Rock down at Redondo Beach
Today I went to pick up my instrument after two days of repairs and maintenance. I had troubles with tuning, the horn is very old and has been very low. I left it with a known name here in LA who desoldered the tuning slide and cut it shorter. It turned out pretty good and he made sure the instrument was in good condition. The horn now sounds a bit different from before but is at least in tune. That’s a good thing.
Mattias has been out doing his long walks (good on him) so he chose to stay home this evening. I wanted to go meet an old friend of mine down at Redondo beach. It turned out the public transportation was a bit more cumbersome than expected… it took me 2.45 hours to get down there!! Nick, my friend, was playing at a club called the “Starboard Attitude” down at the pier, and I brought my horn. Total rock happening, so I ended up playing some Rolling Stones’ tunes and Knocking’ on heavens door. Classic for sure… and good times. Even got myself a photography/webdesign job down there too.
Valentine’s day
Today we explored the subway system and took a ride down to Hollywood/Vine to listen to a big band rehearse. It is great, the subway day-pass (all day subway/metro riding) costs five bucks! 30 swedish crowns! To ride a whole day. Perfect. We walked around Sunset Blvd strolling the walk of fame. Many names we recognized but even more we’ve never heard of. Beautiful area down there, lots of old landmarks. Take a look at the pictures!
Later on we continued down to Charlie O’s to celebrate both Valentine’s day and Pete Christlieb’s birthday. Pete is a legendary tenor saxophone player known from a ton of records and was playing with a group of friends on his birthday at the jazz club. The band and especially Pete played incredible.
Since it was Valentine’s day the place was decorated with hearts and red color; they even hosted a valentine-raffle. We ended up winning one CD, one set of champagne glasses, a bottle of champagne and a huge heart-shaped cream cake.
nice and easy day…
Today was quite a chilled day… The sun was strong and hot; spent some time at the pool reading and relaxing after a recovering sleep (some beers too many last nite…). We went down to the 25 year old club “La Ve Lee” on Ventura Blvd to see some jazz fusion with some for us unknown names. Turned out to be a cool concert with a group called “Code 3″. Some great bass playing from Doug Shreeve.
Tomorrow will be an exciting concert at Charlie O’s featuring Bill Reichenbach and Alex Iles on trombones. Just listened to some clips of Alex Iles on youtube which sounded amazing. Looking forward to hear that! Watch out for some photos coming up!
Emil Richards All-Star Big Band
We went again to rehearse with the Bob Stromquist big band that we now do regularly at Mondays. Easy going, it is really fun to play big band again! Paulie then took us to Charlie O’s jazz club again to see the vibraphonist Emil Richards perform with his All-Star band. We got to see Bill Reichenbach at bass trombone and Charlie Loper on lead bone. Some great solos were played by the trumpeter Bob Summers, the legendary tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb and Emil himself. We were enjoying hearing the Big Phat Band, Gordon Goodwin-drummer Ernie Dresel play. God what a drummer that is, far amongst the best big band drumming we have ever heard. Check the concert photos out!
When that finished, we continued down to the famous Larry Carlton established joint “the Baked Potato” down on Cahuenga Blvd, to go rip some tunes at the jazz/fusion inspired jam session. Both Mattias me and Paulie got to play some tunes there and laid down some backgrounds for the vocalists. Great fun, we’re for sure going back down there again next week.
Today we got hold of the trombone player Bob McChesney via email who sent us his playing schedule. Luckily he’ll be playing with the Don Menza band on Monday, following with his quintet the Wednesday after. Good times, exciting to finally get to hear him play live! That’s it for today!
Few quiet days
We have had a couple of days with some relaxing on the schedule. We have both been practicing our horns a lot and walked around in the neighborhood. We have explored the local foods available in the area; we had an expensive experience at a sushi place close-by, but some better ones including hamburgers… They really can make burgers in this country. Mattias and me have been out walking a lot in the ‘hood - to get exercise but also to give each other some free time at home to practice alone. Our house is really small as you might have already heard. I have been out in the wonderful weather focusing a bit on creative photographing.
We spent the evening at Mama Juana’s, a latin/salsa place that had a live band playing. The place was packed, we got ourselves great latin food and some fantastic music from the band, Son Mayor. Good times. Maybe the avarage female age was a bit higher than we hoped for…
Oh yeah… I jumped into the pool today as well, the weather is warm!
Carl Saunders’ Sextet
daily report again! 
Listened to Carl Saunders and his sextet today at Charlie O’s. Some great playing there and especially interesting hearing a trombone player we haven’t heard of before, Scott Whitfield is really an amazing trombone player and we look forward to listen more to him the coming weeks.
Big band evening
Today we rehearsed with an amateur big band Paulie hooked us up with. Reading through charts and stuff, meeting people. Afterwards we went to Charlie O’s Jazz Club to listen to Bill Holman’s big band. Great players playing. Having a few beers and listen to Carl Saunders playing lead trumpet is just wonderful!
When that finished we went downtown to Santa Monica where a jazz session was happening. And once again it seems we only run into the greatest musicians wherever we turn. On stage is the drummer Stevie wonder has in his band and the bass player usually featured with Diana Ross! this town is just crazy! Mattias went up and played a few tunes and I made some photos of the event. Paulie played as well and played some amazing solos on a few R’n'B tunes. He is really a world class player! What a day! Here are the photos!
Music, music, music!
The last two days have been fantastic. We were lucky to be hooked up with a musician in town. We got a number from a friend in Sweden and we gave it a shot. It turned out to be a saxophone player living on the same street as us!!! That is just not possible we thought and he couldn’t believe it either. This great guy, Paulie Cerra, told us that he would be playing that same evening and that we were welcome to listen. It should be some sort of unrehearsed jam session with him and some super musicians from town. We rode with him in the car and arrived at Cafe Boogaloo, in a community in southern California called Hermosa beach. Great little place in a sort of Creole, New Orleansish style. during his setup me and Mattias went out for a walk on the beach and got some food. Here are some shots you can look at.
When the concert started, we realized that we had been brought to a concert like jam session featuring some of the finest players LA has to offer. Oscar Seaton - drums, Travis Carlton - bass, Kirk Fletcher - guitar and Luke ’something’ - keys. The repertoire was sort of blues/funk, brutally good! Me and Mattias have both seen a lot of good and bad concerts but this one really was something outrageous! Since Paulie told us to bring the horns, we even were invited up to play two tunes with the band! Great stuff! Look at the pictures from the concert!
First days in Los Angeles
So, we obviously made it to Los Angeles! We started with moving in at the place in Valley Village area in North Hollywood. A cozy little house located in an area that seems very relaxed. We had a rental car the first two days in which we drove around to see as much as we could. We had troubles with the cold temperature in the house at first but have gotten sleeping gear now which totally works out. During the days it is quite warm, comparable to a Swedish summer which is fantastic. Such a difference from what we have back home in Sweden.
The first says we used to get ourselves located at the place and find our way around. We drove around in the car around the Hollywood area. We went on Mulholland Drive to see the view and further on to visit the Hollywood sign. Very beautiful views; it is incredible how big of a city Los Angeles is. Tough to imagine. Remembering the flight, we came in over the city at night time. There where lights below us which just didn’t end despite looking through every windows of the plane. Crazy big! Take a look at the pictures from our drive!
Winter cleaning at the site
As you have already seen, I am working on a complete redesign of the site. I have recreated this blog and put it as a sub page of the original henriksoderlund.com site which will become much more promotion oriented. I will create pages to promote and share my work as musician and photographer and they will show up first as you navigate to my root page. From there will be a link, just like there is now, to this blog where you will be able to continue reading about news and my future plans. If you have any suggestions how you’d like to see the page develop, drop me a comment on this post. I will try to coordinate all this in between the Los Angeles preparations. Stay tuned!
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This is the place where you can read about where I am and what I currently am doing. My calendar is on the left.
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