What a front row stage level seat makes you think about at the symphony

I started to think about this about a month ago, as I watched and listened to the Nashville Symphony Orchestra perform Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”. Then, this past week, when we went to see and hear Ravel’s “Bolero”, I had the point finally driven home and decided to write about it.

Possibly the best shoes at the concert

I’m talking about, in general, all the things that have to “go right” for a symphony orchestra to pull off a two hour musical performance. The things that can go wrong are myriad and varied: broken strings, fainting spells, turning the wrong score pages, instruments going out of tune, principal soloists catching cold, and any number of imaginable mishaps, however unlikely. What goes unnoticed in waiting for something to go wrong is how many things have to go right.

A selection of men's and lady's

Shoes, for instance. 79 pairs of shoes have to comfortable, broken in, shined, and functional, enough that 158 feet go completely unnoticed and un-thought-about for the 79 owners. This is important because as anybody who has ever had sore feet or a pair of ill-fitting shoes – which is probably every person who has ever owned shoes – knows, you can’t do a damn thing or concentrate or think of anything other than your feet when they hurt. You wouldn’t think of shoes being important to a concert performance, but I would argue, it could be one of the most critical aspects to a successful performance. Then, of course, you get into the rest of the clothes and personal grooming aspects. Underwear has to be comfortable. Skin has to not be itchy. Underarms have to not be irritated. Horn players’ lips have to be moist, supple and strong. String instrument players’ fingers have to be uncut, firm, and flexible. Percussionists arms have to be loose and responsive.

Those are sharp!

Then the surroundings: The stage has to be supportive but quiet. Music stands have to be upright, straight, and adjustable. Chairs have to be firm, comfortable, secure, and also adjustable. The AC or heat has to come on. The lights need to work. The doors need to be unlocked. 79 cars have to be in good working order and have to find roads that are passable between the performers’ houses and the concert hall. They need to not have accidents on the drive in. They all need to have gas in the tank.

No surprise, these are probably my favorite

Really, given everything that has to happen and not go wrong, it’s amazing there are such things as symphony performances at all.

Freedom from the tyranny of jazz theory

Yesterday was the final exam in my jazz theory class. I feel like I did solid 'B' work and I feel like a B is what I will get in the class, but I have to say, I worked harder in that class - far harder - than in any class I took to earn my BSBA (which was a finance minor for a while). Part of that has to do with the fact that I have a solid financial background just from having read the Wall Street Journal basically everyday for the last 23 years, but certainly a large part of that has to do with the work ethic I was able to apply to my music. I like music more than I like, say, economics or accounting, so naturally, I was willing to expend more effort in its pursuit. The other drawback though was that I don't have a very solid theoretical background in music. Sure, I've been playing for thirty some odd years, and sure, I've studied with private teachers and read books and looked at websites and whatnot, but formal training is a whole other kettle of fish.

If I had to do it all over again, I probably wouldn't. I'd probably find some way to take a regular music theory class first, then tackle the jazz after I got those real pre-requisites out. That would have made the going much easier and would have reduced the time factor involved. So, my advice to this blog's readers is simply, get the basic music theory out of the way before trying to study jazz. (Go ahead and play as much jazz as you want, just don't study until you've done the foundation work.)

With the end of that class, I am now completely free. No songs to learn, no parts to practice, no rehearsals to rush through, no homework to polish. I can just play tunes that move me, or that don't, and listen for pure enjoyment. It's bliss.

Next semester is jazz arranging, if we manage to get some more students signed up. That was actually my forte in the jazz theory class, and even knowing how hard I'll have to work, that I really am looking forward to.

But for at least one month, FREEDOM!

New Orleans Travelogue - Part 5: One place to skip

The original title for this part of my travelogue was going to be: "Mardi gras museum and three-piece jazz band top stuffy servers and mediocre (and expensive) food at tourist trap Arnaud's," but that would have been too long and cumbersome. In a nutshell, however, that is really all you need to know.

