We've covered the DeTomaso Mangusta and the Iso Rivolta S4 Fidia, both of which were designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro. Today we're going to take a look at another one of Giugario's creations: the Maserati Ghibli.
First introduced in 1967, the Ghibli is a grand touring coupe that blended power and handling with copious amounts of Italian style. Ghibli is an Arabic word for a hot wind that blows in the Sahara Desert. Why Maserati decided to name a car after that, I have no idea.
When I think about Lamborghini, I think of their most well known creations: the Countach, the Diablo, the Gallardo, and the Murcielago. But it was Lamborghini's early cars such as the Miura and the Espada that really earned the company its stripes.
The Miura was unveiled in 1966 to great praise, largely due to its beautiful styling. Two years later, Lamborghini had another hit on its hands with the Espada. This was the company's first 4-seater, and it went on to become their most popular car up until that time. Just over 1,200 Espadas were built during their 10-year production run.
When I was a kid, there was a show on TV called "Before They Were Stars." The show looked at popular celebrities to see what they were like before they became famous. Some of them had humble careers working in menial jobs for low wages – and of course, they would always dig up an embarrassing high school yearbook photo.
In the same way, most car enthusiasts have heard of the DeTomaso Pantera, the Ford-powered, Italian-styled, mid-engine sports car from the 1970s. Before DeTomaso hit it big with the Pantera, they tested the waters with a car that is relatively unknown today: the Mangusta.
The Mangusta was the Pantera before it got its teeth fixed, its hair combed, and changed its name. Like an up-and-coming celebrity, the Mangusta was a little rough around the edges before it became a big shot.
First introduced in 1964, the Ford Mustang was an instant success that combined style and performance into a compact and affordable package. The car's long hood, short trunk, and V8 engine captured America's hearts and launched Ford to the top of the sales charts like a Saturn V rocket. Ford was unstoppable, selling a staggering 600,000 Mustangs in 1966.
As time went on, the initial excitement over the new car began to wear off. By 1972, demand for the Mustang was down to 125,000 cars per year. Then in 1973 the oil crisis hit hard, sending gas prices soaring. It seemed as though the Mustang was going to be a tough sell.
Ford responded by introducing the downsized Mustang II in 1974, an ugly little thing that was based on the Pinto. Although it shared the Mustang name, it didn't share anything else with the first generation cars. That's what makes this 1973 Ford Mustang so special – it's the last year of the original pony cars.
When I visit a classic car show, there is never a shortage of Fords, Chevrolets, Chryslers, and other American muscle cars. However, it's rare to see a Studebaker at the local cruise-in night. Why is that? The simple answer is that Studebaker just didn't build a whole lot of cars.
Take this 1963 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk for example. It is one of just 4,009 produced in 1963. In that same year, Ford sold 63,313 Thunerbirds and Pontiac sold 72,959 Grand Prixs. As you can tell, this car was definitely not a big seller, which makes it all the more special to have spotted this GT Hawk at the Scottsdale Pavilions.
Okay, I know what you're thinking: when was the last time you heard the words "Volvo" and "sports car" in the same sentence? Volvos are famous for being some of the safest and most reliable cars on the road, but they're also quite boring. However, it wasn't always this way. Volvo did make a sporty little coupe that was introduced back in 1960: the P1800.


Most entrepreneurs know the long odds: only a fraction of them will lead their enterprises through the rocky stages of growth to launch self-sustaining companies. Very few know how to outflank the failures that await them at every turn, including the most painful--being abandoned by key members of their team or getting pushed out by their board just as their business starts to generate real value.
Derek Lidow is on a mission to improve these odds and change these outcomes. Throughout his long career--as CEO, innovator, and entrepreneur--he has tested virtually every aspect of launching a business. Lidow now argues that success is far less dependent upon a firm's idea or any grand strategy than it is upon something more personal: leadership. Emerging companies have specific leadership requirements, stage by fast-moving stage. Few founders have been able to leverage the tremendous power of this underrecognized reality--until now.
With Lidow's help, you will learn how to become the startup leader your business needs, and you'll move forward with your plans with greater confidence and success.
Derek Lidow is a longtime global CEO, innovator, and entrepreneur. Among other accomplishments, Lidow is widely known as one of the world's top experts on the electronics industry; his contributions range from patents to value chain applications that have forever improved companies as diverse as Sony, Samsung, Philips, Goldman Sachs, and IBM. Today, Lidow teaches Entrepreneurial Leadership and Creativity, Innovation, and Design at Princeton University. He keynotes on the subject of startup leadership and is a media commentator; Lidow's coverage to date includes the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Bloomberg, the Economist, Nikkei, Reuters, and Taipei Times, as well as many top bloggers. Prior to joining Princeton's faculty, Lidow was founder and CEO of iSuppli, which he sold to IHS in 2010 for over $100 million. Lidow's degrees are from Princeton and Stanford, where he earned a PhD in applied physics as a Hertz Foundation Fellow. He is based in New York City and Princeton, New Jersey. For more information, please visit DerekLidow.com.


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Bryant Watson duo share new music
Friday, 19 January 2018 08:56	Richard Amery
Friday night was all about country and roots music. The Bryant Watson duo aka Pete Watson and Joel Bryant returned to the Owl Acoustic lounge, Jan 12.
I hadn't seen them for a while and as it turned out, they had new songs to share as Joel Bryant, got inspired by a bad break up to write a lot of new songs.
Pete Watson laid down some sweet guitar solos wile Bryant sang his heart out.
In addition to lots of new songs they played lots of covers including an impressive version of the Allman Brothers band's "Rambling Man, complete with harmonized guitar solos, the duo played on acoustic guitars.
They showed equally impressive, tender vocal harmonies on a pretty version of the Eagles' " Peaceful, Easy Feeling."
They ended their first set with a cover of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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← Minister's Decision
Posted on May 30, 2018 by Jeff Broomfield
Concerned Citizens of Brant
endorse Green Party Candidate Ken Burns for MPP
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 30, 2018.
Paris, ON — The Concerned Citizens of Brant today announced their endorsement of Green Party of Ontario candidate Ken Burns for Member of Provincial Parliament for Brantford-Brant.
"Ken Burns and the Green Party of Ontario have supported the CCOB's efforts to protect our drinking water from the very beginning, says Past-President Ron Norris "they have been with us every step of the way."
"Ken launched his election campaign with a pledge to do whatever it takes to protect the Paris-Galt moraine that provides our clean drinking water," adds current President Jeff Broomfield, "and we know he means it! At every public event since, Ken Burns is the only local candidate pledging to support the Greenbelt study areas and the Green Party of Ontario is the only party supporting the Bluebelt in Ontario which would protect the Grand River Watershed."
"At the All-Candidates Debate in Paris, Ken was the only candidate to raise protecting our drinking water from the threats of gravel mining as a local priority," noted Anne Ehrlich, a founding CCOB member, "he appreciates the scientific evidence that atrazine contaminant risks pose with aggregate extraction, washing and wastes so close to the Paris town wells."
"People Powered Change means protecting our drinking water quality and quantity for people and communities first," says Green Party Candidate Ken Burns, "We are proud to continue to stand with the Concerned Citizens of Brant and amplify their incredible efforts to protect Paris' drinking water, in particular from additional threats created by aggregate extraction. With years of commitment, this group of dedicated citizens succeeded in achieving the most stringent monitoring and testing standards to date. But as the land which provides our clean drinking water continues to be threatened, we must ensure that we value the natural services that the land provides and continue our efforts to achieve true source water protection for everyone in Brantford, Brant, and Six Nations."
For Ken, the choice is clear, "You can't eat aggregate, and you can't live without water."
"We also need to look at the process for citizen consultation", says Burns "the CCOB endured significant financial burden when the County suddenly withdrew its support for the appeal on the eve of the tribunal hearing. We need to explore options to restore intervenor funding so that the voice of the people is heard through a shared process and evidence based decision making."
The Concerned Citizens of Brant is a group of volunteers concerned with protecting our source water & environment now & for future generations. The CCOB endorsement recognizes the strong alignment of their mission with the Green Party of Ontario's platform of sustainability, to build the community we want at a price we can afford, now and in the future.
Ken Burns is the Green Party of Ontario Candidate for Brantford-Brant in the provincial election on June 7th. For more information, please visit www.brantgreens.ca. Ken Burns can be reached at kenburns@brantgreens.ca or 519-770-5305.
CCOB Contact: Jeff Broomfield – (519) 754-6229 – jeffbroomfield@me.com
Click the link to download the PDF: CCOB endorsement Ken Burns-Green Party of Ontario


