It’s been a while, but I hope you had a sunny summer staying cool, healthy and happy! For me, I’ve been enjoying in what I refer to as my Composing Season, so I’ve been at my beloved piano as well as getting out in nature a lot too of course. Now that fall has begun, I realized that since last September I have released the albums Transparent Sky, and Life Is Beautiful, as well as a digital book, updated my website and now… finishing up our new album: P A R A D I S E C O V E that will be out December 2nd. I’m a fan of all creative projects large and small, so this has been quite a fun stretch for me!
I wanted to first thank everyone that has contributed to our efforts with wonderful media reviews, kind words on social media or Amazon reviews, radio play or streaming of our albums and buying tracks or CDs. As musicians, our goal is to connect with others through our art, and we genuinely appreciate the encouragement we have received. Over the years your support adds up: our albums are regularly at the top of the Jazz Week and ZMR radio/streaming charts, show up as #1 Amazon New Releases, and have drawn over a half million streams on Apple Music, almost a million streams on Spotify, and three million streams on Pandora. These days with analytics at our finger tips, I see that More Than Another Day has been Apple’s Pure Jazz Playlist since December 2020, and Alexa reports that I’m “On Fire” with voice requests! We really appreciate this kindness.
Interested in what’s been going on? Here’s the new website her featuring
P A R A D I S E C O V E that I recorded with Obed Calvaire/drums, Luques Curtis/bass and Igmar Thomas/trumpet. Always exciting to me is when the album is up on Amazon (yes you can pre-order). Do we plan to tour with the new music? Let me know where you’d like to hear us! We’ll see what we can do next spring.
Another project that has been important to me: when I was just out of college I created and co-wrote a children’s book with my sister, Sandra Kirkpatrick. I was an Art Director at the time and asked Randy Chewning to illustrate the book. With the luck and pluck of a newbie, I walked into a book publisher and had a book deal the next week. If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today published by Price Stern Sloan (now Penguin Young Readers Group), was very popular with kids, parents, schools, libraries and critics but as successful as it was, the book went out of print when the publisher was bought out. The popularity of our book lived on when other books copied our book name and/or concept though! Finally this year I was able to update the book and put it out as an E Book (now competing against all those books that had copied our name or concept). In putting out a digital book my goal is not to replace a physical book, but to make it small to carry on your phone or tablet and making it easy for parents or grandparents to entertain kids and learn science facts anywhere. It’s available for Kindle or you can open your Apple Books app & search for ISBN 9781667857428.
Wishing You A Wonderful Fall!
Lisa
Lisa,
Thank you for your recent personal note and CD replying to my letter. I truly never expected a response but appreciate the fact that you care enough to do so. If you are going to tour to promote your new album, I would encourage you to consider coming to Minneapolis. There is a very cool and popular jazz club here called The Dakota. I think it would be the great venue for you. Despite recent history, Minneapolis is really a very nice city and also has a vibrant music scene. I hope you’ll keep it in mind as you plan your tour.
Sincerely,
Gin Kujawa