welcome

Hello friends!

Happy January! I hope you are all doing great, wherever you are. I wanted to let you all know that the new Aerial Photograph CD is available now online!!! It's called "Ways and Means". You can download it on itunes, or get a beautifully hand packaged copy delivered right to your doorstep by CDbaby. Both ways are pretty cool, if you ask me.

Here are the links:

CD Baby

iTunes



For those of you who may not know a lot about me, the Aerial Photograph group, or the project that brought "Ways and Means" into existence, here is some more information...

I'm a jazz guitarist, teacher and composer. In 2008 I decided to do a year long project with my larger jazz chamber ensemble which would, among other things, explore the relationships, communities and neighborhoods of Philly. I wanted to do a project that incompassed as many different kinds of people as possible. That project consisted of me talking with different people every month and composing music about them for my large ensemble, “Aerial Photograph”. Each month I scheduled and recorded conversations with people from a specific community, wrote a roughly thirty minute suite of music inspired by them for the ensemble, rehearsed the group, recorded the music, produced 30 home-made CD’s and packages, and then performed the new music with the group at a local Philadelphia music venue. It sounds like a lot of work, but I had a lot of help and it all went surprisingly smooth. I began in January and focused on the elderly population by hanging out and talking with several people in thier 80's and 90's. The suite was called “city of age”. Then, in February, I decided to talk to people who were dealing with drug addictions and recovery. I spent a very memorable day at an Alcoholics/ Narcotics Anonymous facility. The music from that month was simply called “city of addiction”. Through the months of that year I spent time and talked with immigrants (city of arrivals), children (city of youth), religious believers (city of transcendence), veterans of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (city of service), homeless people (city of want), incarcerated populations (city of amends), teachers (city of thought), victims of violence in Philadelphia (city of loss), community volunteers (city of gifts) and finally, artists and musicians (city of creation).

By the end of the year I had spoken with well over a hundred Philadelphians and wrote a total of about 40 compositions which featured almost 40 musicians. This new CD, "Ways and Means" is a collection of ten songs that I thought came off really well. It's been re-mastered and re-mixed and I'm really excited about how great everyone on it sounds. And I don't want to brag, but the packaging is, well, um, awesome.


We also have a few shows coming up in the next few months - check out www.mattdavisguitar.com for more details.


And if you think you might know anyone who would be interested in this, would you be the coolest person ever and forward them this e-mail? Thanks!


Thanks so much for your support! The band and I really appreciate it!

Take care,
Matt

www.myspace.com/mattdavisguitar
www.facebook.com/mattdavisguitar