meet tell about how he get connected you know how he he increased his level of sources with the power of networking in order says ingredients so i'm a s i think of my viewers want to know more about well who you are eric mintel been playing the piano practically all my life since maybe my parents could always find me at the piano at like four years old just trying to i had a real fascination with would be trying to make up my own melodies and so when i was around fourteen i was going through my parents record collection and found an old forty five record of vinyl record when they had records back then and it was the and on one side was a song called take five the other side was a song called blue rondo alla turk very very rhythmically challenging tunes of for the time and this these tunes are released and i think one hundred fifty nine hundred sixty but i put the music on and i had you know when you had that instant connection so i had that instant connection with the music and i knew right there even though i was playing piano i knew i wanted to play jazz and i wanted to make jazz my life so from that point on  you know we play the college circuit colleges universities concert halls jazz clubs libraries churches anywhere you know that and we've connected with so many people and i love the music and every time we have concerts i'm always meeting new interest interesting people and it's just a great community jazz and jazz is a positive art form and that's why i love it it's one of the one of the last art forms that you can really the musicians free to improvise so you can improvise and you're still composing the piece and i write a lot of my own tunes and so you know we've done a lot of dave brubeck music but we do a lot of my own original music  jazz legend he was he passed in two thousand and twelve he wrote a lot of liner notes for my c d s which we have a lot of c d s available and and just have been very blessed by like that over the over the years with to be record ised not only by dave but by a lot of people in the jazz community in jazz times magazine or jazz is magazine downbeat magazine and i was a guest on marian mcpartland's piano jazz and n p r so all of these great you know opportunities happen because of my love for jazz and what i want to do with jazz in the broader aspect of music so what you're telling me the vision creates opportunities oh yeah i'm definitely how i'm you tell me more how how how vision  example in the white house was a well a prime example we had been playing and we were doing the college circuit and you know were playing gigs and i enjoyed that a lot but i said to myself man i want to take this to a bigger arena i want to take this to a larger audience so i said and then a commercial came on right after i had this thought a commercial came on for the white house on television and i said why don't i call the white house and i'll just call the white house and see if they have any programs where they could send musicians  perform so i called the white house and i asked you know could you do you have any programs where you send musicians to performing any kind of positive outreach like performing for the homeless performing for troops overseas using jazz  like a positive outreach for that so about a week later and i sent a cd at the time i had it's a loose press clipping of a newspaper article and i sent it off to the white house in about a week later i got a call on my answering machine saying that this is the white house we'd like to invite the arab intel quartet to the white house for christmas so i played for a for this is in one thousand nine hundred eighty played for a holiday dinner reception for president bill clinton at the time so what i just said was ask right was so i called and and they said what's your availability because they already knew my daughter had my information what your availability for december so i played again december fourteenth of two thousand and eleven and got a chance to meet president obama which was really phenomenal and he he was also a fan of dave brubeck and i said mr president we have a mutual friend dave brubeck he said dave brubeck was the very first jazz concert i went to see with my father when i was a that if you have a if you have a vision if you have something that is a real burning desire that you want to do with your life if you're not like if you're not happy in your certain situation you know you have to search within yourself and you've got to make a big leap of faith and say well i'm going to try this i'm going to make it happen so then you go for you go toward your goal and you make a decision to go for that goal whatever it could be  may want to switch jobs you may want to try something completely different you may want to take a trip you may want to you know so it's something that you have to make a conscious decision to to do and then just to follow the steps to do that and then you know research research your new you know new idea get as knowledgeable as you can connect yourself with like minded people you know and surround yourself with positive people you know the worst thing is to be run negative and have  know rejection is is a part of life i mean that's just a part of life if i could tell you how many doors were slammed in my face but you've got to have you develop the thick skin so to speak to just say look i know what i'm doing is greater than myself and i'm going to go for it i'm not going to give up on it so it's one of these things that you've just got to keep continually going toward and you get you know wonder i always say one door closes another one opens and that's what happens you know sometimes one person doesn't want to go in your direction then somebody else will so but it's you got to just try to stay focused and stay positive so that's the main thing i could say is just you know you're going to hear it any new venture of any  worth is you're going to have a rejection but it's just and it's i know it's hard for people not to take it personal yes because it's a person this what we're going to do is a personal part of us correct but if you can try to just say try to turn it around and say well look it's not it's not me that they're saying no to they're saying no to the idea that they're saying no to this so i mean yeah i mean i get i've gotten a lot of those but i go keep going and i just  started my group i wanted to do you know dave brubeck when i found his record i just was so taken by that music that i want to learn everything i could on jazz and about brubeck's music but i also listen to a lot of other jazz musicians too but i thought to myself you know i did a lot of research on dave and i did a lot of research in jazz and what i found out with with dave brubeck was not only was it the music that really connected me it was the life lesson so the life lesson of what he did with his music what he did with the gift that was given him so he basically took this and used it for the civil rights movement in the sixty's connected with a lot of people and so what i look at that that's what excites me it's like how can i take my music and reach a wider audience so what we do is when we go on the road we do concerts but during the day will do workshops and educational events for students  we're connecting with students at the high school level college although even sometimes like the junior high level which of the schools have a great music program they really are turning out and great jazz musicians you know and and they the kids love the music they're sponges for the music and so then i have a talk on being an entrepreneur in music because the kids are look the students learn music in school but once they have learned all the musical things that there was tremendous and now that there's no business mind there's no business about it it ends there how you get a gig how what do i do now and unfortunately that's a lot of kids now in there are getting out of colleges and they've got these enormous student loans and they're faced with well i don't have a job well so unless you're in a specialized field but with music you've got to you've got to open yourself up to a lot of different avenues of music so i do a that because i am toying with the idea which i started writing a couple pages on how to book gigs and might the title of the book is how i got to the white house twice