And by the way, now I’m a conductor

Here’s a little more about the “concert” where my 17-piece jazz arrangement was played.

Since I showed up first and most of the band had arrived and was ready to play, we decided to go ahead and start with my piece. The piano player hadn’t showed up, so my instructor asked me if I wanted to play on my piece. Simple fact of the matter was, I had spent so much time working on my arrangement, that I hadn’t played the piano in nearly two weeks, other than occasional relaxing plunking and a few notes here and there to work out arrangement parts. So, my instructor agreed to play the piano. The big band instructor asked if I wanted to conduct, but I told him I didn’t know how. It turned out, however, that the bass trombone player also hadn’t showed up and I needed the bass trombone, mainly for the foghorn accent sounds. So he said he would play, and I had no choice but to conduct. The instructor said, “Don’t worry. This band won’t look at you anyway.” So I explained the intricacies (?) of my piece, counted off, and away we went. It went surprisingly well. After we had played my piece twice, I gathered up the scores and sat down, but then the guitar player, who had to play on his piece and had also written piano and bass trombone parts, said, “We need you to conduct again.” Fortunately, I knew the piece pretty well from our in-class review, so I counted and pointed and away we went. Then we decided to read one of the instructor’s recently completed pieces, and of course, he wrote a fancy trombone part for himself, so I got to conduct his piece sight unseen. The first time through, he stood up and gave a few cues, but the second time through, when it came time for the cues, he was looking at me expectantly, so I gave them.

Really, it was no big deal, but at least now, I can say I have conducting experience without telling a lie.