"I'm another of Toby's very satisfied customers and bought both sets from Toby himself. I bought them about 35 years apart, but for some cosmic reason Toby played the very same demo CD for me during both purchases (Steely Dan). I'll remember your work every time I listen to these speaker sets and I'd love to come visit the new store the next time I'm in town."
"I bought one of the Low Sheriffs in 2012 when I was a senior in high-school. Car Toys, Best Buy, and several other speaker/car audio shops I went to disregarded me as just another kid looking at speakers- never really taking the time to explain to me what all of the 'numbers' associated with car audio meant. True's shop is the only place I found and could trust to help understand the terms and decide which speaker set up was best for me. I've had the Low Sheriff in my daily driver for the last 3, almost 4 years- STILL LIKE BRAND NEW. No one can believe the sound quality and impact of just one 10 inch speaker. True does an amazing job of guaranteeing a one of a kind buying experience."
"I have purchased Toby Speakers since 1989 and have enjoyed the best kept secret in the industry. Many companies make good and bad speakers and it's hard to know what you're getting. Toby does not make a bad speaker. You will never be disappointed with anything you take home from Toby's."
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Jazz in Glen Ellyn
A shout-out to Glen Ellyn, Illinois, the so-called bucolic bedroom community west of Chicago where I grew up, had crushes on the neighborhood boys (Chucker, Eddie, Gordie, and Jimmy), went to grade school and junior high and high school (at Glenbard West), and got confirmed as a Lutheran (Missouri Synod, no less). Who knew it would become a jazz mecca, home to Chicago's top jazz radio station (public radio WDCB-FM 90.9) and an annual jazz festival?
Posted by Pamela Espeland at 7:08 PM 1 comment:
Tia Fuller concert review
From the Department of Better Late than Never, a review that should have been posted much earlier. It will live at the top of the blog for a short time, then move to its proper chronological position.
When: May 25, 2010 • Where: Dakota • Who: Tia Fuller, saxophones; Shamie Royston, piano; Luques Curtis, bass; Rudy Royston, drums
I saw saxophonist Tia Fuller when she came to the Dakota last July. I thought she was good, although she didn't knock my socks off. (Her drummer, Kim Thompson, did.) Fuller returned to the Dakota in May of this year and I missed both nights, something I now regret. Here's what my friend Raymond Hayes wrote about her in an email to me the day after he saw her.
A quick review of last night's concert. Tia Fuller was great, way better then the first time she came. This time she had her own band. She had her sister [Shamie Royston] on piano, her sister's husband [Rudy Royston] on drums, and a very good bass player [Luques Curtis] who was not related. She did mostly original material with a few standards thrown in for good measure. She is a very powerful player. Definitely influenced by Coltrane (who isn't), she has obviously studied very hard. And her hard work is paying off. This band was as tight as any jazz band I have seen at the Dakota. But her personality is very bright and bubbly, more what you would expect from a singer then from a hard-core jazz player. She definitely loves playing. It was really interesting seeing this bright and bubbly person talk about her family and playing music. Then, all of a sudden, throw down as hard as Joshua Redman. Her sister is great piano player who can play both fast and hard plus light and lyrical. Her sister's husband, the drummer is one of the hottest guys out there, they said he just came off the road with Eddie Palmieri and has played with Branford Marsalis, Joe Lovano, Charles Lloyd and many others. Same is true with the bass player ,who just joined the band last week. Only two things wrong. (1) I only went to one night and I should have seen both. (2) There were almost no people there. Why is it that some of the best jazz you hear comes when there is almost nobody around? I downloaded her new record [Decisive Steps, Mack Avenue, 2010]. It's very good. If she ever comes back you have to go. Ray
Photo from Tia Fuller's website.
Posted by Pamela Espeland at 6:50 PM No comments:
Labels: Luques Curtis, Rudy Roystonj, Shamie Royston, Tia Fuller
Benefit for Dean Magraw scheduled for August 22
It's been a year since the first in a series of benefits was held for guitarist/composer Dean Magraw. Time for another one, as Dean is still recovering and it's a long, slow, costly process. Come out and help a great musician/soul man/human being with medical and living expenses.
Musicians on board as of this writing: Frank Boyle and His Eminent Acoustic Entourage, Dakota Dave Hull, Lehto & Wright, Laura Mackenzie, Elgin Foster, Marcus Wise, Jim Anton, Mark Anderson, Gregg Herriges, Anthony Cox, Cory Wong, April Foo's, Prudence Johnson.
When: Sunday, August 22, 2010, starting at 10 a.m.
Where: The Celtic Junction, 836 Prior Ave., St. Paul
FMI: Do the Dean
I wrote a profile of Dean in late 2008 that's still one of the pieces of which I'm most proud, not the least because he told me later that he liked it.
Photo by Manfred Pollert.
Labels: Dean Magraw
Craig Taborn Speaks
The innovative and daring young pianist/keyboardist/composer gives us glimpses into his process and thinking in an interview with WBGO's Josh Jackson. If you have time, go listen to the whole thing (and download a free concert from the Care Fusion festival) on NPR's excellent "A Blog Supreme." Meanwhile, here are a few illuminating excerpts.
On solos and soloing:
"A lot of my groups have very little soloing going on. It's all group improvisation, and solos may emerge, but it's less geared toward that...It's hard for my improvisational process to dictate solos, or even solo spaces. It's hard for me to say, 'Okay, now there's going to be a saxophone solo,' and have that hold in the moment, because it may not want to happen then...I'd rather just let the musical moment and the musicians themselves decide. If a solo emerges, it emerges because somebody is playing some really interesting material and everybody else decides to let that be at the forefront. For me, that seems like the only reason to really have a solo."
On playing both piano and synthesizers/electronic instruments:
"They're just different instruments and different ways of making music. They don't present to me much of a dichotomy that needs to be bridged...They feed on each other in my playing...I can access a certain kind of technical thing when playing a keyboard, for instance--or anything with buttons, actually. I have a digital dexterity that comes from playing piano, so I can make certain things happen live with synthesizers that is facilitated by having finger and hand independence. If I didn't play piano, I don't know if I'd be able to pull off some of the things I do, just because I can have my left hand doing something while my right hand's doing something else and really not think about it too much."
On playing two leads at once, one with the left hand and one with the right:
"It's all an illusion, but I'm trying to think of two things at once. What that boils down to is a kind of strobing between the ideas, the two hands and the ideas I'm trying to develop...I always to try to work on even more, like maybe if I get a third idea...It's just something I'm continually working on, and trying to hear that way, trying to hear counterpoint, contrapuntal ideas...I'm trying to hear multiple ideas all the time. A lot of that is an extension of things I heard Sun Ra do. "
On what it means to live with music:
"Not to get too Cage-like, but tuning into the environment--it's just sounds in time. Extending that, it's just events in time. For me, living with music is just more of an active participation in that, trying to create things that isolate or abstract from a larger world of sound and organize them in some way. That's the 'art form' I choose. But I think we all live with music all the time."
Thanks to Craig's mom, Marjorie Taborn, for alerting me to this interview and concert.
Posted by Pamela Espeland at 10:50 AM No comments:
Labels: Craig Taborn
2011 NEA Jazz Masters Announced
On Thursday, the NEA announced the winners of the 2011 NEA Jass Masters Award: flutist Hubert Laws, saxophonist/flutist/composer David Liebman, composer/arranger/trumpeter/trombonist Johnny Mandel, jazz producer/author Orrin Keepnews (winner of the award for jazz advocacy), and the Marsalis family: pianist/educator Ellis Jr., saxophonist/composer/bandleader Branford, trumpeter/composer/educator/bandleader Wynton, trombonist Delfeayo, and percussionist/vibraphonist Jason.
I don't get the family award. (Lois Gilbert of Jazz Corner put it this way: "I'm kind of surprised at an all encompassing Marsalis family honor being named 2011 NEA Jazz Masters.") I agree that the Marsalis family has been and is important to jazz. Although each has occasionally said or done boneheaded things (except, maybe, for father Ellis), I'm not a Marsalis basher and never will be. But--Jazz Masters?
Here's how the NEA describes the award:
The National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship is the highest honor that our nation bestows upon a jazz musician. Each year since 1982, the program has elevated to its ranks a select number of living legends who have made exceptional contributions to the advancement of jazz.
For the NEA Jazz Masters, the selection criteria are artistic excellence and significance of the nominees' contributions to the development and performance of jazz. The Arts Endowment will honor musicians who represent a range of styles and instruments. These awards will be categorical, e.g., a rhythm instrumentalist, pianist, solo instrumentalist, vocalist, and an arranger or composer.
Why not honor Ellis as paterfamilias, performer, composer, and educator? Although "educator" isn't one of the categories, and neither is "paterfamilias." I'm not saying that Ellis doesn't deserve to be honored and respected. But is he a Jazz Master? Wynton and Branford, one day, yes. Right now they seem kind of young to wear the Jazz Master hat. Delfeayo and Jason? Waaaay too soon to tell.
I'm not sure what the "family" award says about the Jazz Masters program. Currently this leads every story about this year's awards. "America's first family of jazz can now claim the nation's highest jazz honor" (AP). Most egregiously: "The patriarch of the first family of New Orleans jazz, Ellis Marsalis, will be honored along with his four sons as Jazz Masters by the National Endowment for the Arts...Three other artists also will be honored..." (WWLTV). We learn who the "three other artists" are at the very end of the article, almost as an afterthought. Let's hope the spotlight doesn't stay on the unusual "family" award while Laws, Liebman, and Mandel (and Orrin Keepnews) are left in the shadows.
Labels: David Liebman, Hubert Laws, Johnny Mandel, Marsalis Family, NEA Jazz Masters
MacPhail gets $15,000 from the NEA to showcase music by Charles Mingus
Originally published at MinnPost.com, Thursday, June 24, 2010
MacPhail Center for Music has been awarded an "American Masterpieces: Music" grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The $15,000 grant will support a unique performance and education project showcasing the compositions of jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus.
One of the most important figures in 20th century American music, Mingus left a vast body of work, second only to that of Duke Ellington. After his death in 1979, the NEA provided grants for cataloging his music. Microfilms were given to the New York Public Library, where they are available for study and scholarship. His papers and other items — manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, interviews, recording sessions, broadcasts — were presented to the Library of Congress in 1993.
MacPhail's ambitious project, called "Meditations and Revelations," will include four concerts at Antonello Hall beginning in October. The concerts will feature a trio, quintet, septet, and nonet of area musicians including bassist and MacPhail jazz coordinator Adam Linz, drummers JT Bates and Alden Ikeda, saxophonists Chris Thomson and Michael Lewis, and pianist Bryan Nichols.
Preceding each concert, Linz and an ensemble will demonstrate Mingus' music for students at four Twin Cities high schools: South and Patrick Henry in Minneapolis, Central in St. Paul, and Minnetonka High School. In addition, the Mingus repertoire will be infused into MacPhail's curriculum throughout the year, with combos playing his music and classes learning the Mingus legacy.
"There is a certain wildness to Mingus' music that makes it fun for musicians of all ages and skill levels," Linz told MinnPost. "His deep roots in the church and blues make him accessible, and his rubbing shoulders with the avant-garde makes him desirable. ... It's a music that is not to be taken lightly. It makes you really get your [act] together as a player. But the energy at the end of the day is unmeasurable. When all the wheels are turning, there's nothing like it."
