MOTM

Last night I took some greatly needed R&R time and went to a local Jazz club
in Indy to hear Tony Monaco play the B3.  He happened through town for a
show last night and tonight.  It was actually a trio with drums and a guitar
player.  If you really appreciate how a Hammond organ can be played and ever
get a change to see this guy play, do not miss it.  rarely do you see anyone
put so much passion into their music. I doubt I could have even kept up with
just the bass lines he played with feet and left hand let alone imagine
doing what he can at the same time with his right.  Apparently Tony knew
Jimmy Smith quite well (and studied him for years) and enough so by the
family to attend Jimmy Smith's recent funeral.

Larry Hendry

Larry,

You were very lucky! Tony happened to be interviewed several weeks ago by
Terri Gross (sp?) on NPR's Fresh Air program. The interview was really,
really good (as most of them are).

Tony explained that he is right now really into the trio form, and did a
great job of explaining where he's coming from as a B3 musician. He also
talked at length about his mentoring under Jimmy Smith. Plus, he talked
quite a bit about his command of the B3.

IIRC, the interview was broadcast on 2/21. You may be able to stream it
down from NPR's web site. I highly recommend it if you can get it. I'd
try except I'm still on dial-up ;-(

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: J. Larry Hendry [mailto:jlarryh@...]
Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2005 9:23 AM
To: MOTM List
Subject: [motm] OT: B3 player Tony Monaco



Last night I took some greatly needed R&R time and went to a local Jazz club
in Indy to hear Tony Monaco play the B3.  He happened through town for a
show last night and tonight.  It was actually a trio with drums and a guitar
player.  If you really appreciate how a Hammond organ can be played and ever
get a change to see this guy play, do not miss it.  rarely do you see anyone
put so much passion into their music. I doubt I could have even kept up with
just the bass lines he played with feet and left hand let alone imagine
doing what he can at the same time with his right.  Apparently Tony knew
Jimmy Smith quite well (and studied him for years) and enough so by the
family to attend Jimmy Smith's recent funeral.

Larry Hendry






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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael -nil-x [mailto:nil@...]
> Hey, that's weird, I know that guy. Not by his music, he lives in my town.
I used to work at Sam Ash in the keyboard section and he came in quite a few
times. Really nice guy. One of these days I need to go out and catch him, he
plays in town at least once a month.

Plan on it.  You will not be sorry.

> We talked about how a real b3 was to play in comparison to the korg cx3
and the native instruments b3. He complained that beyond the sound
differences, the
midi would not actually keep up with his playing speed and causes him some
problems because of it, only a real b3 would do it. Knowing that the delay
is like 2-5ms that's some pretty fast playing.

His speed is amazing.  But, his style and ability to play a completely
independent and complex bass part at the same time just blew me away.

Another thing that blew me away was the instrument.  Tony was playing the
Hammond "new port-a-B"  It is black with a very nice metal support system.
It breaks down for transport and all the parts together weigh in at only
about 170 lbs.  I will say to those that think Roland and Korg are making
good B3 clones, they are still short of what Hammond is doing with their
latest generation of keyboards.  I could not believe this was not a
mechanical tonewheel organ.  The only thing that threw me was the built in
console reverb, which he abused only infrequently during his show.

Larry