Time to Practice

In a first for our jazz combo, we came up with a play list well in advance of our concert, which is going to be April 13. Since we are technically students, our recital has to take a specific format, namely, we have to cover what are considered the four "main" areas of jazz performance, namely, swing, blues, ballad, and Latin. Our play list, in alphabetical order, therefore, looks like this:

Cherokee
D Natural Blues
Desafinado
Ruby, My Dear

Ruby is a carryover from our Valentine's songfest song, which we didn't get to perform as the program designer "picked" a different song for us. Cherokee was insisted upon by our director, despite at least two of us having a certain disinclination to perform it (including me). D Natural Blues and Desafinado we came up with on the fly, ran through them once or twice, and they sounded good enough, so we decided to stick with them.

And that was that.

I'm glad the selection process is out of the way, because now I can practice those songs diligently and confidently, knowing that every minute I put into improving them will not go to waste. Still, coupled with the four (maybe five) songs that the big band will be performing on April 17, that's eight songs I've got to get down pat and really be able to play. I should be able to master them, though, because I don't have much of anything going on between now and the concerts. There can be no excuses for not accomplishing some serious polishing of my chops on these tunes.

I'm almost as excited about learning these songs as I am about how I will feel when this semester is over and I can play whatever I want once again. The home stretch is the best part of studying jazz in school.