"Meditations and Revelations" concert dates: Thursday, Oct. 7 (trio); Thursday, Nov. 18 (quintet); Thursday, Jan. 20 (nonet); Thursday, Feb. 10 (septet). All concerts will be held at 8 p.m. at Antonello Hall, MacPhail Center for Music, 501 South Second Street, Minneapolis.
Read a review of the first concert here.
Labels: Adam Linz, Charles Mingus, MacPhail Center for Music, NEA
A star in Europe, José James heads home on tour
Originally published at MinnPost.com, Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Some people in the Twin Cities may remember José James as a slight, soft-spoken student at DeLaSalle and South High. Others may recall his Monday night performances at Fireside Pizza in Richfield with pianist Denny Malmberg. Most probably don't know that in Europe, 31-year-old James is a sensation. Now based in London, he has released three CDs, performed in dozens of countries, and played to crowds numbering in the thousands.
James is currently on tour with his latest release, a collaboration with acclaimed Belgian pianist Jef Neve. "For All We Know" is a collection of jazz standards — "Body and Soul," "Embraceable You," "Tenderly," "Lush Life" — in spare, intimate arrangements, as if James and Neve had come into your living room (bringing a 9-foot Steinway grand) and given a concert just for you. They will be at the Dakota this Thursday for one night only.
The story of "For All We Know" is a blend of fairytale and kismet. James is not strictly a jazz singer, though his roots are in jazz; he performed around town in his teens, studied jazz at New York's New School with Junior Mance and Chico Hamilton, and took part in the prestigious Thelonious Monk and London Jazz competitions. (He won neither but was a finalist for the Monk, where his performance made judge Dee Dee Bridgewater cool her face with a fan.) While in London, he handed a demo to DJ and producer Gilles Peterson, who owns the Brownswood label.
That was his second big break. (We'll get to his first in a minute.) "Gilles Peterson put me on the world stage and gave me a chance to produce my first album," James told MinnPost earlier this week by email. He wrote his own material and included soul and hip-hop vibes. "I was heard by other folks outside of jazz, which is crucial." Both "The Dreamer" (2008), his first recording for Brownswood, and the follow-up "Blackmagic" (2010) are more pop than jazz.
Performed together in Belgium
James met Neve in Belgium, where they performed together on a TV show and Neve filled in for James' regular pianist at a concert in Brussels. When James suggested they make a recording, Neve booked a studio for the next day.
They played songs they love. "These are basically my favorite standards," James said. "Songs I have a relationship with. They were my introduction to jazz. I grew up listening to the classic versions by Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon. These are our national treasures, timeless songs from the history of our culture. They remain important."
And here's where the story gets really interesting. "For All We Know" is an album of mostly first takes and no overdubs, like the great jazz album "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman," released in 1963 and now a classic. (Kurt Elling's interpretation, "Dedicated to You," won the 2010 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album.)
James and Neve made the recording for their ears only. Then word got out, buzz happened and Impulse! came calling — the same label that is home to "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman."
"For All We Know" is the first new release on Impulse! since 2004. Its most recent release up to now: Alice Coltrane's "Translinear Light."
Coltrane was key
What does James think of this fortuitous chain of events? "What can I say? 'Dedicated to You' is my favorite male vocal jazz album of all time. It was hearing John Coltrane play 'Equinox' when I was 17 that got me seriously into jazz singing, so he's always had this pull on me. He is an inspiration to us all, and it's an honor to follow Alice on the label."
Impulse! is betting heavily on "For All We Know." The new CD will play a major role in the label's 50th-anniversary celebrations. The suits are hoping that it will bridge the gap between jazz and pop — like Norah Jones' "Come Away With Me" famously did for Blue Note. Plans are in the works for a second Impulse! CD, a live recording of James's "Facing East" project, a five-piece band (with Neve) that plays the music of John Coltrane.
Now, what was James' first big break? Meeting music teacher Denny Malmberg at South High. "He transferred from DeLaSalle midyear," Malmberg recalls. "The counselors put a schedule together for him, and the only place they could put him during fifth hour was my women's choir. He sat there staring at me for two weeks.
"Then one day he came up to me and said, 'Hey, Mr. Malmberg, have you ever heard of Nat King Cole?' I said, 'Of course.' He said, 'I do a lot of his songs.' I said, 'How about "Route 66"?' I started playing it on the piano, he started singing it, and he blew me off my bench. José sang baritone-bass parts with the women's choir for the rest of the year, and we featured him on solos."
How did the women feel about that? "Are you kidding? They loved him."
'I want to be a jazz singer'
James and Malmberg grew close and remain friends. When James moved back to Minneapolis after several disappointing years in New York ("He was so young; it was very difficult," Malmberg says), he went to his former teacher and announced, "I want to be a jazz singer." They performed together on Monday nights at Fireside Pizza for just over a year.
"José is all about Coltrane," Malmberg says. "He's all about Monk. He's all about Louis Armstrong. He knows the history, he knows the roots. [Vocalist] Debbie Duncan once told me, 'José is an old soul,' and it's true."
Malmberg helped James create his audition tape for the 2004 Monk competition. James didn't win (another young singer named Gretchen Parlato did), but that hardly matters anymore. Did Malmberg know his former student would be successful? "I had no doubts about it. I had never heard a voice like that in my life."
James has a gorgeous baritone, sultry and haunting. He's been compared to Hartman — and to Billy Eckstine, Gil Scott-Heron, Joe Williams, and Bobby McFerrin (for the quality and resonance of his voice), Marvin Gaye (for his soulful style), D'Angelo (for sexiness), and Billie Holiday (for his ability to communicate pure emotion). I hear Andy Bey in his voluptuous, quivering vibrato.
Closing note: Malmberg had several students who went on to be fine musicians. A short list: Michael Lewis, Kevin Washington, Michael Bland (Prince's drummer), Dan Frankowski, Adam Linz, Bryan Nichols, Betsy Barta, Bernard Scully (principal French horn for the SPCO). Some were going through very rough stretches when they met Malmberg. "I hate to think what they would be doing right now if they hadn't found music — if that hadn't been available to them at that time," Malmberg says. Words to ponder for those who would cut music programs in the schools.
Hear tracks from "For All We Know."
See and hear James talk about and perform "Lush Life."
José James and Jef Neve, Thursday, June 24, 7:30 and 9:30, Dakota, 1010 Nicollet Mall, ($20-$10). Tickets at the door or online.
Labels: Denny Malmberg, Jef Neve, José James
Interview with Sean Jones
By Larry Englund
Larry Englund hosts the weekly radio show "Rhythm and Grooves" for KFAI Radio Without Boundaries. bb
Trumpeter Sean Jones has a muscular, yet often lyrical approach to contemporary jazz. He has been called a Young Lion, a Firebrand, a Rising Star (Downbeat, 2006, 2007), and Best New Artist (Jazz Times Readers Poll, 2007). Barely thirty, he has released five albums on Detroit's Mack Avenue Records, played on the Grammy Award-winning Turned to Blue by Nancy Wilson, and has served as a session man with Joe Lovano, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, and Jon Faddis, as well as for label-mates Tia Fuller and Gerald Wilson.
At his Twin Cities Jazz Festival performance on June 17, Jones and his quartet came out blazing, causing at least one fan to wonder at the band's incendiary performance, declaring his awe with, "This is the warm-up?" [Ed. note: Jones preceded Joe Lovano on the Mears Park stage.] Jones debuted original music from an upcoming album, sharing it as a gift to the audience. I talked with Jones by phone about a week before his performance, as he took a break from a recording session.
Larry Englund: Good morning, Mr. Jones, how are you today?
Sean Jones: I'm doing well, how are you?
LE: Just fine. You said you are in the studio. Are you doing some new recording?
SJ: I'm actually in the studio with Gerald Wilson. We're working on his next record. Next week I'm in the studio with my band.
LE: I notice you've been on a couple of Wilson's records on Mack Avenue Records. He's one of the masters.
SJ: He certainly is. He's one of the staples of the Big Band rep, and I'm honored to work with him.
LE: What is your first memory of music?
SJ: Wow. (Pauses.) Actually, the first memory of music that I have is being in church, I think I was about five years old and saw the choir director directing the choir and I thought it was pretty cool that when he made a gesture with his hands there was sound. I thought the sound was coming out of his hands. I know that sounds strange, but I actually thought the sound was coming from his hands. So after church, when everyone was finding their way out the door, I went up to the choir stand and put my hands out thinking there was going to be sound, and there was no sound. I went to my momma and asked, "How come there's no sound when I do it?" She said "Well, you know, that's the music. They're playing the music, they're playing the instruments." So I've always been intrigued by music, man, since I was five years old.
LE: Was the choir director the first musician you admired?
SJ: I didn't necessarily admire him, I think it was music as a whole. The first musician I ever really admired was a guy named Eddie Howard, an organist at our church. He would do stuff with his hands and feet that I thought, wow, that's pretty amazing. I had to be in elementary school then.
LE: What was the impetus for your decision to become a jazz musician?
SJ: I would have to say, sixth grade, where I had a great teacher named Jessica Turner. She brought two Miles Davis records in. She brought Miles Davis' Amandla, and Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, and I kind of fell in love with jazz. Then I knew that I would at least be listening to that kind of music for the rest of my life. I didn't know until high school that I would make a career out of it.
LE: When you made that decision, what was behind that, your decision to become a jazz musician?
SJ: Two things. Someone asked me what's the first thing you want to do when you wake up in the morning. I said, "I want to play my trumpet." They said, "Well, that should be your career." Then I wrote a letter to my mother telling her what I would be doing ten years from my sixteenth birthday. Those two things really led me in this direction.
LE: When you made that decision, you went to school and studied classical trumpet.
SJ: Right.
LE: What made you decide to study classical trumpet, as opposed to going to a jazz school?
SJ: Well, I figured it's very important to understand the instrument. I wanted to study the pedagogical component of playing music, which is: knowing your instrument inside and out. Studying jazz, or any genre for that matter, is pretty much about learning the musicianship required to play a certain type of music, swing, chords, all of that. That's musicianship. Pedagogy is how to play the instrument, or the vehicle that you choose to make music. I think a lot of jazz musicians, sort of in hindsight, begin to study the pedagogy of their instrument, because they find out their musicianship far exceeds what they're able to do with their vehicle of choice, their instrument. For me, I wanted to make sure that both were balanced, all the way through.
LE: Now you teach at Duquesne University.
SJ: That's correct.
LE: What are the two or three main points that you tell your students when they take one of your classes?
SJ: First and foremost, you have to be able to play your instrument. It's extremely important to know your instrument in and out. To be able to play anything that you possibly can on your instrument. Know a variety of styles, and also get in touch with your humanity. Those three things, to me, make you a great musician. Know your instrument. Know the music, and know how to be a great human being. It's extremely important.
LE: That will all come out in your playing.
SJ: That's right.
