NunaBlog > Jazz

Stages de musique

2008-01-12T00:40:00.000-05:00

Cette année encore, l'ARS nous a confié le mandat de promouvoir sur la toile ses stages de musique.

Dans les stages de musique classique, l'ARS propose :

stage baroque

stage de musique de chambre

stage classique

stage chant

Les amateurs de musiques modernes y trouveront aussi leur bonheur :

stage blues

stage jazz

stage danse

Et comme il faut de tout pour faire un monde, voici justement, pour les musique du monde...

stage percussions

Jamming at SAT

2006-07-27T13:19:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure to play keyboards in a mix-session at SAT (www.sat.qc.ca). That was my first gig in electrojazz. We played a bunch of loops of our own, and had great feedback from the audience. I look forward to the next one.

Accredited Photographer for Montreal's Festival International des Nuits d'Afrique

2006-07-11T13:17:00.000-04:00

Again, Latino newspaper appointed me as their official photographer to make pix of the International Festival of African Nights. This festival has been going on for many many years, now. They do an outstanding job to promote African music. In my opinion, they'll be around for more years than you could shake a stick at, which is good news because African music *is* the root of the majority of today's music. Photos: Youssou N'Dour, Celsio Machado.

Appointed Photographer/Translator for an interview of Jazz piano legend Mr Oliver Jones

2006-07-07T13:03:00.000-04:00

Alberto Antonio Méndez is my partner at newspaper "La voz". We meet very interesting persons and work on articles about them: Alberto conducts the interview and is the writer, I'm the photographer. Today, we have the great pleasure to meet and interview Oliver Jones at the Hyatt, downtown Montreal. This interview started as a real and intense exchange between the three of us: Alberto asked the questions in Spanish, Oliver understands Spanish pretty well and replies in French of English, which I translated to Alberto... To use a Jazz terminology, I'd say we performed in trio! Being a Jazz musician myself, I had a chance to sneak in a few questions about technique... Huge thanks to Oliver and Alberto for this outstanding moment.

Accredited Photographer for Montreal's International Jazz Festival

2006-06-29T13:06:00.000-04:00

Accredited Photographer for Montreal's International Jazz Festival
Latino newspaper "La voz" appointed me to make photos of performing artists. That was awesome. Besides making shots from outstanding concerts, I had a chance to collaborate with the team of the festival itself. Intense moments that was...
Attached are a few of those pics: John Pizzarelli, Maceo Parker, Wayne Shorter, Michel Donato, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Patricia Barber, Quadro Nuevo, Lorraine Desmarais, Dave Brubeck, and (phew...) a view from the Hyatt's terrace shot with a fish-eye (10.5 mm lens)

Stages de musique

2006-05-16T02:25:00.000-04:00

En conformité avec l'engagement communautaire de NunaSoft, nous avons été mandatés pour améliorer la visibilité sur les moteurs de recherche d'une association.
Le but est d'obtenir le meilleur classement possible sur Yahoo!, MSN, Google, etc.
En utilisant l'effet de levier, nous espérons attirer plus de membres vers cette association, dont les dirigeant et enseignants ont montré un dévouement sans faille à la cause de la pédagogie musicale depuis 20 ans. Elle propose des ateliers musicaux en France : stage de jazz, stage de blues, stage de chant, stage de musique classique, stage de baroque, et plus encore. Visitez le site pour plus de détails (et, pourquoi pas... pour vous inscrire en ligne à l'un de leurs stages musicaux !!!).

Official launch of Whip Cream's Website

2005-12-21T02:04:00.000-05:00

The equation is simple: Whip Cream = Frédéric Darveau + François D'Amours + Francis Fillon + Alex McMahon. Electrojazz they play. And they play well. It was an honor for NunaSoft to develop their Web site. We're terribly into jazz ourselves (I met Frédéric in a jazz club; we are bassist brothers, so to say).
Here's the new site: www.whipcreammusic.com

Official launch of "Les Clients" Website

2005-12-13T02:12:00.000-05:00

That's a tiny, yet popular Website. An example of what we can do for our clients who have a small Web budget, but still need a Web presence to develop their business.
Special thanks to Fred, from the band.
Here's the site: www.lesclient.net

Michel Donato in an Alpine restaurant...

2005-08-31T01:48:00.000-04:00

What a coincidence. I was having lunch at this restaurant on the shores of a lake in the Alps. I was noticing this framed drawing on the wall... Hmmm... interesting, that's a pianist and a bass player.
Nothing original, you should say. Well, right. Maybe right. After looking at it, I thought I recognized Oscar Peterson. I asked the owner of the restaurant, and she confirmed. It IS Oscar. So I made a picture. Back home, after looking at this photo a few times, I thought... funny, Michel Donato did play with Oscar. And Michel grows a moustache. And the age they have on the picture is consistence with the age they have today. So I contacted Michel's Manager, who, what a coincidence again, was in a meeting with Michel. Michel looked at the photo and confirmed that was him!!! What a small world.

