Head of Bear

Intuos Teddy

July 4th At The Washington Monument

I went to the Washington Monmument to see fireworks on July 4th. Other than the millions of people trying to leave the area at once, it was fun. More photos here.

Intuos Bear

I bought a Wacom Intuos4 tablet, so I decided to practice a little bit with it.

Summer Sound System

An illustration done for the relaunch of Beyondjazz.net, a site focused on "future jazz", for an article about Summer music festivals. Having a guy sitting on a huge stack of speakers was one of my concepts. Luckily, at the Caribbean Carnival I saw exactly that. I guy on top of a huge stack of speakers. Perfect for reference!

DC Caribbean Carnival

Thanks to my cousin and grandfather I had the chance to go to the DC Caribbean Carnival. It was basically a parade down Georgia Avenue celebrating Caribbean cultures with loud music, colorful costumes and a lot of dancing. Of course, I took this as an opportunity to take some crazy photos. There are more here.

The Reflections

This is a cover redesign for an album my father's band recorded in 2000. They were a jazz group known as The Reflections and played around Roanoke, Virginia as well as other spots in the state and elsewhere. I have fond memories of seeing my dad play guitar, sitting around at rehearsals and at one point practicing with them on drums. I owe much of my love for music, especially jazz, to my father and the culture he exposed me to. Sadly, he passed away in 2001, so I thought this would be a way to celebrate Father's Day in his memory.



Above is the original cover. I think my interpretation might be a little too dark and modern for some of the music, but I'm happy with it. I'm offering up the album for download if anyone's interested in hearing it. The link is at the bottom of this post. You can also hear my favorite track, "Da Ja Vu", in the player below. I had planned to include a recording of a live show they did at the Snowshoe Ski Resort in West Virginia, but I haven't had the chance to transfer it over from cassette. I may post it later.



Personell on the album include my father, Ted Taylor, on lead guitar, Dan Pratcher on bass, Elmer Coles on trumpet and keyboards, Gary Bannister on vocals, and Austin Marshall and Clint Randolph on drums.

De Ja Vu

DOWNLOAD

Duke Ellington Jazz Festival

I got a nice surprise this weekend. On Saturday and Sunday I attended the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival on the Mall in front of the Washington Monument. I saw a few groups, but the highlights for me were The Terence Blanchard Quintet and The Nicholas Payton Quartet.

What made Nicholas Payton's set so special was the surprise inclusion of two of my current favorite musicians, bassist/singer Esperanza Spalding (top) and drummer Karriem Riggins (second). I had no idea they would be performing, so I was a little bit in shock when I saw them setting up for their equipment. It was the highlight of my week. Maybe my month! I managed to take some interesting shots, thanks to being able to get right in front of the stage. There are more shots here.

TEDIKOLA

These are collaborative pieces between me and my talented friend Mykola Dosenko, remixes of some of my work. I've posted some before but I thought it'd be nice to put them in one post. Hopefully I'll be altering some of his work soon!

The Cover Down

Sometime last year I created an extension of my album cover blog, basically as a place to post random album covers I found interesting without having to write anything. That got boring after a while, searching Google for a decent image and posting it, so I stopped.

A few weeks ago I decided to revive the blog, The Cover Down, but this time dedicate it to covers scanned directly from my vinyl collection. This takes a lot of effort, considering I have a standard size scanner and each side of the covers needs to be scanned four times and photomerged to be complete. But it's been a great experience digging through my collection and I've gotten a pretty good response to the blog. My plan is to scan at least one cover a day. We'll see how long I keep it up.

Thanks to my parents, my old friend Jeremy, my girlfriend's dad and that dude on Craigslist who gave away about six cardboard boxes full (!) for letting me have all of their records!