LE: For the last few years you've been the lead trumpet for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. You've also put out five albums. You're obviously doing sideman work with Gerald Wilson, Tia Fuller, and others. What have you learned from working with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra?
SJ: Work ethic. Sitting next to Wynton Marsalis, I really learned how to work and what the meaning of work is. I've never seen a human being work as hard as him. He really makes you want to do more when you see how much he's working on music, raising money, going to talk with kids, and all those different things. People can say all they want about Wynton's musicianship, and his opinions, that's fine. But you can't knock his work ethic. That man works extremely hard. I definitely learned that.
LE: Is there anything that you've learned on your own that has been important to you and your development as a musician?
SJ: People want to feel you. People want to hear your story. People want humanity when they come to hear you perform. They don't want to hear a bunch of notes. They don't want to hear how good you think you are, or how good you are. They want a very human experience and then they'll go home. Because they're trying to escape their daily routines, and their daily issues. That's what I'm trying to do each time I get on stage and each time I put an album out.
LE: Now you're embarking on a tour. You'll be here in the Twin Cities for the Twin Cities Jazz Festival. You've played in the past with your own group. Is this a new aspect to your career?
SJ: I wouldn't say it's new. I'm trying to work with this ensemble a lot more. It's become a priority. It's always been a priority, but it's definitely a priority now. I've stepped down from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to deal with my own band and my own projects full time. It's a big step, but I'm ready for it. Also, I'll be playing with different people. All summer I'll be on tour with Marcus Miller, so I'm looking forward to steps in new directions.
LE: Who's going to be with your band when you play here in the Twin Cities?
SJ: It will be Orrin Evans on piano, Luques Curtis on bass, Obed Calvaire on drums, and Brian Hogans on saxophone.
LE: Your most recent album, The Search Within, came out last year on Mack Avenue records. It's a very personal album.
SJ: It's definitely very personal, about my journey into my thirties, looking back, and plowing ahead into the future. The next album is pretty personal, too. It's about love, and exploring the different aspects of love. It's not all about love with flowers and candy and all of that. It's the varying aspects of love.
LE: Which brings me to my final question. What's been the most satisfying aspect of your career so far?
SJ: Just being on stage and seeing people happy about what they heard. Being able to move audiences. I've been a lot of places playing with a lot of people. Nothing beats the energy and the synergy of the audience when they're feeling you, when you're feeling them. I crave that, and I'm looking to many more years of that.
LE: Thank you so very much for your time. I look forward to seeing and hearing you at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival in Saint Paul next weekend.
SJ: We're going to have a ball. Thank you.
Photo of Sean Jones at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival by John Whiting.
Labels: Larry Englund, Mack Avenue Records, Sean Jones, Twin Cities Jazz Festival
Joshua Redman and Yo-Yo Ma on the PBS cartoon "Arthur"
Lena Adasheva wins Photo of the Year at the Jazz Journalists Association Awards
What a great photo of trumpeter Tom Harrell. HH and I met photographer Lena Adasheva last month at the Jazz Standard, where we had gone to see Andy Bey sing. She was taking photos of Bey and generously shared some with me for future posting here (I haven't written my review yet but took detailed notes--it's forthcoming.) HH and I both loved her photo when we saw it on the Jazz Journalists Association website (and voted for it twice, once in the preliminary round and again in the finals).
Congratulations, Lena. You deserve this.
Tom Harrell, Moscow International Performance Arts Center (Moscow, Russia), December 26, 2009. (C) Lena Adasheva.
Posted by Pamela Espeland at 10:29 PM No comments:
Labels: Jazz Journalists Association, Lena Adasheva, Tom Harrell
Melody Gardot sort-of concert review
When: Saturday, June 12, 2010
Where: The Depot, Minneapolis
Who: Melody Gardot, vocals; Irwin Hall, saxophones and flute; Charnett Moffet, bass; Charles Staab, drums
This is a sort-of review not because it was a sort-of concert, but a concert at an event and venue that are challenging for performers with any degree of subtlety: the Minnesota Orchestra's annual Symphony Ball at the Depot in Minneapolis.
The Depot is cavernous, a former train shed with high peaked ceilings. The Ball is the Orchestra's annual fundraiser. Ladies wear gowns, men wear tuxes, and people are there to see, be seen, socialize, and give money. (Live auction items included a trip to Hawaii valued at $50,000.) Co-hosts Sarah Hicks and Irvin Mayfield were charming, HH looked dreamy in his tux, I had the privilege of meeting maestro Osmo Vanska, meteorologist Paul Douglas walked by, and I saw at least one pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. But I digress from the music. See how easy it is?
The Depot. Not our event, but you get the idea.
Gardot and her band were the featured entertainment. I had never seen her live but had heard her debut CD, Worrisome Heart, and like it very much. She's her own singer with her own voice and style, but if you've never heard her before, it might be helpful (sort of) to think Madeleine Peyroux meets Patricia Barber meets Nellie McKay.
Here's Gardot live on the Swedish-Norwegian talk show "Skavlan" in 2009, singing "Baby I'm a Fool."
Her personal story is compelling: a devastating accident in 2003 left her in chronic pain, hypersensitive to light (her dark glasses are not an affectation), and needing to walk with a cane. Just 25, she seems older, but who wouldn't. She credits music and music therapy with saving her brain.
She has a distinctive and beautiful voice--sultry, bluesy, with a feathery vibrato--and enormous personal style. Her sound, her way of singing, her demeanor, and her name seem French; she was born in New Jersey, but the French love her. For the Symphony Ball, she wore a very little black dress and very high heels.
She brought a killer band. The saxophonist and drummer were new to me, but not her bassist, Charnett Moffett. Any band with Charnett Moffett in it is worth sitting quietly and listening to, which many people didn't do. Had Frank Sinatra come back from the dead or Barbra Streisand appeared on stage, I'm not sure the results would have been much different.
Despite the talking and laughing and milling around and the fact that many people left early (this was, it must be said, mostly an older crowd, the event started early and ran long, and once the wine was poured, there were no bars), Gardot prevailed. The people who stayed gradually moved closer to the stage as spaces opened up at tables. Toward the end, mostly serious listeners were left, and we were richly rewarded.
Gardot sang and played piano and guitar. Her singing is warm and intimate, her banter relaxed and engaging. She sings with real emotion--not just the words, but the feelings within and behind them, whether serious or playful, hopeful or consumed with longing or nostalgia or regret. She performed many of her own songs--I wasn't taking notes, and now that I've been listening again to Worrisome Heart and (for the first time) My One and Only Thrill (her latest, a giveaway at last night's event), I can't recall which songs I heard last night and which I heard this morning. But I do remember a delicious "Summertime" and her closer, "Caravan." I hope to hear her again before too long, in a club setting or a small hall or even a festival where people come for the music.
I wish I I could have been in two places at once last night. In another part of the Depot, Maud Hixson and her new band, French 75, were performing at Crash the Ball, an event for young professionals. Wish I could have seen them, too.
Labels: Charles Staab, Charnett Moffett, Irvin Mayfield, Irwin Hall, Maud Hixson, Melody Gardot, Symphony Ball
New blog layout
Change is good.
Posted by Pamela Espeland at 11:02 AM 1 comment:
Jazz concert review: Stacey Kent enchants at the Dakota
Originally published at MinnPost,com, Tuesday, June 8, 2010
It's been four years since Stacey Kent last performed at the Dakota — on March 14, 2006, to be precise. During that time, she released her first CD on Blue Note, the Grammy-nominated "Breakfast on the Morning Tram" (2007); was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by France; studied Portuguese; made her second Blue Note CD, "Raconte-moi ..." (2010); and battled breast cancer. Her husband, saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, began wearing his hair like a Sumo wrestler, pulled back and tied in a knot at the back of his head.
She's on tour for "Raconte-moi," just released and sung entirely in French. ("Breakfast" includes two French songs; the new CD is the whole baguette). Because the first set on Monday ran long, the second started shortly after 10 p.m.
Kent's opening song was Antonio Carlos Jobim's widely covered "Waters of March." He originally wrote it in both Portuguese and English; she sang it in French ("Les Eaux de Mars"). Jobim's masterpiece is a high-wire act, basically three notes with leaps in between and tricky lyrics (a sampler, in English: "It's a sliver of glass/It is life, it's the sun/It is night, it is death/It's a trap, it's a gun. ..."). She made it sound relaxed and easy, her lovely voice twining with Tomlinson's soprano sax.
From there, we heard a selection of songs from several recordings: the title tracks from "Breakfast on the Morning Tram" and "Raconte-moi," two bossa novas, including Jobim's "Corcovado" from Tomlinson's CD "The Lyric" (2006), "Makin' Whoopee" and "Say It Isn't So" from "The Boy Next Door" (2003), "One for My Baby" from "Let Yourself Go" (2000), Kent's homage to Fred Astaire. For the bossa novas, she played guitar. She sat quietly as her husband and the band played "Alfie," Tomlinson's tenor sax sighing with regret.
In between, she told stories, the longest about her French connection: a grandfather who taught her to recite French poetry. Kent enjoys talking with the crowd, so much that she sometimes gets trapped temporarily in a dead end of her own devising. Tonight it was something about the French having a head-heart connection, Brits not having it, and Americans being all heart.
Later she riffed on "delicious," noting that French journalists love the word and using it to describe her band. Part of the great pleasure of seeing Kent live is the warm, romantic interplay between her and Tomlinson, married 19 years this August. Art Hirahara on piano, Gordon Johnson on bass, and Phil Hey on drums really are delicious, a perfect blend of sound and rhythm that supports Kent's singing and Tomlinson's playing.
Kent's voice is sensual and sweet, with flutters like silk in a breeze. She can also swing hard, which she did on "Makin' Whoopee" (not a happy song, despite its title). And she can fill a lyric to bursting with emotion. Irving Berlin's "Say It Isn't So" ("Everyone is saying you don't love me/Say it isn't so") is now officially the saddest song I have ever heard.
At one point, Kent spoke of her love for bossa nova. "I'm obsessed, possessed, impassioned and engrossed," she told the crowd. Effusive, too. Hearing her speak and sing, it's evident how much she loves words and languages. English alone isn't enough for her anymore.
Stacey Kent and her band are here for one more night at the Dakota, 1010 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis. Shows tonight (Tuesday, June 8) at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. ($35/$25). Tickets at the door or online.
Conversations on Improvisation: Stefan Kac
Stefan Kac
While sifting through words to describe Stefan Kac (pronounced "cats"), I opened an email from trumpeter Dan Frankowski to find that he had already done the work for me. Frankowski called Kac "an intense, brooding, mercurial, funny, and passionate composer, tuba player, and thinker."
At 27, Kac has one foot in jazz and the other in classical music. In 2005, he was accepted to the Betty Carter's Jazz Ahead residency program at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. -- the first tuba player ever to make the cut. He has performed and recorded with the Pan-Metropolitan Trio and the sextet Ingo Bethke. He's an avid part of Milo Fine's circle of improvising musicians and a member of BroncoVision; in March, he played with pianist Bryan Nichols' We Are Many project at MacPhail.
