UPDATE AUGUST 2014

August 31, 2014

I’ve been practicing quite a bit lately. Since things have been slow when it comes to gigs this summer, I’ve been able to spend more time than usual in my rehearsal space, which has been really nice.

I’ve been getting together with fellow percussionist Bo Håkansson a couple of times since the beginning of this year. We’ve been exchanging ideas and concepts back and forth and it’s been very inspiring to me. Bo, who is a great percussionist and is coming from the classical world, has shared some of his thoughts on how to work on your sound, your touch and your control and that has reminded me of some basic elements that I had “forgotten about” / haven’t worked on in a LONG time…

For one thing, we’ve been talking about dynamics and being able to pick Bo’s brain on such a fundamental topic has inspired me to get back to basics in general. Thinking along those lines, I started thinking about basic parameters in general (such as 4-way independence, control/consistency of sound and, to quote Milford Graves, “the motions of drumming”) and started developing some exercises on the very fundamentals of drumming, exercises that are feeling quite “to the point” to me and that I will keep developing and probably start using with my students as well, once I’ve worked everything out. I’ve been enjoying constructing my own exercises the last couple of years and would like to spend more time on that in the future. Once I’ve worked them out, they usually feel pretty “tailor made” to me.

A couple of records are in the making. Some of these sessions took place a while back and things have been delayed for various reasons, but Andersson/Nilsson/Anderskov will release an album before the end of the year and an album with Epstein / Åman / Nilsson is mixed but we still haven’t decided on where to release it. Also, an album that I recorded with Azerbaijan saxophonist Rain Sultanov last fall will be out fairly soon.

lim will record a new album in January and we’re now working on all new music for that CD.

I’ll also be adding some more videos soon…