It's springtime once again in the land of blue skies, green palm trees and white beaches (aka Miami).  Being a transplanted New Yorker, the arrival of spring doesn't have quite the same impact for me in Miami as it did in the Big Apple.  However, universally springtime is celebrated as a time of bloom.  Since I'm a musician, I'll refer to this bloom as The Rite of Spring in honor of the timeless ballet by Igor Stravinsky.

Since the release of Origins last November, my world has been action packed with introducing and sharing my musical creation to the world.  Being an independent artist, I've learned that marketing your creation is a never ending, very time consuming, but limitlessly rewarding job.  The payoff for me has been the love and support I've received from so many friends and fans of my music, across the U.S. and around the world in over 50 countries.  Much of the exposure was possible due to so many great social networks and traditional and internet radio stations such as Jango.com.

Now I'm prepping for round two.  Bloom is defined by Webster as "a state or time of beauty, freshness and vigor," and this is exactly the creative state I'm in this season.  Shifting now from marketing mode to creating mode; I've been updating my instruments and sound pallets, cleaning up software and operating systems, and reviewing notes and ideas I’ve been jotting down.  I've placed some older instruments on eBay and have incorporated new instruments into the mix.  Since my new pallet has evolved from the days of recording Origins, I'm now calling it... Sound Pallet 2.0.

Most artists and creative people know that every once in a while you have to go through some level of creative spring cleaning to help inspire artistic growth and bloom.  This often requires the resurging of all your creative energy and the polishing of tools in your shed to ease the ebb and flow of creating.  I say it’s the Rite of Spring, but this season is ripe for me to create music and prepare to live again in a new state of reverie.

Inspired By Love is a photo collage piece I created some years ago as a tribute to Valentine's Day.  I was awakened early one Valentine's Day morning from a dream of which the muse was speaking to me of love, art and life.  She whispered that a saint who was watching over me would point me the way to complete my circle of love.

At that moment images began floating around in my mind.  I remembered a photograph I took in Antigua, Guatemala of the statue of San Pedro (Saint Peter).  I went outside and grabbed a copy of the New Times which is a local Miami paper and I began to cut out sections including Art, Music and Film.  I stopped by the local flower shop and purchased a red hibiscus, then went back home and assembled the different parts.  I took a photo of the work and titled it Inspired By Love.

Incidentally, later that year that I met a beautiful woman who is now my loving wife.  My muse is never wrong.  Happy Valentine's Day!

The first Jazz album I bought was:

The first Jazz album I bought was Politics by the Yellowjackets. It's still one of the most played albums in my library. Actually, Yellowjackets is the most played group in my library hands down. It really doesn't matter which album as they've all got something that I would consider classic. Around that time though I was also buying many of the classics by John Coltrane, Miles Davis and was discovering Michael Brecker.

How would you describe the state of jazz today?

Jazz is such an important part of our American history, yet jazz is becoming more popular globally than here in the US. Now in order to attract big crowds at a local jazz festival many acts are included that I believe to be stretching the scope of jazz. You go to a jazz festival now and hear more of what I would call soul, or R&B than jazz. But that's OK if this is what it takes to bring in a younger audience.

What are some of the essential requirements to keep jazz alive and growing?

Radio stations that play jazz are slowly disappearing from major cities. It's unbelievable to me. Now there is limited access to the music outside of internet and satellite. There is some jazz that is very academic and not as accessible to the average listener, however there is plenty of jazz and nu-jazz out there that is more accessible to the average listener and it needs more exposure. 

What is in the near future?

I'm currently working on two more albums that are different in concept. One will step away slightly from what I started with Origins and the other will hopefully take Origins to the next level. I am also working on publishing a book in 2010. I'm being selective with performance dates currently until I've released the second or third albums.

If I weren't a jazz musician, I would be a:

If I weren't a jazz musician I'd be a painter. I love art, photography and paintings... creativity in general. I took some years off from playing and composing music and during this time I got into photography, and photographic art. It was a great time of discovery for me as I realized that my creativity wasn't only with sound. I would see images in my head and was able to realize those images and create art. Now I would love to do a project that incorporates both my images and music. Time... there's so much to do and so little time.