As a classical artist, Kac was a finalist in the Minnesota Orchestra's 2005 WAMSO Young Artist Competition. He holds the tuba chair in the Copper Street Brass Quintet, a touring and educational group that is artist-in-residence at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church. He also teaches low brass at the West Bank School of Music.
Most recently, Kac formed the Symphonic Transients Orchestra, a large instrumental ensemble of flexible instrumentation that performs original compositions -- part contemporary classical, part jazz.
Born in the Twin Cities, Kac hated music until age 11, when he was given a choice that must have seemed lose-lose at the time: join either the school band or the choir. He first took up the euphonium, the tuba's smaller cousin, and then switched to the tuba in ninth grade. In 2005, he received a Bachelor of Music in Tuba Performance degree from the University of Minnesota.
Musical achievement aside, for the first 19 years of his life, baseball was Kac's real priority. As a student, he once hit against a young pitcher named Joe Mauer. "I'm a .500 lifetime hitter against Mauer," he says. "One for two -- not bad."
Pamela Espeland: What obstacles have you encountered because of the instrument you play?
Stefan Kac: Not as many as you'd think. The obstacles I've faced have been in formal, academic settings. I can't think of one example from the so-called real world where it has held me back or where I've lost out on something because of it. The novelty [of the instrument], and the expectations of what the tuba is traditionally asked to do, and what it is actually capable of doing, work in my favor.
[Note: Kac believes that any instrument can be a jazz instrument, and that insistence on "standard" jazz band instrumentation is bad for jazz and for music students. For more on this topic, see "A Tuba in the Jazz Band?" in the "Writings" section on his website.]
PLE: The tuba used to be more common in jazz. What happened?
SK: The textbook version of what happened is that the Chicago style of jazz took over. The bass took over the tuba, and bands were playing indoors instead of outdoors, so they didn't need a bass instrument to project over a football-field-size space.
There's been kind of a revolution in tuba playing within the last 40 years -- not just in jazz, but also in classical music. The level of playing right now is absurdly far ahead of what it was two generations ago.
PLE: Have you ever been tempted to stray -- to play another instrument?
SK: All the time. I'm tempted by the piano. I'm fascinated with the clarinet and the viola. I feel there's a lot locked inside of me that I can't get out through the tuba. I'm not going to sit here and claim that [the tuba] is just like a saxophone, because it's not. You can do things the saxophone can't do, in terms of the richness of the sound, and the range -- the dynamic range is huge -- but you can't do everything. I would love to have chops on a more facile instrument.
I've never thought of myself as just a tuba player. I was a tuba major in college, and it was my job to get better at playing tuba. Once I got away from that, I remembered what I had known years earlier: I'm not just a tuba player. I'm a composer. I'm a listener.
PLE: When did you first become interested in improvisation?
SK: I joined a group in 2003 led by [drummer] Nick Zielinski called Tanya and the Holsum Family Fiscal Planner [later Brenda and the Holsum Family Fiscal Planner]. It was a large improvising group that he conducted, about 11-12 people. I was in my third year of college, playing a lot of jazz and classical. I had never played free. Joining Nick's group introduced me to that.
PLE: What was it like?
SK: Equal parts scary and exhilarating. I knew pretty quickly that I had stumbled on to something that was going to become more important to me.... As most jazz players do, I had trained myself to play in that style. It never occurred to me until then that I might want to improvise in another style.
PLE: What do you mean by "in that style"?
SK: Taking tunes and solos, material from famous recordings and famous players, and imitating them. Taking phrases and licks from people like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis, practicing them a lot, and trying to use those licks the way they used them. The way jazz is taught is that you take someone else's stuff and play it. Rarely do you stumble on a teacher -- and it's difficult to do this as a teacher -- who teaches improvisation as improvisation rather than style. And I was happy [playing in that more traditional jazz style] for a long time. It took joining Nick's group to break everything open.
[Note: For more of Kac's thoughts on style and jazz pedagogy, see "Stylization as an Oppressive Force" in "Writings" on his website.]
PLE: How do you define improvisation?
SK: I'll have to steal Milo's [Milo Fine's] definition. He calls it "instant composing." My only caveat to that is that traditional composition is well-suited to yield certain results, and improvisation is well-suited to yield other, different results. If you sit down with a string quartet, and someone says, "Why don't you guys improvise something in the style of a Haydn string quartet?" you're talking about very minutely, closely organized harmonic motion. It's really hard to improvise harmonically with other people when you don't know what the chords are.
PLE: When you're playing free, do you know what the chords are?
SK: No. This isn't to say that free improvisation doesn't involve harmonic motion; it does. But it doesn't involve the same kind of harmonic motion that Haydn would involve. Also, when you compose for a string quartet, you control the entire group. [When you're improvising], you can only control yourself and your part.... I've heard composers say, "You could never improvise a piece as well as a great composer could compose a piece." I don't agree with that at all. I agree that you could never improvise a piece and have it sound like it was composed. It's going to sound like it was improvised. I'm not saying that's better or worse; it's a different set of parameters yielding a different result. If that's not the result you want, you're working in the wrong medium.
PLE: What happens when you and Milo Fine and Davu Seru or whoever sit down and start to play?
SK: The first thing that happens is someone, or a group of someones, has to decide to start. To me, that's the hardest part. You know the Miles Davis quote, "If you don't know what to do, do nothing." That's kind of my philosophy in that situation. It's never in doubt that someone will start. And once there's sound, you're composing in real time. I grew up composing with notation, ostensibly in a classical musical style and tradition. I'm cognizant of the fact that I can't control the other people, and I don't know what they're going to do before they do it, but I can listen, and I can react, and I can compose my part to this symphony that's going on around me.
PLE: Are you seeing notes?
SK: There's no visual aspect to improvisation for me. I'm thinking about what should happen next; occasionally, there's something technical, in terms of playing. You hope to keep those things in your subconscious, though, because it's tough to keep up if you're thinking about technique.
PLE: Does time speed up or slow down when you're playing? What is your sense of time?
SK: I think I have a tendency for time to speed up, which isn't always a good thing.... When I played baseball, I was an in-fielder for most of that time. When a ground ball would be hit to me, I would almost black out, because after I had thrown the ball, and it was in the first baseman's glove, and the guy was out and the play was over, I wouldn't remember what had just happened. It was almost trancelike. That happens from time to time in playing, too. It's hard to trust that, though. I still rely a lot on the conscious part of my brain -- probably more than I should, probably more than a lot of other players do, but that's kind of who I am, for better or worse. I'm not the kind of person who leaves things to chance.
PLE: Are you pre-hearing or trying to predict what the others will do?
SK: I'm tempted to anticipate, but when you do that, you're always wrong. And if you're not wrong a lot, then you need to play with some new people and get out more.
PLE: How do you know when it's working?
SK: That's completely subjective. Different musicians in the group sometimes don't agree on that. If the people in your group aren't agreeing on that, you're probably with the wrong group.
PLE: It seems as if playing free would be energizing and enervating at the same time.
SK: I find it mentally exhausting. At the end of those Homewood things [free jazz performances at Homewood Studios in North Minneapolis], my head is spinning. That's not to say that I don't have fun. Of course I have fun, but I feel a significant sense of responsibility that I don't feel as much elsewhere. It's not just about executing the part on your page perfectly; it's about making up a part. What if something cool is going on, and I ruin it? That's not the kind of thing that should be going through your mind, but it's always there for me. So, it's actually more of a burden than a lot of other situations.
PLE: Many people seem to think they have to understand jazz before they can enjoy it. They don't say, "Before I go to a classical concert, I have to understand Bach."
SK: They do [say that about classical music], but it's definitely worse with jazz. I've never liked the word "understand" applied to music. I don't think that liking something has to do with understanding it or not understanding it. It's hard even to define what "understanding" would mean in this case. You could apply it technically -- to the theory behind the music. But there are people who don't read music, don't know theory, never studied formally, never played an instrument, and somehow they're able to enjoy those kinds of music. That, I think, is a pretty obvious argument that "understand" is not the right word.... We probably won't ever be able to reason our way into aesthetic judgments. That would be a total contradiction of what art is, what aesthetics are, and how we function.
PLE: What advice would you give to someone who's thinking about going to one of your free jazz performances?
SK: First of all, the sound is the important part. And I mean that as opposed to the visual part, the rebellious we're-just-going-to-do-what-we-want-to part. It's a piece of music. It's a concert. Focus on the sound, in spite of everything else that might be different about it. Second, don't expect it to do what other kinds of music do.
PLE: What should people expect?
SK: The cliché would be "Expect anything!" and theoretically, anything could happen. Obviously, depending on the [performers], not absolutely anything could happen, because people have their things they do -- their approaches, their experiences.
PLE: People often have negative expectations of free jazz. Noise, cacophony, disorganization, shrieking.
SK: If they're expecting shrieks and wails and farting sounds, assuming they view those things negatively, they're probably going to have a better time than if they're expecting glorious celestial harmonies.... Most really good, accomplished free playing doesn't just shriek and wail. There's a lot more to it. That's why people will be pleasantly surprised.
PLE: What are you listening to these days?
SK: I haven't been listening to much jazz lately; I'm almost entirely listening to classical music. Every now and then, I stumble on a progressive rock band I really like -- a lot of those bands were heavily influenced by jazz. I can tell you who has influenced me in jazz: Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis. Miles Smiles was one of the very first jazz albums I listened to. Monk: I've been listening to Monk because I'm still working through that Robin Kelly biography [Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original]. My dad gave it to me for Christmas. I'm like, "Thanks, Dad, I can't even lift this thing."
PLE: You're comfortable in a number of different worlds that don't always get along, like classical and jazz.
SK: I don't go out of my way to be eclectic. I have legitimate interests in a couple of different areas, and most people tend not to be like that. Classical musicians are not known for their eclecticism. Jazz musicians are jazz-centric. Trying to straddle different groups like that is difficult. Not musically or artistically, but socially.... I'm finding balance to be an important and tricky issue. But if I had to do just one of the things I'm doing and couldn't do the others, I'd be really unhappy.
Originally published on mnartists.org on June 2, 2010. mnartists.org is a project of the Walker Art Center and the McKnight Foundation.
Learn more about Stefan Kac, hear selections from his music, and view scores at his website.
Photos by John Whiting.
Labels: Conversations on Improvisation, mnartists.org, Stefan Kac
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Jazz concert review: Stacey Kent enchants at the D...