i love to please i want to i know i decide i do get it out there it's like i you know it's just me sitting down to do it you know that's the whole thing and i've never and that's that's part of me that's part of my risk now i want to write this book you know and it's like a little like leery about how do i go bad i've never written a book before ok so that's ones yeah you said those people that you know have to learn and learn and about instrumented on the what to do with it in high schools and colleges i think you are good places and i thank you and that's the thing you know i've talked to a lot of students that have that fire in the belly and that's that fire that you know you have to have that we were just talking about the energy and if they if they follow that and don't get discouraged because there's going to be many many areas in music yes they can definitely get discouraged right out of the game but if they can just hold on and not take things personally and have a different viewpoint on it i think you can really they can really go somewhere and make the changes not just play the gig why not just make the money at the gig make make a and that's that and i try to do that and thankfully i've worked with these guys now in my group who are like minded because we're all going in the same direction we've got dave mone on drums nelson hill on sax and flute who's phenomenal player jack on bass who is up toward and performed all of the all over the world and so i've surrounded myself with these guys who are not only great musicians who are great people and we're like a band of brothers and we take that  idea and we take this on the road and go all over the place and and it's just great connecting with people and the the greatest thing is that sometimes we play places and people come up to us all the time and would say you know i never really like jazz but i like your music while so what tells me is it's the way we're presenting the music the way we're presenting it you gotta have the audience involved in what you're doing or can't just have a being twenty five years in the field i mean one of the first years i mean the first year i think i had one gig you know the very first year and the second year you build upon that listen i hope you're listening because for one whole year just one right now you would i could feed the image here so to you what is really society so my viewers can really understand i think it's if you can you can inspire one person that's leadership yeah if you see them just by a one person if anybody's listening to this now if they if there's a musician there and you can inspire somebody to go the extra mile that's that's what it's all about that success it's not the money it's not the cars it's not that's all that's fleeting stuff you know and you could you can have that but that doesn't make you success for a lot of years i think people thought and that's what i thought that was too it's like when you get to a point where and i think it's just human nature you can get so you could say i've been successful which i don't think i've been successful i'm always working on but you get to that point and you're like this is all there is you know you wanted that human nature you want to go to the next level you want to want to work on something else like now i want to work on this book i've got a lot of understand more about what you're trying to do and what you're what you're saying because music is powerful and you and i want people who are listening tools to understand that there's a lot you can get out of music oh absolutely ok so now at a listening all you perform it so now what are any least that you see today especially among the youth and that's what you just mentioned go to going back real quick on the emotional side of music that's why i love jazz because and the piano because that the emotional quality that you can get out of the music that's what connected me so i think that's how i try to strive is to try to go for that emotional content in the music and that's what draws people because they understand that instinctively understand that kind of idea and the music is not the universal language rhythm is no rhythm is the universal language so it's like a heartbeat that connects everybody together your heartbeat yeah and that was a quote by dave brubeck that's not my question but that was it like that's something that can tire everybody together i that heartbeat is the rhythm but the enemies of of success are especially to negative today because fortunately let me see today is a little bit different yeah unfortunately listening to the news is you know it's like every day is like not talking is yeah ok so i would sit get away from the news i like to say that i live in my own little bubble bliss because i you know i you know i just want to try to make the world a little bit better place musically and with anybody that come in contact with help somebody out somehow you know but the other enemies or being negative not following through don't if you don't follow through there's another saying you see following trued with those you know yeah like a venue say a venue that you're calling it and you're calling for a gig and then you don't call them back ok the fortune is in the follow up on the follow you've got to follow up with so that's one thing if you don't follow up you're not really going to go anywhere and i've got it you've got to keep those connections and then just being in a positive person just try to stay positive keep feeding your mind read try to stay positive i know chuck and i were just talking about being positive his motivational books which you've written a lot of which is awesome and that's the thing you've got to continually feed your mind of me and my with positive thoughts and positive self talk around because you are as something what you have what we try to permeate and through the whole room is an energy because people are feeling that energy and i play pretty ferocious piano i mean i'm pretty pretty energetic that way and it's like go to the gym if you go to the gin and you get you know you're feeling like you know want to go to the gym but after you do your workout you feel so much better you feel like so that's what i feel like with music too after concert it's hard for me to wind down because we're like you know there's a lot of energy spent but it's the smiles on people's ok so we've got a lot of concerts but they could go on eric mintel cortez dot com and look at our schedule and we've got a lot of different concerts coming up throughout this area and all up and down the eastern seaboard they can buy c d s on my yourself in a nest five ten years with what you have you know well doing what i'm doing i'm doing you know doing it in probably a better position you know but still connecting with people still touring  taking our music to a wider audience as wider spaces and just you know connecting on many different levels and continuing to play jazz and exploring the far in advance so i've got to have i have that time where i can do that and i'm my own boss so i can pretty much just delegate a certain amount of time to booking the group certain amount of time to playing practicing writing music  and then doing t v shows you know all kinds of stuff so it's i have a flexible schedule that way but it's and i'm very blessed to be able to do that and that's why and being doing this for twenty five years you know and having an a i really like what you've said eric i mean tell you know just what we're up of things but i just want to kind of summarize what you just said because pretty amazing to me especially when you said you just you know sent you know e mail all you're always network you will always network and that networking has brought some amazing people in my life so that's yes definitely never give up on networking that's for sure and you know as a musician it's tough for us sometimes to go out and see other musicians because we're working usually at the same times but it's always good to support other other musicians too because we're all in the jazz community is a small community so we've all got to kind of help each other out the way wow or something so as sided t to wear what you want my audience to don't give up don't give up keep trying and trying new things and never never give up why this is our song we have come to the end