Photographs by Ebony Ruzic.

Five Ways to Support Your Favorite Indie Artist

Oh how times have changed.  Eighteen years ago I walked away from the music industry because I thought membership was clearly not based on artistic talent, but rather who you rub noses with or whether you happen to be the lucky 1% to get "discovered". Back in my old days in New York, I produced many talented artists who I watched struggle, scrap and scrape to be seen or heard by the right person - people who had bad attitudes and no time for someone who wasn't a protegé of an already famous act.

Oh how times have changed.  Now-a-days musicians have the ability to share their music with music-lovers all around the world.  This has been made possible with the advent of many new technologies, but most notably being the internet and social networking which has allowed potential fans access to the music and the musicians access to potential fans.  Gone is the necessity for that snobby A&R guru or the business-only minded major label executive.

Welcome to the rise of the Independent Artist!  But the definition of being an "Indie Artist" has also changed.  It used to be that an Indie artist was an artist signed to an independent record label and that simply meant a label not part of a major record label conglomerate.   Now being an Indie artist mostly means that the ARTIST has paid out of pocket for recording, mixing, mastering, duplication, distribution, promotion, equipment, tours and travel expenses.  Whew... that was a mouthful!  In other words these days the Indie artist is doing more than just sharing their gems with the world, they're financing the entire project mostly for the love of their craft.

So you're asking... "how can I help?" Well I'm happy you asked, so here are five easy ways you can help an Independent Recording Artist whose music you enjoy:

1. Buy their music.  OK  $0.99 cents is not a lot of money.  $9 bucks, $15 bucks... you spend this on a danish and coffee at Starbucks.  Remember producing the music wasn't free.  The artist paid for the recording production and duplication.  If you like the work... buy it! This helps the artist recoup costs and record another great album of music.

2. Comment on their Website or Social Network.  This takes no time to do but means the world to the artist and here's why.  Word of mouth is the biggest form of marketing to an Indie artist.  Also this artist is probably trying to get the attention of magazine editors, venue owners, radio programmers and entertainment bloggers.  When these folks visit an artist website or social site and see great comments, they get excited about the artist as well.  This means more promotion which gets your Indie artist off the block and into more homes and MP3 players.

3. Join their street team.  OK so you know the Indie artist personally and like the person, but you're not into their particular brand of music... I get it!   However, you probably know five people who are into it.  Spread the word.   Send an email blast to those music lovers or ask the artist for promo cards to hand out to these potential fans.  You never know... the music you share with folks you know may change their life.  They would be forever grateful to you.

4. See them perform.  If you know your favorite Indie artist or band is performing at the neighborhood hot spot,  go and enjoy the night out.  Bring a friend.

5. Don't just do nothing.  So you're a fan or a friend or a follower, but what does that mean to you?  I can tell you it means the world to the artist.  However a pat on the back is great, but if you really enjoy the music or the artist, take any of the extra four steps above and you would be the Rock Star to your Indie artist!

This week was an exciting first week out of the gate in terms of radio exposure.  I spent some time during the Christmas and New Year Holidays farming out ORIGINS and almost immediately the efforts began to bear fruit.  Here are a few of the highlights:

Rhythm & Jazz Radio

This is San Antonio's Hotspot for Jazz and R&B 24/7. 

This week four songs from ORIGINS were featured including Origins, Le Cirque Enchante, Summer Rain and Sunflower. 

This hot Jazz station features National artists along with Regional and Independent ones according to Station Owner and Program director Mike Fernandez.

"I have a diverse playlist... you may hear Everette Harp one minute then the smooth straight-ahead jazz of local singer Ken Slavin then you may hear Sade's and Alicia Keys' latest then Eric Darius the next followed by crooner Slim Man to Houston's spectacularly talented Kyle Turner", said Fernandez.

