So far the overwhelming blowout talk here was Nick Sieger’s of Sun Microsystems. He’s got the whole thing over here on his blog, with a complete discography of the great music he played.
While listening to this great primer on the history of Jazz and discussion of core concepts, some ideas collided in the back of my brain. I’m pretty familiar with a lot of it, but it’s been a while and I’ve been stuck in some of the same genre/idea ruts. I started thinking about some things I’ve been working on for my band, things I want to try, some of the concepts Nick was discussing and illustrating by playing us music and I suddenly had an explosion in my head and a near-complete song idea! I actually drew out a few bass clef staves and wrote some sheet music notes real quick to try when I get back home (or in a music shop on Queen St. on the way to the after party.).
Nick, in half an hour you just made up every single JavaOne conference I attended ;-)