Here are some details anyway:

We decided to eat at Arnaud's on our last night for a lot of the usual reasons. It's a famous, reputedly great restaurant. It's part of the New Orleans culinary scene. It was close to our hotel. And we'd never been there before. When I called for reservations, we found out there was the added bonus of sitting in the "less classy" room, where you could order off the same haute menu while listening to live jazz music (for only $4 per person more) and not have to dress to the nines. That was for us, so we signed on.

I won't detail all the things that went wrong at Arnaud's. Suffice to say when the guy gave me a wine list then asked if I was ready to order the wine before he'd so much as showed me a menu, I knew we were in trouble. When I ordered a wine off the "special" prix fixe menu and was told I could only order it if I ordered off that menu, regardless of price and regardless of the fact that our a la carte meal totalled about twice what the prix fixe menu did, I was flabbergasted. "This is, um, some kind of rule," the goofball said. "Just give me the wine I asked for, asshole, I'm the customer!" I wanted to say, but I didn't want to create any enmity right at the start of our last meal in New Orleans, so I ordered something else and bit my tongue.

And it was good I bit my tongue, because the meal was completely unimpressive and not something I wanted to taste too closely anyway. Baked oysters: spongy, lifeless and ordinary. Fish: bland and uninspired. Steak with crabmeat: Salted to death, cooked poorly, unoriginal, and freaking expensive. The wine was good, but that was because I picked it. Then came, "You want us to remove the wine label? We don't know how to do that. Here's a duffel bag to carry it home with."

Truly disappointing. I was glad when it came time to refuse dessert and I felt good giving them a tip that was even more mediocre than their service and food.


What was not disappointing was the live music. The trumpet, banjo, bass trio was nothing all that special, but they were professional and played quite well. They took requests and went table to table, and for lack of a better idea, I requested "C Jam Blues". The bass player was a cut-up. He immediately goes, "Yeah, C Jam Blues. Okay, what key?" But that request tipped them off that they were talking to one of their own, another jazz musician, and the bass player even invited me to sit in on his other band's rehearsal the next morning at 10:30. (I declined, as we would be well on our way home by then.) So, I enjoyed chatting with them, hearing some good music, and forgetting about the awfully average meal.

Mrs. S then informed me that the guide book we had told us not to miss the Mardi Gras exhibit, so that got us ushered through the hoity toity section of the restaurant (where I saw at least one bow tie and two white jackets, so yeah, keep them away from us riff-raff) and upstairs to the display. It was impressive enough to keep Mrs. S's camera continuously firing for the next twenty minutes.And I would say, if you do do Arnaud's, that yeah, don't miss the costume display. It's one of a kind, unlike the food.

I guess we can conclude the restaurant summary by simply saying, two out of three wasn't bad, and we had memorable experiences at all of them, so I would count that as a successful trip. I think Mrs. S agrees.

One down, one to go

My third ever jazz concert performance conluded last night. We were jazzing out at The Flying Monkey, in front of fifteen or so paying patrons of the arts. There were only two bands: a piano trio and our quintet with tuba. I won't run it down in detail except to say that we sounded pretty tight, even though we were not exactly clear on where we were taking the songs and how we were going to get there. At least this time, none of us wandered off through the wilderness and got off on our own trail. Everybody stayed on the same path and we more or less reached our destination all together. That will suffice.

Friday is the big big-band concert with Kathy Kosins as guest vocalist. That band has been sounding better and better, and I really like the fact that our performance is well mapped out and discussed beforehand. The only thing we haven't worked out yet is where the solos will be and when the vocalist will be singing, but we are probably going to have some opportunity to do that tomorrow and Thursday. With the big band behind me, I expect nothing but success, because my playing will be basically inaudible for the majority of the concert anyway.

I'm very much looking forward to after the performance, as I need that feeling of release and lack of obligation to learn new parts and songs and get them down. I'm ready to go back to intermediate loafing about the piano.