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Q: How to get and set text android? I'm trying to get the text from one android edit text and put it in another, the whole over all goal is to make a temperature converter. It's an assignment from an online course I'm working on which I paid for.
Anyways this my code I'm using in my MainActivity:
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    final EditText txt_Input1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.txt_Input1);
    Button btnConvert1 = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnConvertOne);
    final EditText txt_Output1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.txt_Output1);

    btnConvert1.setOnClickListener( new View.OnClickListener(){
        public void onClick(View view){
            //txt_Output1.setText(txt_Input1.getText().toString());
            //txt_Output1.setText(Integer.parseInt(txt_Input1.getText().toString()));
            userInput = txt_Input1.getText().toString();
            Log.v("TEST", userInput);
        }
    });

    EditText txt_Input2 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.txt_Input2);
    Button btnConvert2 = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnConvertTwo);
    EditText txt_Output2 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.txt_Output2);

    btnConvert2.setOnClickListener( new View.OnClickListener(){
        public void onClick(View view){

        }
    });

}

I'm not really sure what I'm doing wrong I've tried it a couple different ways and so far none have helped, I'm not really sure why but if I don't set the edit texts as final it won't let me call them in my btnConvert1 method. Does anyone know how to fix this? I really want to know what I'm doing wrong. Right now if I hit the btnConver1 this is the output I get:

01-07 00:56:11.549  26996-26996/application.helloword.tobar.jose.temperatureconverterapp V/TEST﹕ [ 01-07 00:56:11.809   768: 1129 I/AudioService ]
      getStreamVolume 3 index 0

A:  String str = editText.getText().toString();
 editText.setText("your name is " + str);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
A self-invented man
The many meanings of Walt Whitman's glasses
By Michael Cunningham | Jan/Feb 2010
Michael Cunningham has published four novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hours. He teaches fiction writing at Yale.
Mark Morosse
Whitman's last pair of eyeglasses, shown here on a manuscript draft of "Rise, Lurid Stars," which Whitman composed in about 1865 but never published in full. View full image
This photograph of Whitman in his 50s is one of many professional portraits in the Beinecke that were autographed by the poet. Richard Deming, a lecturer in the Yale English department, has written that Whitman was probably the most photographed American author of the nineteenth century.
If we harbored any collective doubts about whether an object can be too rich and significant to write about, the matter of Walt Whitman's glasses should put those doubts to rest. I mean, really. Walt Whitman's glasses.
Like Emily Dickinson's bed or Herman Melville's customs office uniform, this particular pair of spectacles resides in that peculiar realm of metaphor so potent as to exist already, fully formed, in all our minds. Nobody who's read even a little of Whitman needs me to get poetic about What Those Eyes Beheld, or about the nervous system that connected soul to brain to eyes to lenses to nineteenth-century America and which was, ultimately, able to reach back from beyond mortality itself and speak to us, the still-living, about the constant intercession of the past into the present. See, I'm already going misty on you.
I'd rather talk briefly about what the glasses (artificial enhancers that they are) imply about Whitman as a self-invented man. Not as a self-created man—American history is irritatingly full of such people—but as, arguably, the first American artist not only to generate a body of great work but to enhance himself into—invent himself as, if you will—someone who could credibly produce the work in the first place.
The young (and the no-longer-all-that-young) Whitman was a dreamer and a dilettante, prone to half-hearted performances as a teacher and a journalist, among other occupations. He wrote (strictly for money, as he'd later claim) a negligible novel about temperance. It was not until he'd reached his late 30s that this drifty slacker produced, out of nowhere (biographically speaking), Leaves of Grass. He would spend the subsequent 35 years expanding and revising and re-re-republishing it, a total of seven times.
Literature offers us the occasional late bloomer—old Joe Conrad, having published his first novel at the age of 38, is a particular favorite of unheralded writers who begin feeling like failures in their mid-20s—but for the most part genius tends to manifest itself well before the genius in question comes to the attention of the AARP. Rimbaud had stopped writing poetry entirely almost two decades before the age at which Whitman got started, and Keats died ten years younger. By Whitman's debut age, Flannery O'Connor had pretty much produced her entire body of work, and Chekhov would have only seven more years in which to write.
Who cares? No one, certainly not about a few years more or less where works of immortal brilliance are concerned. Whitman, however, is a case unto himself. It seems to have taken him the better part of his first four decades not only to conceive and write the first edition of Leaves of Grass, but also to transform himself from a callow drifter into the visionary, ecstatic bard we revere. And, okay, maybe . . . the bard he could revere as well. I suspect he had to feel like a poet in order to function as one.
He became a performer in a costume, to miraculous effect. He is part of a fabulous, distinctly American line of figures who essentially pictured someone larger and grander than themselves and then, by force of will combined with a few judicious borrowings and calculations, became that person. Feckless Walt became Walt Whitman the Poet as, some time later, Cassius Clay will become Muhammad Ali and Robert Zimmerman will become Bob Dylan.
The eyeglasses, by the way, are real, but it doesn't seem impossible for Whitman to have decided that Walt Whitman, capital W capital W, would wear glasses, just as surely as he'd wear workingman's clothes, a beard, and a big slouchy hat.
An item of Whitman's apparel, then, is especially marvelous, and for gratifyingly human reasons. None of it was in any way arbitrary or accidental. Whitman dressed himself as Whitman, a notion at odds with the way we tend to prefer our departed poets, who are generally supposed, when alive, to have been either wholly indifferent to the physical world or at the very least eager to transcend it, and who maintained a healthy skepticism about its apparent heft and density.
Whitman exulted in the world's heft and density. He was among the least lily-livered poets who've ever lived. He adored the world, and insisted on the simultaneous realness and divinity of its every locale and denizen, from the refined to the destitute to the despicable. He was an ordinary Joe who turned himself into a seer, and although it seems safe to say that genius can't be summoned out of nowhere, we'll never know how much or how little it mattered to Whitman—what fundamental confidence he may have released within himself—by starting to look and act—there's no other way to say it—like a poet.
That's what's so wonderful about being in the presence of Whitman's spectacles. They're not symbols; anyway they're not merely symbols. Nor are they the material leavings of a saint, with all a relic implies about the gulf between spirit and flesh. This fragile pair of eyeglasses suggests the exact opposite—that the gulf between spirit and flesh is overrated, and that we can, in theory anyway, put on the glasses and, in so doing, call up some nascent inner being to become the man behind the glasses. It's difficult to imagine a more resonant but humble object.
Vol LXXIII, No 3


