This week, the Weather Duo heads southeast to Fredericksburg, VA, where we're playing at the Electroacoustic Barn Dance.

We've been gearing up for that this week. In preparation, I made some electroacoustic music, which we are using in a piece that we'll perform on Friday:

This bit consists entirely of piano sounds that I recorded myself playing on Sunday. It's fun, not being a pianist, to make "piano music." Perhaps sometime soon I'll work on a longer project of affected piano playing.

In addition to our performance in Fredericksburg, the Weather Duo will be heading to Arlington on Sunday, the 30th, to play a show at the CD Cellar.

I'm certainly looking forward to this trip, a highlight of which will be teaming back up with Anna, who is returning stateside from her studies in Ireland to perform with us. Woo!

I'm flattered to announce that I've been immortalized in the form of an electronic/experimental/ambient album by the electronic musician John Praw.

"Ben Willis" was released this week on Mine All Mine Records: 

More flattering than having an album named after me is the fact that it's actually quite good.

You can peruse some of John Praw's previous releases here.

I went to the Jazz Jam at the Cardinal a couple of weeks ago, which is hosted by the New Breed quartet every Tuesday. If you're in Madison, this is the place to be on a Tuesday night, believe me. 1/2 price wine and a great band. Go!

Anyway, I sat in for a rendition of Wayne Shorter's Footprints, after which a drummer and sax player who also sat in and I decided to meet up later for a trio hang.

Turns out we're the coolest band ever! Here is the second improvisation we did, which I've broken into two parts:

the JazzSports! sessions, featuring:
Pete Ross, saxophone
Kyle Traska, drums
Ben Willis, bass

Speaking of new music, here is some new stuff  from some great musicians I'm really happy to know:

The recycle project is an electronic music/sound design project of composer/cellist/scholar Brian Grimm, in which he takes recordings of his acoustic works, and manipulates them into new pieces.

Here is another new track by Brian, which is exceedingly hip:

It is dedicated to a friend of his, a bass player, who has sadly passed this last week. I also lament the loss of another bass player. May he rest in bass!

Also check out this month's bell monks video:

Last week's concert was a blast! Some people have impressive devices devoted to capturing high-quality images of real-world events, but here are some shots that I captured with the mediocre imitation of such a device that my cellular phone is equipped with: