Rhythm Assembly!

Here's a transcript of this assembly I gave to Earths Magnet School in Newbury Park, California.

IanAFry.com QR Code

Laying down drums with Andrea Bocelli @ the Frank Erwin Center 2012

(check the side mini-jumbotrons on this one)









Here's a photo gallery at QRO magazine.

Andrea Bocelli @ Frank Erwin Center Review

(Conductor Eugene Kohn, left, and Andrea Bocelli take a bow during Bocelli’s concert at the Frank Erwin Center on Friday, February 10, 2012. Kelly West AMERICAN-STATESMAN)

From: The Statesman
By Pam LeBlanc | Monday, February 13, 2012, 02:20 PM


Andrea Bocelli romanced a love-struck crowd Friday at the Frank Erwin Center, giving couples everything but the long-stem roses in his pre-Valentine’s Day concert.

Talk about timing. How did Austin get so lucky to land the famous Italian tenor, who lost his sight at age 12, on one of the biggest date nights of the year?

Bocelli, making his Austin debut, wasted no time with chitchat. He jumped into his “Love Italian Style” show with a string of soaring arias, as clips from opera performances played on a big screen behind him.

It was exactly what the audience, some of whom had pulled out the furs for the special occasion, had paid to hear.

They swayed and gazed happily at the stage, especially when Bocelli dove into “La donna e’ mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto and “Brindisi” from his La Traviata.

Couples cuddled; fans swooned. More than a few wiped tears from their eyes. Music really can make you cry.

Just watching Bocelli, who had congenital glaucoma as a child then went completely blind after an accident playing soccer, is fascinating. He stood perfectly still as he sang, smiling serenely as if he knew he had a hand in winning over a heart or two that night.

Eugene Kohn conducted the 71-piece orchestra and a choir of about 60. Soprano Eglise Gutiérrez and special guest Heather Headley sang also, taking over for a solo or two and sharing the stage with Bocelli for duets.

Bocelli has said that music is love, and that came across in his song choice, which included numbers from Romeo and Juliet, Handel’s “Halleluja Chorus” from The Messiah, “Ave Maria,” and a few pop songs, too.

If the audience wanted songs they knew by heart, they got them with Bocelli’s rich rendition of “Amazing Grace,” (which added a whole new meaning to the line “was blind and now can see”) and a version of “New York, New York” sung as photos of Bocelli in the City That Never Sleeps scrolled in the background. He even played the flute for one song.

He was best, though, when singing solo, in his native Italian. It wasn’t until the end of the concert that Bocelli finally said a few words, thanking Kohn and his fellow performers before dedicating one final song — “I Can’t Help Falling in Love” — to all the people in love.

Based on the audience’s response, that was most of the crowd.

There’s just one problem for anybody who surprised their date with tickets to the show. How are they going to top that next Valentine’s Day?

Mrs. Glass on KUT's Austin Music Minute with Laurie Gallardo

Appearance on Weary Things by Andy Friedman & The Other Failures.

Listen on the player above, or Here or Here.

Drums on Idaho and Road Trippin'.

Buy on iTunes

New Music from Hoss Pie Records

Listen to SoccerMom & Mrs. Glass

Tony "Ham" Guerrero 1944-2011

Tony "Ham" Guerrero I love you

Austin Chronicle Chronicles Tortilla Factory's History (link)

Guitar Center Drum Off Round 1 Austin, Texas • video by Michael Rey!

Sometimes You Gotta Be A Master from Michael Rey on Vimeo.

Tortilla Factory Nominated for Best Tejano Album of the Year for 2010 Grammys

Live @ Austin City Hall (link)

and a clip from San Antonio right by the Alamo.

Guitar Center Drum Off 2010 • Austin, Texas • Round 2

New Tortilla Factory Album "Cookin" on CdBaby

Check out this new record by the Grammy-nominated Tortilla Factory that I am honored to be a part of.

Available on CDBABY & iTunes.

Listen to CUMBIA DEL AMOR at ReverbNation or at the music player at the top of the page.

War Pigs FEAT-Caleb Burhans performed by Newspeak

Listen {above} via the ReverNation Widget
- or-
click on above link to listen to a great tune by Black Sabbath

Sara Lindsey's new Tat by Cody @ Camino Azul

Metro PCS Spicy News

Metro PCS Spicy News has been running these commercials that include some tabla sequences that I created with Tim Heintz. Enjoy.

Ethan Meixsell - Pathos and Logos

Experience my drumming on "Lydia" and "Weapons of Mass Distraction" via V-Drums and the BFD sound bank at Ethan's MySpace or at my ReverbNation

Andy Friedman Weary Things (in which I play drums for the most part)

BUY Weary Things on iTunes

Brooklyn Rail Article

Listen to Andy Friedman's new album Weary Things

From AndyFriedman.net
Friedman released his second album, Weary Things (City Salvage Records/Kindred Rhythm) in the winter of 2009, which garnered widespread critical praise, a performance on NPR's coveted Mountain Stage, and a feature interview on XM's Bob Edwards Show, further solidifying his growing reputation as a "dusty, paint-splattered Americana sage." (Rochester News & Democrat) Despite this, and along with only a handful of other albums (including releases by Tom Waits and Chuck Prophet) The Associated Press highlighted Weary Things among The Best Overlooked Albums Of 2009. "Friedman can write a lyric and deliver it," declared Stephen Wine. "He is not to be overlooked, that's for sure." Friedman's "hard-tack country originals" were described in The New Yorker as "the mark of a true artist," while NoDepression.com called his songwriting "unforgettable." Old Crow Medicine Show's Ketch Secor, in a poem written about Friedman's sophomore album, called his record a "certified, genuine American tune." Indie-folk icon Sufjan Stevens proclaimed, "I think the world of Andy Friedman. I've always wanted to be Andy Friedman." In the album’s liner notes, David Gates -- the author, Pulitzer-finalist, and former senior arts editor for Newsweek -- sets the tone for Weary Things. “What [Friedman] sees through his windshield isn’t Greil Marcus’s Old Weird America," he writes, "but the weird, new America where the pastoral is no longer pure.”
"Andy Friedman is not exactly one of those musicians you play while you're paying your bills or cleaning the house," says NPR, "his songs demand that you sit down and listen to them, which is why he is such a hot live act." While his songs are anything but funny, Friedman has published over a dozen gag cartoons in The New Yorker under the pseudonym Larry Hat. As an award-winning illustrator published under his own name, Friedman’s portraits of cultural figures appear regularly in literally hundreds of magazines and newspapers worldwide, including recent covers for the New York Times Magazine and The New Republic.