Music

Dabang Band plays Looking For Mr. X, live at the Ssamzie Sori Festival (2002)bio pics

Here’s the archive of all that’s left of my musical history. That is, all of the recordings that remain. A great deal of them were lost, so there’s a big hole in my archive here, but at least all of my extant recorded performances, and performances of things I’ve composed, are here for your listening pleasure (or pain). I plan to include musical performances from my past.

There are still a few pieces that are not available in any recording, but which I have on hand in manuscript format. If I can ever get around to it, I plan (someday) on learning how to use a program to typeset the scores and I will definitely upload them here, releasing them under a creative commons license. (This way I might actually get recordings someday, even if the local music community takes no interest in performing any of them.) There is at least one piece I plan on rewriting for two pianos and string nonet. That’s going to take some time, though, so watch the main page for announcements if such stuff interests you. Or email me, and I’ll note your interest and let you know when something comes up on that front.

As for my own musical training, while I have studied the double bass, and very briefly fooled around with electric bass and oboe, my main instrument has always been the saxophone. On all of the recordings below, on which I am performing, I play tenor and/or soprano saxophone. There are a fair number of pieces on which I do not perform, because during the majority of my undegrad years, I also happened to study music composition. I have no recordings (at the moment) of my favorite couple of pieces, but I have recordings of plenty of other ones. Everything here is presented in chronological order.

But before I go on, I’m just going to note that you can still buy copies of the second Dabang Band album from Yesasia.com. If you sample the tracks below, and like them, and want the CD, it’s there. I won’t get any money, though, so it’s really up to you. The artwork helps make it a nice package, though.

All files are offered in high-quality (relatively: VBR avg. 192kb/sec) MP3 format for the time being. Personally, I prefer ogg-vorbis, but mp3 is just more common.

Here are the quick jump links:

NEW!: Some videos of Dabang Band have turned up on Youtube. The following two were just prior to the making of Pig Over Seoul, at our first festival performance — the Ssamzie Sound Festival:

Actually far from our best performance, and I did cack the middle of one solo. Not the screech, that was on purpose, I mean playing a little too “out” in the middle of one solo. What can I say, I haven’t played for three or four years, and then picked up the horn again five months before this gig happened.