Hanna Richardson & Phil Flanigan

“Do Something” – arriving soon!

Check out Jonathan Royce-Gerry’s fabulous design for our new CD, Do Something!  Over the past year, we’ve done three separate sessions.  The first, at Subcat Studios here in Syracuse, features Randy Reinhart on cornet, Stefan Vasnier on piano, Phil on bass, and Hanna on tenor guitar and vocals.  We did two subsequent trio sessions at Rosewood Sound in Syracuse, one with Jared Mulcahy on bass and Phil on the second tenor guitar, and one with Randy Reinhart on cornet and Phil back on the bass.  Lots of fun tunes to work with.  Three sessions ably unified through mixing and mastering by Mike Badalamenti and Gary Baldassari.  A very busy year caused the project to go into hiatus for quite a while, but it’s finally done!  We should have CDs in a couple of weeks.  Sincere thanks to our Kickstarter supporters for making it possible–your CDs will be in the mail before long!

Hanna will be interviewed about her singing and music-making this coming Wednesday, April 20 on Hofstra University’s WRHU radio.

The interview will be conducted by Bob Collins during The Jazz Cafe at WRHU and will air at 2 pm (EST) at www.WRHU.org (follow the links to listen live).

I wonder what she’ll say?

Homer Center for the Arts is a former church, complete with gorgeous stained glass windows and pews.  It also has some of the finest acoustics of any performance venue in the area, helped considerably by the state-of-the-art sound system that doesn’t get in the way of the music.  Tenor Madness will be playing there on Thursday, April 21 at 7:00 p.m. The concert is free! It’s our first appearance since Phil’s dreadful broken ankle incident. Make the short drive; it won’t be a late night (we’re playing one long set) and it promises to be a fun one.  Here are directions.  Hope to see you there!

“One of the best chamber-jazz ensembles you’ll ever hear.”–Michael Steinman, Jazz Lives

That’s Jared Mulcahy, our bassist — alas, soon to leave us for music school.

When our original third member, Tom Bronzetti, stopped playing the tenor, I had a brain wave: bring in Jared Mulcahy on bass, and have Phil play the second tenor.  Jared is a remarkable bassist and has filled that chair admirably!  Here’s a picture of Jared a few years ago at a jam session we hosted; he’s about 15 here:

Well, he is!  But in recent years, as I’ve been struggling to learn to play the tenor guitar, Phil has been figuring out chords for me and generally messing around on the tenor guitar himself.  And he has kept messing around. Those of you familiar with Phil’s bass playing know he has always been an amazing soloist, so now he gets to apply that soloing ability to the guitar.  You won’t be surprised to learn that Charlie Christian features largely as an influence here!  Here’s an early gig we did at the wonderful L’Adour Restaurant in this new configuration:

Tenor Madness at L'Adour, August 2010 Photo: John Herr