I have been listening to a lot of records this past six months and some of the albums I’ve been into are:

Peter Epstein Quartet: Polarities (Songlines)
Morton Feldman / Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin & Kluttig: For Samuel Becket (CPO)
Dr. N. Ramani: Classic Karnatic Flute (Nimbus)
Nikolay Roslavets / Marc-André Hamelin: Piano Music (Hyperion)
Don Cherry: Modern Art (Mellotronen)
Doug Hammond Trio: Perspicuity (Bellaphon)
Darius Milhaud / Radio-Sinfonieorchester Basel & Francis: The Complete Symphonies (CPO)
Jeff Ballard Trio: Time’s Tales (OKeh)
John Scofield: What We Do (Blue Note)
David Torn: Only Sky (ECM)

Once again, haven’t been to very many concerts (unfortunately) but I have enjoyed these:

Taraf de Haïdouks @ Pildammsteatern, Malmö on June 21^st
Chick Corea & Herbie Hancock @ Jazz Jazz à Juan in Antibes, France on July 12^th
Herbie Hancock solo piano @ Pomeranian Dukes’ Castle, Szczecin, Poland on July 22^nd

Also, I just finished Herbie Hancock’s book “Possibilities”.

This summer and the beginning of the fall has been an unusually slow period when it comes to gigs but I’m keeping busy practising / studying and I have some stuff coming up later in the fall. In November, I’m touring with Cecilia Persson & Norrbotten Big Band and expEAR will do a project together with double bass player extraordinaire Drew Gress in December. I’m also planning to go to Chennai, India in December to study konokol and I’m preparing a CD recording with guitarist Hans Nyman in a new project in January.

Having had more time to practise, I’ve spent a lot of time in my studio lately. I’ve been getting into working on one parameter at a time, focusing on different aspects of playing the drum set separately and then putting everything back together again. I haven’t really been working like this in the past but I really enjoy the feeling of being able to isolate the very fundamentals of playing the instrument and exploring each parameter individually. To me, this also gives me a chance to “catalog” my playing and examine my range (for instance when it comes to dynamics, tempo, density, complexity and so on).

This has also led me to come up with some exercises dealing with different aspects of playing (see Update August 2014), and I’m planning to develop those further and eventually start using them with my students as well. More about this later…