala. We're going to start working on an opera. That's going to take a few years. But I just started writing the first few notes just before you called. I just finished two records: one with Blaise Siwula and one with Borah and a guitarist from Denmark. The record I'm doing as a leader I'm going to keep a secret for a while. And I have all of Carol's next record recorded; we just have to go in and do the vocals.

AAJ: It seems like your life and career had a period where you were discouraged by the business of music. But this seems like a great time for you. You're working hard, doing unique work, and you kind of did it all yourself.

DM: I really didn't do it all myself. I had a lot of help. When I say my wife is supportive—you have no idea what that meant to me. It just gave me the strength to keep doing it. So many times, you just want to walk away and say "the hell with this. Because you have to deal with so much.But she said, "don't stop, don't stop. Keep doing it. So Carol's been my backbone, my soulmate. She's allowed me to be who I am in order to do this.


Selected Discography

Dom Minasi, The Vampire's Revenge (CDM Records, 2006)
Dom Minasi, Quick Response (CDM Records, 2004)
Carol Mennie, I'm Not a Sometime Thing (CDM Records, 2004)
Dom Minasi's DDT + 2, Time Will Tell (CDM Records, 2003)
Dom Minasi Trio, Goin' Out Again (CDM Records, 2002)
Dom Minasi Trio, Takin' the Duke Out (CDM Records, 2001)
Ernie Andrews, Girl Talk (HighNote, 2001)
Blaise Siwula/Dom Minasi, Duet (coma, 2000)
Blaise Siwula Trio, Dialing Privileges (CIMP, 1999)
Dom Minasi Trio, Finishing Touches (CIMP, 1999)
Michael Jefry Stevens/Dominic Duval Quintet, Elements (Leo Records, 1996)
Dom Minasi, I Have the Feeling I've Been Here Before (Blue Note, 1975)
Dom Minasi, When Joanna Loved Me (Blue Note, 1974)

Related Articles
Dom Minasi: An Internet Success Story (Analysis, 2004)
Dom Minasi: A Matter of Time (Interview, 2004)

Photo Credits:
Top Photo: Courtesy of Luke Ratray
Center Photo: Will Gamble

Bottom Photo: Scott Friedlander

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