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Tony Miceli Begins a Series of Internet Live Performances, Including Guest Artists

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If jazz is going to thrive in the New Millennium, musicians will need to find new venues for performance and recording. In recent years, especially for non-established younger musicians, performance opportunities with nightclubs, festivals, and standard record labels have been diminishing. If jazz is to reach a wider public, it will have to do so in new and creative ways. Clearly, the internet will feature significantly in such innovative developments, as will such technical devices as laptops and i-phones. The public wants music at hand, wherever they may be at the time. Already, downloadable tracks and albums are supplementing and may eventually supplant CDs and LPs. Players form their own independent labels and websites. As smaller clubs and concert halls feel the pinch of economics, live performances too may find a home on the web.

In what may become a trend, Philadelphia vibraphonist and entrepreneur Tony Miceli has begun an occasional series of live internet broadcasts of performances by individuals and small groups. The viewer/listener signs up for the performance on line, and gets a video hookup through Miceli’s website. (Click on the link: “The Philly Sound Live.”) In these live webcasts, they not only get to see and hear the performance; in addition, they can converse with each other via text messaging, and after the performance, they can text the musicians. The whole occasion becomes a social and educational experience as well as a musical one, and it all takes place in the viewer’s home or wherever the person’s laptop or desktop computer happens to be. (Some hand-held devices can access it as well.)

Tony invited me to one of these live sessions to see how the whole thing works. It was held at Pro-Line Music Store, 190 Lincoln Highway, in Fairless Hills, PA. The store owners, Don and Linda Moyer, have set up a small performance stage with state-of-the-art sound equipment, lighting, and seating for an audience of about thirty people. They proffer all the food and drink of a modern coffee house, and you can browse the store’s collection of musical instruments and equipment or take music lessons in one of their adjoining studios.

On this particular evening, Tony gathered a fine group consisting of himself on vibes, Madison Rast on bass and James Shipp on percussion to accompany violinist Diane Monroe, an accomplished concert violinist who is equally at home with classical, jazz, and country music. She is a marvel of a musician with a lively persona, and the group performed several of her own compositions, both lively upswing and meditative ballads of many moods.

Earlier that evening, Tony had carted in a couple of laptop computers and video cameras. Within a few minutes he set up the equipment and went on line. Then he turned the broadcast over to a cohort, and went on stage to play vibes. A live audience filled the seats, and on the laptops you could see an internet audience signing in from far and wide and beginning to “converse” with one another. At the appointed time, the show began. Diane introduced the group and began to “rock” on the violin, performing all the turns of phrase of a Stephane Grapelli but with her own more terse style. Her technique is impeccable and her improvisations rich and imaginative. She and the group gave a performance equal to any. And it really swung.

When the set ended, Linda Moyer checked her laptop for incoming text messages from the listeners. She read several of their questions to the musicians, who answered them competently. Monroe thanked all the listeners, and the internet session drew to a close.

This writer came away with a feeling of being present at the birth of a new broadcast medium, as might have been the feeling back in the late 1940’s when a few people bought the first small screen black and white TV sets, and the neighbors came over to watch. The new novelty was of course the interactive possibilities of the internet. In the not-to-distant future, these broadcasts may recruit audiences world-wide, with high definition audio and video, and large-screen lifelike viewing possibilities. (At the present it is more like watching something on YouTube.) Jazz education, entertainment, and social networking will be combined in this new medium. If you are a jazz aficionado or musician and would like the thrill of something new and exciting, check out Tony’s website for upcoming events. He also features on-line teaching and master classes, another innovation that some musicians have been using for some time now.

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