James Danderfer

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Saturday Morning News Post!

Hey hey hey and a Ho ho ho! I hope you’ve all been enjoying some sort of vacation revolving around either Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, or Christmas. And if you’re one of the many who don’t care for this time of year then I hope you can at least laugh it off this season while you secretly plan your 2010 Thailand Christmas Holiday Vacation For One trip.

As for me, the celebrations continue today and I’ve treated myself with a brand new colour scheme on my website (thanks Chris!), I feel like a 16 year old girl with a brand new dress to wear to the ball.

So, that’s it for me. I’ve got a full day of over-eating, under-practicing, and checking out my new Esquire Magazine’s “Augmented Reality” features online.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Saturday Morning News Post!

Work continues on my commission for the CBC Jelly Roll Morton tribute in Vancouver, Jan 15. Click here for details.

Basicly, I’m writing a suite for Jelly Roll and his time spent at the Patricia Hotel. Some of it’s finished, some of it’s not. I’ve been spending a fair amount of time at my keyboard lately, recording ideas and little snippets of songs that catch my attention. That’s the easy part though, now I gotta take some of these gems and craft them into full fledged songs. “Driving the tunes home” as it were, is the laborious part, it’s still fun, but it’s still work, and as such, I try to avoid it as much as possible.

Anyways, a few nights ago I thought it was high time I go and see this Patricia Hotel for myself which is located in the infamous “Lowest-income postal code in the country”, East Hastings St. more…

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Saturday Morning News Post!

Sorry this post is a bit late, I flew from Montreal to Vancouver a few days ago and not just in the nick of time. The day I left, Montreal had its first snow storm of the season, and to my friends who live in Montreal and said it was a “little snow storm,” I said “You’re out of your goddamn minds!” A snow storm is a snow storm, when you get over a half foot of snow in a few hours and it’s blowing up, down, and sideways at the same time, well, that’s mother nature trying to tell you something,… Get out! Pack your shit and take your delicate sensibilities elsewhere! more…

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Saturday Morning News Post!

First off, let me hype my upcoming Vancouver shows both featuring Miles Black on piano and Joe Poole on drums; they are:

Jan 3rd @ The Cellar: “Party Like It’s 1929!”: A tribute to the classic clarinet trios of Johnny Dodds, Barney Bigard, and Benny Goodman and including some new original music by yours truly.

Jan 15th @ The Patricia Hotel: “Celebrating Jelly Roll Morton.” This show, for which I’ve been commissioned by the CBC to write some new music for, will feature a wide variety of Vancouver bands, including my trio. The event is commemorating Jelly Roll’s time spent living and working in Vancouver and will be recorded and broadcast on CBC Radio some time in the new year.

Moving on. Wow!, this 1st semester at McGill really flew by. Seems like only yesterday I was questioning the legitimacy of studying jazz in University and now more…

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Saturday (Morning) News Post!

Well, well, well, not too many comments last week. Hmm, I managed to write an entire blog about what it’s like to live with debt, as if nobody has ever experienced that before! Brilliant. Naturally, my rant about being broke was met with general silence except for one comment to the effect of “Deal with it.”

Oh right! Silly me, I forgot: Nobody ever wants to hear a complainer,… unless of course it’s something that both people want to complain about, but in general, nobody’s interested. They’ve got there own problems. Even if it’s a legitimate gripe, even if you’re old and sick, but especially if it’s regarding a jazz clarinetist who chose his own path. After all, let’s be honest, when I’m not stressed out about money, my job is a hell of a lot more fun and rewarding than most peoples. more…

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Saturday Morning News Post!

Readers, let me level with you, this hasn’t been my best week. It’s been a pretty goddamn shitty week in fact. It’s a number of things really, but the proverbial cherry on top of it all is a lagging anxiety concerning money, or a lack thereof.

Of course, who hasn’t had money concerns in the last year or two, right?

And yes, it’s all relative, for a jazz clarinetist a lucrative year could simply mean being able to afford to go out for drinks a few nights a week and pay the rent!,… awesome!

Many a professional jazz musician have heard the question after a gig: “Wow, you sound fantastic! So what do you really do? more…

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In case you missed it in the headline,… the SMNP is one year old everybody! Push aside that bowl of corn flakes, break out the bubbly and let’s celebrate! (Remember, there’s nothing with a little “hair of the dog” in the morning,… as long as no one sees you doing it.)

And what a year it’s been! In only 365 days you’ve seen the SMNP evolve from an amateurish, uninformed blog site to what it is today,… an amateurish, uninformed blog site with a comment section! Boo-yeah!

And so last week I chose to mark the occasion by more…

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Saturday Morning News Post!

First off, readers, let me say a big hoorah! to all of you who offered your two bits in the brand new comments section which became (thanks to Chris Hold) the latest exciting feature of the SMNP. It’s great to read your opinions, feed back, stories, etc. So you get to voice your opinions on my uninformed views of life and the arts, whle I get to feel like I’ve got friends,…it’s a win-win folks!

As I write this weeks SMNP I am flying from Montreal to Vancouver to follow my one true passion, you guessed it! more…

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Saturday Morning News Post!

Readers, something unusual happened to me the other night. I was listening to a recording of my song being rehearsed with the student 10-tet here at McGill; it’s a somewhat difficult piece and the read-through was shaky (as first read-throughs generally are), and then came the clarinet solo by yours truly…

If I can be at all objective about my own creative work I’d say this clarinet solo was somewhat, em,…lame. I was playing as loud as possible in order to be heard (it’s a loud kind of song but clarinet isn’t a very loud instrument), which led to tension not only in the sound but in my hands as well, which led to uneven (and “ungrooving”) technique and generally poor rhythm. I could even hear myself mid-solo realizing how bad it was sounding as I began to flounder for any musical ideas I could think of.

Now readers, I like to think my clarinet playing doesn’t usually suck that bad but this wasn’t the unusual part I speak of. The unusual part of it was more…

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Saturday Morning News Post!

First off, my sincere thanks to all those readers who took the time to answer last weeks questions regarding changes to my web site and the SMNP.

Yes, thank you all,… all 3 of you. more…