Tish Oney's Music Blog

Greetings from gorgeous Ithaca, NY! I am thrilled to be back at my alma mater as their 2011-12 Robert G. Boehmler Visiting Artist presenting two concerts on the main stage (in Ford Hall Auditorium) Thursday, 9/29 and Friday, 9/30. In addition to these public performances, throughout this week I have been providing master classes, jazz workshops, music history and songwriting lectures and private coaching sessions for students. I am also delighted to reunite with some wonderful faculty friends, colleagues and mentors who have shared music with me over the years. IC is a phenomenal place to develop as a musician--the faculty are truly top-notch and the opportunities for excelling in a spirit of healthy competition are second to none. This week has been a gift and I feel deeply honored to have been selected as this year's recipient of the Boehmler Artist Residency grant. This week's concerts are free and open to the public due to this generous donor, so please take that shor...

Welcome to another installment of my blog! It seems the months fly by... This past month has been busy--I started it with a wonderful and fun recording session at Red Rock Recording Studios near Stroudsburg, PA with Alfred Music Publishing. I am honored to sing with some of the finest session singers in the country a couple of times a year to update the Alfred choral music catalog offerings. I plan to return for more recording at the end of October. It's a nice diversion from touring and teaching and gives me a chance to periodically refine my sight-singing skills! Session singing moves very quickly--for this session we rehearsed each song once through (if that) and then recorded it, and I (along with a few other singers) performed all the women's parts on separate tracks (first and second soprano and alto). Having several excellent singers with well-developed ranges and sight-singing skills is crucial to make the session run efficiently. Each "take" must be ...

Blujazz, my new record label, has announced that my new CD, "Sweet Youth," recorded with the incomparable guitarist John Chiodini, will be available for sale worldwide on August 16 with a jazz radio release date of August 29! We are very excited about this coming month's events and look forward to sharing our new music with all of you. To order the new CD, you can find it in the coming weeks at www.blujazz.com ... In conjunction with the new album release, my concert schedule will begin to get busy throughout the fall...I'll be performing August 20 at First Baptist Church of Honolulu (7 pm), September 9 at The Master's College in Santa Clarita, CA (7:30 pm) and September 29 (The Peggy Lee Project) and 30 (Tish Oney's Big Band Excursion) at Ithaca College School of Music (Ithaca, NY) at 8:15 pm in Ford Hall Auditorium. For information about these and more concerts, please see my website, www.tishoney.com .

Registering copyrights, purchasing mechanical licensing, paying royalties, registering new titles, searching for publishers, answering questions about public domain...so much to do before releasing a new album! Now that the recording, editing, mixing and mastering are done, I must be close, right? Not necessarily! But seriously, we ARE close and I expect I will have the final product in my hands within another month. The cover art and liner notes are currently in the design/production stage and that is an exciting process. I absolutely treasure being the producer of my own albums and being able to have the strongest influence on every aspect of the recording, including the artwork design and development. I have hired wonderful photographers and a graphic designer with a gifted eye and a sense for creating something beautiful to match the intent of the music. I am blessed! Another exciting bit of news is that this new album, "Sweet Youth," will be my debut recording on ...

I am thrilled to be putting together my first-ever full length big band show which will be taken on tour this coming fall season. I have compiled a show of songs arranged by some of the greatest big band arrangers of our time--Chris Walden, Joe Riposo, Jason Goldman and Jim Hughart. I am tremendously thankful for their time, talents and energy in writing these wonderful charts and sharing them with me for this tour! The tour will be under way in late September with my first big band outing back where it all started--Ithaca College School of Music. Several years ago as a Masters student I fronted the IC Jazz Orchestra on a number of occasions, most notably when Les Brown came and visited the campus for our Commencement Eve gala concert. In September I will return to the Ithaca campus as their 2011-12 Robert G. Boehmler Visiting Artist to teach master classes and workshops, to do some guest lecturing and to give two evening performances in their main concert venue. At this moment, ...

I recorded my new album in November with the amazing John Chiodini on guitar and with help from a phenomenal recording engineer from Los Angeles named Paul Tavenner. The three of us had loads of fun making great music over a couple of weeks in the studio and now are continuing to listen to the tracks, editing and mixing them from afar. I made a point not to rush the production of this album--planning CD release events too far in advance can tend to bring unwanted stress, and so I decided not to add more pressure to my life than necessary! I am still enjoying the benefits of our second CD, "Dear Peg," which thankfully continues to receive international airplay and brings a continuous stream of concert performances into my calendar. This forthcoming project, "Sweet Youth," is coming together beautifully. Some of the highlights include several new arrangements of favorite standards of mine including a very tricky-to-sing piece called "Autumn Nocturne." T...

The discipline of practice can be elusive for the busy artist... but as the virtuosic pianist Vladimir Horowitz famously said (and I paraphrase): "When I miss one day of practice, I notice a difference in my performance. When I miss two days, my fellow musicians notice. When I miss three days, the public begins to notice." When it comes to singing, muscles necessary for precise musical execution don't take long to atrophy, and so require regular workouts on a daily basis. Add to that the responsibility of performing a completely memorized program and the necessity of practicing becomes intensified. Further, the fact that I am constantly writing music, arranging songs and creating songlists or programs tailored specifically for each performance requires a regular investment of practice time in advance of each concert. Over the years I have found ways to view my daily practice session as special time for me, like an hour spent at a spa, rather than an hour of drudgery...