For my final university project at HDK in Göteborg, Sweden, I chose to rebrand Network Ten, a TV channel from back home in Australia. The idea was to emphasise Ten's foray into modern digital platforms and create a unified design language for their brand and on-air presentation.
Bold, bright colours and a focus on typography are intended to reinforce Ten's reputation for clean and simple broadcast design and remind viewers why they fell in love with the channel in the first place. The motif of digital "cards" was used - the same ratio as a playing card, displayed in portrait orientation to reflect the increasing use of smartphones and personal technology.
These cards are used in multiple forms: popping up in the bottom left for notifications, pulling themselves into the center of the screen for signposts and floating in 3d to create dynamic "windows" into the content behind them. In-programme tweets, ad timers and Spotify notifications are just a few ways this rebrand has a digital influence.


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Q: Databinding lost when printing data-bound FlowDocument I'm losing data-bind when initiating a printing process, is that possible ? Thats what I can only think of in my situation here, where I have a Table inside a control that makes the Table data-bindable, all inside a FlowDocument. When running it the data-bind works fine and the table draws itself with some data on it with no problems.
However, when printing the output of that control is always blank.
I've added a ListView with the same bindings and when printing the generated data it too appears lost.
XAML:
<Window x:Class="GlassStore.InitBill"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        xmlns:local="clr-namespace:GlassStore.ViewModels"
        xmlns:flowdocs="clr-namespace:FlowDocuments;assembly=FlowDocument"
        Title="InitBill" Height="825" Width="1004">
<Window.DataContext>
    <local:InitBillViewModel/>
</Window.DataContext>
<Grid Background="White">
    <FlowDocumentReader HorizontalAlignment="Center"
                        HorizontalContentAlignment="Center">
        <FlowDocument ColumnWidth="999999"
                      IsColumnWidthFlexible="True"
                      TextAlignment="Center"
                      Name="FD">
                <Paragraph>
                <ListView ItemsSource="{Binding GridTrans}">
                    <ListView.View>
                        <GridView>
                            <GridViewColumn Header="ffff"
                                 DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding CarModel}" />
                            <GridViewColumn Header="xxxx"
                                 DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding CarName}" />
                        </GridView>
                    </ListView.View>
                </ListView>
            </Paragraph>
            <Paragraph TextAlignment="Center">
                <TextBlock Text="{Binding test}" />
            </Paragraph>
            <flowdocs:ItemsContent ItemsSource="{Binding GridTrans}"
                                   Background="#FFF2C3C3"
                                   BorderThickness="2">
                <flowdocs:ItemsContent.ItemTemplate>
                    <DataTemplate>
                        <flowdocs:Fragment>

                            <TableRowGroup flowdocs:Attached.IsItemsHost="True">
                                <TableRow Background="AliceBlue" >
                                    <TableCell Foreground="Red">
                                        <Paragraph>
                                            <flowdocs:BindableRun BoundText="{Binding CarName}" />
                                        </Paragraph>
                                    </TableCell>
                                    <TableCell Foreground="Green">
                                        <Paragraph>
                                            <flowdocs:BindableRun BoundText="{Binding CarModel}" />
                                        </Paragraph>
                                    </TableCell>
                                    <TableCell Foreground="Yellow">
                                        <Paragraph>
                                            <flowdocs:BindableRun BoundText="{Binding glassPrice}" />
                                        </Paragraph>
                                    </TableCell>
                                </TableRow>
                            </TableRowGroup>

                        </flowdocs:Fragment>
                    </DataTemplate>
                </flowdocs:ItemsContent.ItemTemplate>
            </flowdocs:ItemsContent>

                <TableRowGroup>
                    <TableRow>
                        <TableCell>
                            <Paragraph>Row1 Cell1</Paragraph>
                        </TableCell>
                        <TableCell>
                            <Paragraph>Row2 Cell2</Paragraph>
                        </TableCell>
                    </TableRow>
                </TableRowGroup>

        </FlowDocument>
    </FlowDocumentReader>
    <Button Command="{Binding print}"
            Content="إطـبع"
            Height="29" Margin="91,0,112,41"
            Name="button1"
            VerticalAlignment="Bottom" />
</Grid>
</Window>

Now I know the problem is not with the Custom Control, because I have the same problem now with ListView.
I've attached the source to the Window version here and the printed version here.

A: The ViewModel would be nice, especially the method behind the print command. My guess ist, that the flowdocument is put into a special print context and loses the datacontext of the window.
Try removing
<Window.DataContext>
    <local:InitBillViewModel/>
</Window.DataContext>

and use
<FlowDocumentReader HorizontalAlignment="Center" HorizontalContentAlignment="Center">
    <FlowDocumentReader.DataContext>
        <local:InitBillViewModel/>
    </FlowDocumentReader.DataContext>
...

instead. Maybe that helps?
Edit: The print command would have to move to another ViewModel to still work, of course. This other ViewModel would stay where the old one was, in the Window.DataContext.

A: Here's my solution:

*

*define the document in a separate XAML file:

Load the Flow Document from Resource Dictionary Xaml

*then print:
    var prntDlg = new PrintDialog();
    var res = Application.LoadComponent(new Uri("/Resources/ReportDocument.xaml", UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute)) as ResourceDictionary;
    var doc = res["ReportFlowDoc"] as FlowDocument;

    doc.DataContext = this.fdswReport.Document.DataContext; //your FlowDocumentScrollViewer
    doc.PageWidth = prntDlg.PrintableAreaWidth;
    doc.PageHeight = prntDlg.PrintableAreaHeight;
    doc.ColumnWidth = prntDlg.PrintableAreaWidth;
    doc.PagePadding = new Thickness(80);
    doc.IsOptimalParagraphEnabled = true;
    doc.IsHyphenationEnabled = true;

    if (prntDlg.ShowDialog() == true)
        prntDlg.PrintDocument(((IDocumentPaginatorSource)doc).DocumentPaginator, "Report");


Kevin Finnery, Andrea Odom and Tom Krowl together have more than 85 years' experience in High Temperature Furnace engineering, design, manufacture and installation.
In 2001, Cremation Systems, a division of Armil CFS, Inc. developed and introduced the CFS 2300 human and pet cremation retort.
Armil CFS, founded in 1968, is a manufacturer of high temperature industrial process furnaces and equipment serving markets such as automotive, aerospace, rail and incineration.
With almost 50 years of furnace technology behind it, the CFS 2300 is the most fuel efficient, user friendly retort on the market today. In addition, Tek Marshal, Fire Marshal and the Quick Change Hearth available only in our CFS 2300 equipment provides our customers with a unit that has the lowest operating cost in the industry.
The unparalleled installation services and remote monitoring capabilities of Cremation Systems has raised the industry standard of cremation equipment.