This was a great presence boost for ORIGINS right out the gate into the new year.  Each of the four songs will continue to get about 1 - 2 plays each on this station over the coming week.

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Jango.com Radio

What a ride Jango has been this past week!  Three songs from ORIGINS including: Le Cirque Enchante, Sunflower and Summer Rain hit the Jango airwaves with great reception.

Within the week the three songs amassed a Jango pop score of 94 out of a 100 and attracted 55 new fans and growing as of this writing.  These new fans of ORIGINS hail from across the US, Canada, India, Venezuela, Indonesia, Ecuador, Riga Latvia (Baltic), Italy, Ireland, Kenya, Australia, Sweden and Spain.

To say that the music of ORIGINS has gone global is an understatement.  I'll continue to list happenings on Jango.com as the weeks progress.

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Somojo.net Radio

Plays Independent and unsigned music live 24/7.

It was great to hear this week that Somojo.net liked the music of ORIGINS and decided to pick up Summer Rain to add to its playlist rotation.  It was even more exciting to see that by Wednesday, Summer Rain had risen to #3 on the Somojo.net Jazz charts.  By Thursday, it jumped again to #2 on its Jazz charts.

This is a great and diverse station that plays not only Jazz, but R&B, Rock, Pop, Indie, Acoustic, Metal and other stations of music.

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Jazz.Radio

Jazz.Radio (live365.com/stations/50666) plays a unique mix of traditional, modern, contemporary, new age, cool and easy listening jazz ... Some of the best new and unsigned artists added weekly.

Jazz.Radio took a liking to the music of ORIGINS and added both In My Time and Le Cirque Enchante to its playlist.  Both have been getting very good rotation on this station and in fact as I write this Le Cirque Enchante is currently playing.

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Please visit and support each of these radio stations as they are supporting Indie artists, and its your support that keeps them going.  While you're there, request more of the music from ORIGINS so they know who sent you. 

Well Music Lovers it's time for me to sign off for now, but it's been a blast this first week of the new year hearing the music of ORGINS get so much rotation.  I'll continue to share the latest happenings of the music on future Friday Night Roundups.

Ahhhhh. That feeling of satisfaction when something you've worked on for a very long time is finally complete.  It's that feeling of joy coupled with a sort empty-nest feeling knowing the bundle of joy you spent so much time cultivating now has a life of its own.

I've reached that point today with Origins my first recorded album release.  I began working on the album about three years ago with only the title of the album and an idea for how I wanted it to sound.  That changed of course as I struggled in the beginning to find my voice.  Not that I didn't have a stylistic idea of how I wanted the music to sound, but I struggled with having so many influences and directions of musical interest that I needed to reel things in to have some consistancy throughout the album.  So I took a democratic approach and let the music decide.   I just kept writing tracks and they eventually began to take shape as a collection and created a voice for themselves - rather than me trying to create the voice and push the music into it.

Now Origins is born into the world and what a joy it's been so far.  For me the joy is two-fold.  During the three year period that Origins was in the works, I beleive I've composed about 50 or so songs.  Some of these are completed and some aren't.  Some sound like a film score, some like an Opera, others like World music and some like urban music or urban Jazz.  The temptation while creating music in other various styles is to get side-tracked from what you're working on and begin working on something else.  This could mean a different song, or a different album altogether.  So during that three years, months were spent writing and recording music that had nothing to do with the album I was trying to finish.  Combine this with being gainfully employed and spending time with the  family, and you begin to see how the months... years slip by.  So one joy is the satisfaction of completing the work and the other is the satisfaction that it's finally complete so I can officially move on the my other projects.

With that said, today is a great day for me with plenty of cause for celebration.  In addition, tomorrow is my birthday (no coincidence in the timing) and my wife just gave me a birthday present a day early. She got for me a much needed pair of recording headphones to replace my current ones.  While my old ones are only four years old and sound perfectly fine, you can clearly see the wear and tear that a tireless composer can put on a pair of recording headphones.

Anyhow, so I begin tomorrow with a new age, a fresh start and a brand new pair of headphones.