“AJP …play a funky, freewheeling brand of jazz fusion.Think the cooler, bop-era side of Miles Davis, crossed with today’s contemporary jazz-influenced jam bands like Soulive. Dig it, baby!”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  See you at the show!

5 August: Stewart library concert series, Corinna. Outside show at the town bandstand.  7.00.

7 August: Winterport Music Festival. We’re calling this set “Forty Minutes of Fury”. Miles did 38 minutes at the Isle of Wight Festival. We get two more- and we intend to use them…

20 August: Bar Harbor Jazz Festival. This will be our third show at Maine’s finest summer jazz festival. See you on the village green that afternoon (start time TBA- check back soon.)

The Festival is set to kick off August 7 at 11:00 AM and features, in addition to yours truly, Ernie & the Automatics (with Barry Goudreau & Sid Hashian of BOSTON).

In keeping with the spirit of the day we are planning a particularly raucous version of our “hot set” of Bar Harbor Jazz Fest and “Downtown Countdown” fame. We are working up a pair of funk monsters from the Brecker Brothers catalogue and have every intention of spending our 40 minute set waging war on schlock. Death to boring jazz, me hearties!!!

Don’t miss the Colin Graebert Trio (featuring 60% of AJP) at the Hilton Garden Inn in Bangor  this Thurday evening (3/4). Grab a seat at the bar, order up some hot wings, and enjoy some spectacular jazz in an intimate environment.

AJP plays Monk and Miles in Ogunquit!” On 6 February the ‘Project will head south to the Dunaway Center in Ogunquit for a themed show starting at 7.30. Sponsored by Ogunquit Performing Arts, this gig features the music of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk and pays homage to the tremendous legacy these two jazz giants left us.

We are so excited about this that we can barely speak- a great venue, great music to choose from, and our first-ever show south of the mid-coast. A memorable night would seem to be in the offing… See you there!!

Check out the great write-up from Seacoast Online.

Check out all the other activities and events going on in downtown Bangor on the 31st as part of the Downtown Countdown.

The Project will be kicking off the festivities on the Bangor waterfront on Friday 8/28 at the Sea Dog. Come on down, grab a pint of Blue Paw Blueberry Wheat Ale, and enjoy the show! We’ll be playing from 5:00 – 6:30 PM, right before the kick off parade for the American Folk Music Festival.

Don’t forget that you can catch the Project at the Bar Harbor on August 21st. We’ll be playing from 6:00 – 8:00 PM at Agramont Park (corner of West & Main, Across from Geddy’s). If it rains we’re going to move into Carmen Veranda’s and play there. Come on down to Bar Harbor and watch the Project rock the Jazz Festival.

3/5 of The Project will be appearing at Paddy Murphy’s in Bangor on Thursday July 9 starting at about 7PM. There’s no cover, so come down, grab a pint and check us out.

PS – If you haven’t had them, try the fried pickles. You won’t regret it.

The Project is playing at a private function at the Whitehall Inn in Camden on Sunday June 21. If you are lucky enough to be attending, please let us know what you thought of the show in the comments section. We love getting feedback from our audience.

If you happened to get a good video or audio recording of our set, let us know that as well. We would like to add it to our site.

If you want to book the project for your public or private gig, contact us and let us know!

The boys in the ‘Project got the summer season off to a rousing start on the weekend of 8/9 May with appearances in Winter Harbor and Bangor.

On the 8th we awoke to see that our group was the subject of a feature article in the Bangor Daily News by Emily Burnham, our favorite music journalist in the whole world.

Later that day Austin, Gaylen, Mark, and newcomer to the group Colin Graebert (a Berklee-trained keyboard monster) kicked off the 2009 “Schoodic Arts For All” summer season with two shows at the wonderful Hammond Hall in Winter Harbor. At 1.00 we played for 100 local school kids in years 5-8, and then after a fantastic afternoon of local hospitality we hit it again with two white-hot sets at 7.00. Highlights included “So What” making time stand still as we opened the show, a scintillating “Footprints”/”Witch Hunt” combo, and a bunch of road-tripping Bapst students making the clave intro to “Blue Bossa” a LOT more challenging than it usually is… All hands agreed it was an epic night.

On the 9th we once again opened the John Bapst prom, this time staying and playing past our designated stop time because, well, we were just burning the room down and no one wanted it to end.

This summer finds us mostly on the coast, and “Project fans looking to see us really open it up might want to circle 21 August on the calendar. Bar Harbor might never be the same…
The Summer So Far:

21 June. Private Function, Whitehall Inn, Camden. (Yes, we do such things- give us a shout if you’re interested.)

19 July. “Winterport Music Festival” pre-fest concert. 2-4 p.m., Winterport Meeting House. We intend upon truly enlivening their Sunday afternoon, as this will mark AJP’s first appearance as a quintet!!

31 July. “Ellsworth Summer Music on the Waterfront.” 6 p.m. Bring ya beach towel down to the banks of the Union River. Let’s all make fireflies dance in the dusk.

21 August. “Bar Harbor Jazz Festival” 6-8 p.m., on the village green. Yes indeed, – we have a prime spot at Maine’s premier summer jazz festival and we are definitely going to make it count! We don’t want to tip our hand, but it looks like the second set of this show might even rival the legendary second set at Winter Harbor. One thing’s for sure- if you bootleg any of our shows this summer (and yeah, we encourage that, especially on video!) make this the one! See you on the Green!!!

As always we are open to venues here, there, and everywhere (even our native city of Bangor- book us for next New Year’s already, will ya?). If you are interested in having AJP in your own tent, festival, living room, stadium, hip jazz club or village green, just contact us. There is simply nobody else on the scene who sounds like AJP- and we can prove it.