Just four more days.

Ups and Downs

As we kick off Jazz Appreciation Month...

The past week has been filled with a series of ups and downs. Monday night was big band rehearsal, and our drummer was absent. This allowed us to hear the band in a completely different light, and the fact that I wasn't playing very well at all really came out. On one of the songs, I was even play a completely wrong chord, pretty much altering the whole progression of the song. Although I arrived at rehearsal full of confidence after a productive weekend of practicing, by the end of rehearsal, I was starting to feel like an accident that put my hand into some kind of cast for the next three weeks would not be completely unwelcome.

Due to the emotional strain of putting down our eighteen year old cat on Tuesday (a story that I won't go into other than to say that after spending 18 years together with any sort of living thing, it has to be the hardest decision in the world to decide to end that being's life), I didn't practice very much on Tuesday, so I showed up for band practice on Wednesday, pretty much looking forward to the drummer being back and covering up my mediocre, uninspiring sound.

Unfortunately, the drummer wasn't there yesterday either.

So I did what any other jazz pianist with my lack of skills would do: I created space. I played sparser chords more sparingly, played fewer notes, played less on the beat, and even got a section taken away from me where we changed how we play the solos. I was fine with all those decisions, and I think they were made for the betterment of the music. Plus my overall sound was more interesting because I stopped doubling the left hand with the right.

Jazz ensemble actually went pretty well from start to finish. I picked up some good pointers on soloing and was able to implement them right away. At my piano lesson, we worked on some chord voicings for one of the songs I've been having trouble with in big band. The end result was, my confidence is back, my willingness and desire to practice is back, and my sound is better.

That's what I'm going to school to learn, anyway, so it's good to know we are at least accomplishing that.

There was a quote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, that John Coltrane once said, "This (jazz) music is a serious as life itself." I'm not sure I buy that on its face, but I will say, if you had to pick something to take seriously while pursuing it, jazz would be a good selection.

Break time

It’s spring break, so that means my Monday and Wednesday for this week are free from band practice and free from pressure to demonstrate a little progress and improved capability in playing the five pieces we are learning.

Yeah, right.

All it means is I’ve got to continue to practice and improve and demonstrate twice as much improvement once we get back in the rehearsal room. The way I figure it, the director is probably going to expect these pieces to be ready to go and sounding pretty much like they are going to sound on the night of the concert, a little more than one month hence.

Just the same, if I want to take it easy and then hunker down later, this is the last week I can do so until after April 17. Good thing that my new jazz blues lesson book arrived. It gives me something to look at and makes me want to sit at the piano and learn some new stuff, and after I get tired of that, I work on tunes. Plus, my piano instructor gave me a new practice method/exercise to develop my left hand stride ability, and it allows me to play a bunch of tunes that I like, albeit in a truncated, staccato fashion built solely on quarter notes.

Long story short: spring break is no time for rest.

Some practice hints

These are some things that have been working for me. They might work for you, too.

1) Even if it doesn't seem productive, practice all the songs you're liable to have to perform at least once each every day. On Tuesday night, not having much time to practice, I was going to limit my big band practice to the two pieces we are going to play in the February concert, but I decided to at least have a look at the third piece that the director gave me. I input the main line in my music program to get the rhythm right, and I practiced all the main phrases except for the obviously difficult ones (two of the, say, six or seven phrases). I didn't expect we would be playing it on Wednesday, but it turns out that the third piece is the "break the monotony fall-back song" for the band, and they love to play it. So when we got sick of playing one of the tunes, we did decide to play the third piece a little bit. Good thing I had looked at it the night before. I actually held my own. Then we played four pieces in combo, so yesterday, I played all seven songs over a period of about an hour. Today, since I will have some time, I'll actually work on improving. But they are sort of getting better by sheer exposure.