Davis Assistant uses an HTTP API using TLS with a 2048-bit RSA certificate issued by Amazon. SSL termination is done at the Amazon Elastic Load Balancer and communication within AWS is secured using Security Groups. Communication with Dynatrace environments is also secured with TLS. By default, Davis requires a certificate signed by a trusted authority. However an administrator of a Dynatrace Managed environment may configure Davis Assistant to accept a self-signed certificate. Authorization between Davis Assistant and your Dynatrace environment is handled by a shared API token.
What Dynatrace data can Davis Assistant access?
Davis Assistant communicates over the public Dynatrace REST API, and may access any data from the API that the configured API token has permission to access. This may include details of problems, time series data such as response times, environment Smartscape topology information, events collected by Dynatrace, and some configurations, including custom event thresholds and maintenance windows. See the REST API documentation for details about what is available over the REST API.
What data captured by Dynatrace is stored in Davis Assistant?
Davis Assistant caches a minimal amount of data from the REST API for a short period of time (about 10 minutes or less) to reduce the number of API calls made to your Dynatrace environment and thereby reduce response times.
What data is shared with the Chrome extension?
The Davis Assistant Chrome extension is used to enable voice navigation in Davis Assistant. Only the bare minimum of data needed to accomplish this is shared with the chrome extension. The extension makes a TLS encrypted WebSocket connection back to Davis Assistant and authenticates itself using a shared token, which is user-provided. This token is stored in Chrome local storage and is kept safely away from other web pages, tabs, and extensions. The extension communicates with Davis Assistant using a set of messages. On connection, the extension authenticates with Davis Assistant using the shared token. After the extension is authenticated, Davis Assistant sends the URL of a page associated with the response from the Davis Assistant Alexa skill to the Chrome extension. No Dynatrace data is shared with the Chrome extension beyond for URLs of pages associated with responses from the Davis Assistant Alexa skill.
Where is Davis Assistant hosted?
Davis Assistant is hosted in Amazon Web Services in the US East (N. Virginia) region.


text:
Why Hasura's entry into the Unicorn is a major milestone for India's open-source ecosystem
With this funding, Hasura becomes the latest entrant to the Unicorn club.
Open-source SaaS company Hasura raised $136.5 million in its Series C funding round, taking its total evaluation to $1 billion. With this funding, Hasura becomes the latest entrant to the Unicorn club. It also holds the unique designation of being India's first open-source Unicorn.
Source: Crunchbase
Hasura's journey
Operational data is highly distributed among several sources. Developers are often left to consume data in insecure and unauthorised compute environments. To remediate this, Hasura offers data APIs which connect multiple services and data sources. Hasura makes web development faster by eliminating bottlenecks to access data for frontend and full-stack developers.
The company was founded by Tanmai Gopal and Rajoshi Ghosh in 2017. They initially started in Bangalore, but in view of growing opportunities, moved their base to San Francisco.
Gopal, a dual degree (B Tech and M Tech) holder from IIT Madras, had first established 34 Cross, product development and consulting firm in 2013. In an interview, Gopal said that building applications were a frustrating process then, and he wanted to offer developers an easier route. He was soon joined by Ghosh. A graduate in computational biology from the National University of Singapore, Ghosh started her career in research before entering the world of entrepreneurship. 34 Cross soon shut down.
Gopal and Ghosh then went on to establish Hasura. A portmanteau, the name Hasura is a combination of Asura (mythological devil character) and Haskell (a programming language). In an interview, co-founder Gopal said the amount of data is exploding. Businesses want to derive useful insights from these huge amounts of data, but they are often caught in bottlenecks – compliance, security, and delivery. The other problem is storing this huge data. Some of the data is stored with a cloud vendor, and other is open-source. Hasura makes it easy to access data from multiple sources. The users can make the decision most appropriate to their business using the technology of their choice.
Hasura's GraphQL
An open-source engine, Hasura can connect to PostgreSQL databases and microservices across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. It then automatically builds a GraphQL API backend, making it easier for the developers to build their data-driven applications on top of the unified API.
With the latest funding, Hasura will accelerate research and development and further expand global activities for the company's GraphQL Engine. With this, even users with zero experience can compose a GraphQL API from existing APIs and databases. "With this funding round, our investors and the Hasura team are doubling down on our vision to solve data access and unlock the next decade of developer productivity. We're going to be addressing the needs of our users by adding support for their favourite data systems much faster," said Gopal.
India's open-source ecosystem
India's open-source community is growing at an exponential rate. Last year, GitHub, which has over 5 million Indian contributors, allotted Rs 1 crore to support India-based open-source projects and contributors. GitHub COO Erica Brescia said that India is the fastest-growing country when it comes to new developers contributing to open source projects. India's open-source ecosystem can be traced back to the early 90s when several Indian Linux User Groups and Free Software User Groups were being formed.
Over 85 per cent of India's internet is working on open-source software. Establishments like Courts, State Bank of India, LIC India, IRCTC, etc., rely on an open-source ecosystem to scale operations and provide services. In 2015, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), which falls under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, rolled out three open-source related policies – Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India; Policy on Collaborative Application Development by Opening the Source Code of Government Applications; Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Hasura's entry into the Unicorn club is a major milestone for the open-source ecosystem in India.


Justin Lake is an owner and principal at Venado Technologies. A lifelong mobile tech enthusiast, Justin is dedicated to leveraging modern technologies to improve the effectiveness of organizations with highly mobile workforces.
Before Venado, he held roles in companies such as wireless carriers, mobile device manufacturers, mobile managed service providers, and software development teams. And while those experiences drive much of Justin's counsel with his clients, the real fuel is bringing creativity to every new challenge. Working with his own ideas and leveraging his extensive network of industry professionals, Justin and his team bring value to the digital transformations of the most exciting companies in the world.


text:
Q: Inline form factory does not load all documents after POST in Django I need some help with inline formset in Django.  I am using the inline form set factory to upload documents to Document model which has foreign key reference to Department Table as follow:
model.py:
class Department(models.Model):
    DepId = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
    Name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    ShortName = models.CharField (max_length=25)

    def __str__(self):
        return (str(self.DepId) + " "+  self.ShortName+ " is created!")

    class Meta:
        db_table = 'Department' # Table Name
        managed = True
        verbose_name = 'Departments' # Verbose Name of Table.

class Document(models.Model):
    CATEGORY = (('Type1', 'Report Type 1'),
                ('Type2', 'Report Type 2'),)
    Id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
    Name = models.CharField(max_length=300)
    DocType = models.CharField(max_length=300, choices=CATEGORY)
    DocContent = models.FileField(upload_to='reports/')
    DepId = models.ForeignKey(Department, on_delete=models.CASCADE, db_column="DepId")
    UploadedDate = models.DateField(default=timezone.now, null=True)

    def __str__(self):
        return (str(self.Name))

    class Meta:
        db_table = 'Document'
        managed = True
        verbose_name = 'Document'

    def delete(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.DocContent.delete()
        super().delete(*args, **kwargs)

view.py
def doc_loading_view(request, pk,  *args, **kwargs):
    DocumentFormSet = inlineformset_factory(Location,
                                            Document,
                         fields=('Name', 'DocContent', 'DocType',),
                                               extra=1)
    department = Department.objects.get(DepId=pk)
    formset = DocumentFormSet(queryset=Document.objects.none(), instance=department)
    context = {
        'department': department,
        'form': formset,
        }
    if request.method == "POST":
        formset = PaymentDocumentFormSet(request.POST, request.FILES, instance=location)
        if formset.is_valid():
            for form in formset:
                fileform = form.save(commit=False)
                print (fileform.Name)

            return redirect('getdoc', pk=department.DepId)
        else:
            messages.info(request, "Errors in Formset: "+formset.errors)

    return render(request, "getdoc", context)

Template:
{% extends 'base.html' %}

{% block content %}
{% load static %}

                        Department Name

                    {{ request.session.dep_name }}

Upload the Document

You must have atleast one Report 1 and one Report 2 types

                        {% for message in messages %}
                            {{message}}
                        {% endfor %}

                    <form action = "" method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data"> {% csrf_token %}

                        {{ form.management_form }}
                        {% for f in form %}
                            {% if forloop.first %}

                                        {%for field in f.visible_fields %}
                                            {{ field.label|capfirst }}
                                        {% endfor %}

                            {% endif %}

                                {% for field in f.visible_fields %}

                                        {# Include the hidden fields in the form #}
                                        {% if forloop.first %}
                                            {% for hidden in f.hidden_fields %}
                                                {{ hidden }}
                                            {% endfor %}
                                        {% endif %}
                                        {{ field.errors.as_ul }}
                                        {{ field }}

                                {% endfor %}

                        {% endfor %}

                        <button type="submit" name ="fl_upload" class="btn btn-outline-info  btn-sm">Upload File</button>
                    </form>

{% endblock content %}

I am using the Javascript from this git repository.
So when I load the multiple documents, form set always return only one document.  Is there any issue with my code?
I am not sure this behaviour due to extra=1, which I specified in formset definition.
Thank You.

A: I think the problem is in your view.py. When the formset is defined, you're using a custom queryset, queryset=Document.objects.none().
formset = DocumentFormSet(queryset=Document.objects.none(), instance=department)

This queryset returns no records so the only row returned in the extra (blank) row. Removing querysetqueryset=Document.objects.none() should fix the problem.


A charming pair of gilt bronze wall-lights with two light-arms with leaves and flowers, issuing from a central barrel of foliage and stem and finishing in a delicate floral grouping.
The firm of Millet T. was founded in Paris in 1853. A very talented specialist in 18th Century reproductions, Millet produced furniture and artistic bronzes of the highest quality. He was one of the few cabinet-makers to obtain authorisation from the Château de Versailles to make a replica of Queen Marie-Antoinette's great jewel cabinet. As an artist of great merit he obtained the highest rewards such as the Gold medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1889 and the Grand Prize at the Universal Exhibition of 1900. The photographic archives show, among some views taken in the Millet's workshop and his Parisian showroom, the stand held by him during the Saint-Louis Universal Exhibition of 1904. Among Millet's masterpieces then exposed, this chimney decoration is to be seen. The firm lasted until 1918.