Official launch of Michel Donato's Website

2005-06-01T02:00:00.000-04:00

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
This is official: we launched Michel's Website today. Needless to say, designing and developing this Website was over 1,000% pleasure. Why? Well... Michel is a jazz bassist (a world-class one, if not galatic-class), his Manager is also a great jazz bassist (he's famous throughout Québec, toured Europe, and is really cool), and I'm also a jazz bassist (not world-class, though... maybe... home-class:-)).

Oh, yes... the URL is www.micheldonato.com
Peace and swing.

QualiArt migrated

2005-04-22T23:26:00.000-04:00

Goal was three-fold:
- pay less for hosting
- pay less for domain names
- make the whole stuff easier and quicker to manage
Almost a case study: QualiArt owns several domains all registered with a different registrar, and hosted on different servers. Too complicated to manage and grow, and too expensive. So we arranged it all. Web expenses got divided by three. True, we had to shake a few suppliers who don't like to lose clients and pretend they don't receive domain transfer requests, or lost password info... Anyway, we did what we had to do, including sending an aggressive fax to a reluctant registrar, who, amazingly, proceeded in a snap upon reception of our fax.
Conclusion: though we're in a hitech all-virtual electron-ruled world, "old" methods with paper are sometimes more efficient. Always a matter of context - huh ?!?

Our Jazz duo at l'Aquarium Café in Montréal

2004-11-06T02:05:00.000-05:00

Le VEhiCUle, that's the name of our duo with Normand Vanasse. We're revisiting Jazz standards, exploring them, playing them and playing with them. We love that. It's exploration. We're following a path. Or several. But always with respect to Jazz, to its freedom, and to the spirit of its Masters. We performed tonight at l'Aquarium. The audience enjoyed, that's what they told us. So all of us enjoyed, actually.

Met Erik Truffaz and Michel Benita

2004-07-05T04:45:00.000-04:00

My good friend Steve Wyatt from Yamaha Music Canada took me to their electrojazz concert with VJ'ing. Steve knows them personally (whom doesn't he know in the jazz biz BTW???). He introduced me to them. Being a bass player myself, I had some good time with Michel talking of... bass. I told Erik about my Arctic thing and Inuit language. He asked me advice on where to get a warm coat. BTW, winter coat in French is 'anorak', which is an Inuktitut word meaning coat.

Chatted with Brad Mehldau

2004-07-03T02:25:00.000-04:00

This Montreal jazz fest is unique. Awesome. Great way of meeting artists. I had a chance to see Brad Mehldau Trio perform tonight at Gesu center. I took a chance and waited in front of the stage after the concert. Then came the monsters! The three members of the trio. I asked for a couple of advice. I told Brad I was a bassist and was curious to know what he was expecting from a bassist when he plays, he replied "Play the roots". Larry Grenadier gave me a couple of tricks about rhythm and harmony (I won't tell you, heh heh). And Jorge Rossi is pretty good at classical piano.
Ok, enough said... I have a lot of bass-work for the next 50 years... roots... tricks... interpretation...

I shook hand with Keith Jarrett! Yesssssssssss!

2004-07-01T04:33:00.000-04:00

Keith is my favorite musician ever. Period.
All styles. BTW, he doesn't play any specific style. He doesn't play all of'em either. Keith plays Jarrett. I've seen him perform in Paris, San Francisco and Montréal. Every note he plays is unique, so needless to say that each concert is different from any other concert he has made before. I always gather with the other fans at the backdoor. In SF, I got the autograph of all three members of the trio signed on the booklet of their CD. In Montréal, I got Gary's and Jack's, but not Keith's. He offered a handshake instead. I won't complain ;-)
Hard to describe what I felt at this moment. Something very intense yet subtle. This genius I've been listening to for 15 years... Thanks Keith.

NunaSoft selected to administer QualiArt's Web sites

2004-04-10T23:13:00.000-04:00

I met Fred at l'Escogriffe in Montréal. It was... errr... late in the night. We're talking jazz, aren't we? Anyway, there was a jam session, and between two glasses of sweet wine we had this discussion about "ohhh, you play jazz... what instrument? bass?!? well, me too. You play music, I do Web sites... ohhh, you do Web sites and you play the bass... well then we have to work together". This is what we unanimously decided. First on the cards: a quick revamp of QualiArt's main site.Then, we'll see, but Fred is a great and willing producer for outstanding artists.
Future looks superbright.