Creative Edge Music

Petite pianist, composer, and humanitarian, Keiko Matsui has a dynamism that is anything but small. Her big spirit and larger than life passion is matched only by her grand talent that has taken the world by storm many times over. Ms. Matsui originally hails from Tokyo, Japan, where she began playing piano at the age of five. Her earliest influences ranged from Sergei Rachmaninoff to Stevie Wonder... And it's no wonder, because her eclectic music now spans the genres of smooth jazz, new-age, and jazz fusion. Over the past several decades, her acclaimed records like A Drop of Water, Cherry Blossom, and Sapphire, have garnered sustained positions on Billboard's Top Contemporary Jazz Albums and Top Ten Indie Contemporary Jazz Albums. Billboard also rated Ms. Matsui the number three Top Contemporary Jazz Artist. Recent records like Whisper from the Mirror have reflected a departure from Ms. Matsui's traditional smooth jazz sound, to a more etherial, world beat f...

Over the weekend, I had the chance to get on the phone with former Thirty 30 guitarist/keyboardist, Anthony Esparza, to discuss his many upcoming projects. We talked about his solo project, The Black Order, and his upcoming Ep, Last Letters From Earth, due out this Spring. We also talked a little bit about his new band, podcasting, and the end of his previous band, Thirty 30. What is The Black Order? Anthony : It's a solo project that I am developing. I'm a big fan of film composers like Hans Zimmer, James Horner, John Williams, and I've been experimenting with the mindset of a film composer for a few years now. When I was writing the keys and strings for "House Of Plagues" (the first album from Anthony's former band, Thirty 30), I approached it with the idea that the overall music was a movie, and the keys and strings became the actual score of the movie, if that makes any sense. Kind of like the 'metal, aggressive' parts of the music were scen...