The Ornery Coleman Trio

I’m delighted to have finally recorded with this group… a collaborative effort by Jason Harnell on drums, Joe Bagg on Hammond organ, and me on Fender Rhodes. Our first gig was a bit of a whim almost 15 years ago, when we all suited up for a dinner set at Vibrato, and I’m grateful for the chances since then to keep things rolling and growing. And what a treat to have the golden ears of our recording/mixing engineer Keven Brennan, and our masterer Matt Otto. I hope you enjoy this collection of originals, jazz and American Songbook standards, and free form improvisations!

Archives duo recording: “Anima”, with Matt Otto

Here’s a recording from 2011 that I never got around to posting about… A set of mostly spontaneous contrafact duets with my long time friend and cherished musician, Matt Otto. We had an empty church to ourselves for the day in Kansas City, along with a big Steinway, and the superb engineering expertise of Mr. Chad Meese.

Videos from Ambrosio/Meissner 6tet West Coast Tour

Dave Ambrosio, Russ Meissner, Loren Stillman, Matt Renzi, Nate Radley, Leonard Thompson
@ The Nash, Phoenix, AZ:

@ Chez Hanny, San Francisco, CA:

Dave Ambrosio/Russ Meissner – SteepleChase Lookout: “Moments In Time”

Happy to have been a part of this recording. Dave and Russ have been playing together for over twenty years, and they put together a group of wonderful musicians for this SteepleChase release…

More info here

And some videos of the CD release at Cornelia Street Café…

Video of trio gig at The Blue Whale, 8/23/14, Los Angeles

Part of the Los Angeles Jazz Collective’s summer festival

Darek Oles, bass
Mark Ferber, drums

New trio recording : Wayfare

1.Mitnick 2.Spinning 3.On the Wing 4.Port Costa 5.Socotra 6.Ground Control 7.Parasang 8.Hoedown 9.Black Sands

Musicians:
Leonard Thompson – piano,compositions
Ryan McGillicuddy – bass
Mark Ferber – drums

Recorded by Steve Wood at Benaji Studios, Laguna Beach CA on January 2nd & 3rd, 2012
Mixed by Matt Otto at JCR Records, Kansas City MO in 2012 & 2013
Mastered by A.T. Michael MacDonald at AlgoRhythms, Brooklyn NY on April 3rd, 2013

Cover Art:
“Arroyo Seco” by Roger Kuntz, 1961
Photo by George Post
Used with permission from the Estate of Roger Kuntz, via Mary Kuntz-Coté

Available on iTunes, Rhapsody, CDBaby, and other digital music sites.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/leonardthompson

 

Video excerpts from Justin Morell’s upcoming dectet release

It was great fun taking part in this project. Superb writing and fantastic musicians. The cd should be released a little later this year.

Vignette

Written and recorded in 1999, as part of the “SF2000 Time Capsule” compilation produced by my friend Patrick Kaliski.

Click the triangle below to listen:

Improvisation over “It’s The Talk Of The Town”

Press play to listen:

Linear Vocabulary: Trying to break old habits

In an effort to broaden my linear vocabulary, I devised an exercise that would force me to choose a different scale degree each time I landed on a particular chord. Here, I used the first part of John Coltrane’s “Countdown” and arbitrarily chose the F7 chord in the first bar as the parameter. In other words, the object was to construct seven different lines, the only restriction being that I use a different scale degree on the downbeat of the F7 chord in each of the seven lines.
Push play to listen:
click here for the pdf

Neapolitan Major

A few years ago I cut out 12 felt squares, one for each degree of the chromatic scale, in hopes of letting chance help me to discover some new sounds.
One day I closed my eyes and picked out a group of seven notes which I subsequently learned are referred to by some as the Neapolitan Major mode. I played around with it a little, ran it through Mick Goodrick’s ‘Cycle 2’, and picked some different pedals to go underneath it.
Click here for the pdf
Push play to listen: