It's time for our annual holiday CD sale. Until January 1, it's buy 3 CDs and get 1 free. Order 3 CDs from ranblake.com, and then enter the word "newsletter" and the title of your bonus choice in the "Notes/ Instructions" box that appears just before you complete your order.

We currently have 13 albums available:
All That Is Tied
Breakthru
Duke Dreams
Epistrophy
Horace is Blue
Improvisations
Indian Winter
Painted Rhythms: Vol. 1
Round About
Something to Live For
Sonic Temples
Suffield Gothic
Unmarked Van

Other CDs of Ran's are available from a variety of sources:

Short Life of Barbara Monk -- We're temporarily out of stock, but you can get it from Black Saint/Soul Note.

Masters of Different Worlds is available from Mapleshade.

Third Stream Recompositions, Wende and You Stepped Out of a Cloud are available from Universal France or Amazon.

Newest Sound Around is available from Amazon or Half.com.

A Memory of Vienna, Duo En Noir, That Certain Feeling, and Painted Rhythms, Vol. 2 are out of print and hard to find. Your best bet is to check eBay and used record/CD stores with large jazz collections.

A number of Ran's albums are only available on vinyl: Rapport, Blue Potato, Film Noir, Crystal Trip, Open City, Portfolio of Doctor Mabuse, Ran Blake Plays Solo Piano, Realization of a Dream, Third Stream Today, Third Stream: 2nd Chapter, Take 1, Take 2 and Vertigo. Again, your best bet is eBay and used record stores.

2007
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January

Ran and guitarist David "Knife" Fabris begin their European tour tonight in Strasbourg, France. The tour dates are:

November 22 -- Ran performs solo at the Jazzdor Festival in Strasbourg, France.

November 27 -- Lecture and duo performance at Max Planck Institute Guest House, Tuebingen, Germany. Seating is limited, so please call ahead (+49(0)7071-601765) if you're interested in attending.

November 29 -- Duo performance with Knife at Theatre du Perigueux in Perigueux, France.

December 9 -- Duo performance with Knife in the afternoon at Le Petit Faucheux in Tours, France. Ran will also be teaching a master class in the week leading up to this show.

December 13 -- Ran performs at the Sunset Sunside Club in Paris. Ran will teach a master class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in the days leading up to this show, and students will participate in this night's performance.

December 15 -- Duo performance with Knife at Casa Jazz in Rome.

A November highlight for Ran was seeing the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra (SBYO) of Venezuela perform at Boston's Symphony Hall.

SBYO is conducted by charismatic Gustavo Dudamel, who is just 26. The orchestra is part of a national program in Venezuela called El Sistema, which gives instruments to poor children across the country and places them in a network of orchestras starting in preschool. About 250,000 kids are participating.

The concert was presented by the New England Conservatory, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Celebrity Series of Boston. The day of the performance, Jose Antonio Abreu, El Sistema's founder, spoke at NEC. Ran came away impressed with the program and the SBYO's talent and enthusiasm.

You can read the Boston Globe's review of the Boston show here.

We'll see you in December.
--Steve

Vol. 3, No.11