2) Practice right before bed, even if it sounds bad. They say your brain forges the neural paths from a day's learning while you sleep. I've noticed that even when I can't play something, even hardly at all, if I practice it more or less right before I go to bed, even if I just keep making mistakes and making mental notes of those mistakes, the next day, it goes smoother. If I'm not drinking while practicing, as I have been doing of late, the effect is even greater.

3) Mix hard drills with easy drills. This seems to give me some positive reinforcement. I work at something that I don't do particularly well, like a stride left hand or full octave scales in both hands, and after that I run through some simple arpeggios and drills, or a straight up scale or two. There was a time I couldn't really play much of anything on the piano, and the realization that now I can play these drills that were once, essentially, impossible, reminds me that I'm not wasting my time on the hard stuff. Someday, it too will be soundly based in my repertoire. (Who knows what ridiculously esoteric and difficult stuff I'll be practicing then.)

4) Never forget to reward yourself. After practicing rootless voicings over and over, I always like to go back to one or two songs with straight up, rooted, full chords. Let's face it: Repeated rootless voicings on solo piano, although they sound great at times, are desperately tiresome after a while. The ear and brain really crave resolution and 3-5-7 harmony when they are continually fed 3-6-9 harmony for any length of time. Give your brain, nerves and muscles what they want, and when the pressure and spotlight are on you, they'll give you what you want.

I'll have more practice tips soon.

Gear up!

It had been quite a while since I bought music equipment. In 1986, while I was living at my parents', I bought about $10K worth of stuff and built a small studio in the basement. I even glued acoustic panels and shag carpet remnants to the walls to help with the sound deadening in the tiny room. (We had formerly used that room to raise Discus fish, so it had plenty of electrical outlets all around the wall - perfect really - for a recording studio.) Back then, I even had travel cases for everything custom made so I could carry everything to Japan when I went back. Out of necessity, when it came to buying music equipment, I was a bit of an expert back then.

So, two week ago, when my ensemble instructor gave us all of six days' notice that we had to have our own equipment at the concert, I was a little pissed. Pissed because I would have to go through a lot of extra work to get my piano removed from its semi-permanent stand, but mostly because I knew that having to buy equipment can be a pain - pain which I was not looking forward to. Back 22 years ago, we didn't have the internet, so gathering information on equipment, researching prices, and all that took a long, long, long time. Using the internet to research what I wanted and how much it would cost me this time around was a breeze. The only catch was the narrow time frame. I would not be able to order off the internet and get everything sent to me in time. (Well, technically, I could have, but the first case I looked at had a retail price of $129 with free shipping, but expedited two-day shipping was $69 more. Who would pay that for what could be a one time gig?)

Long and short of it is, I did my price and product research online, but I was going to have to do my actual buying in the real world. I really only needed to buy a case and an 'X' stand, and it was pretty easy to see there were limited options for the former, but basically unlimited options for the latter. As far as the stand goes, a stand is a stand is a stand, so price was my only real criteria (I didn't want to spend more than $30, as they are usually available online for around $25). As for the case, my piano only cost around $500 in the first place, so I was not going to buy a $300 hard case for it. That just didn't make sense. Nope, a $99 soft gig bag was going to be the way to go. I called around to the three or four major music shops in the area, only to find nobody had what I wanted. This was on the Thursday after the announcement that we had to supply our own equipment. One shop told me they had a used gig bag, but when he went to make sure they still had it, he discovered it had been sold.

In the end, I was able to find one store that had 'X' stands reasonably priced (around $35) and another store that had a custom Yamaha case not unreasonably priced (around $165). So, I figured I was going to be in for $200, and I let it go at that. On Saturday, I decided to physically make the rounds of the stores, just to see what I could see. Since I had already called around, I knew where I could go to get what I wanted, although not necessarily at a price I wanted to pay, but I thought there was at least a chance I might see something that would work or that I would talk to somebody who could steer me in a different but acceptable direction. I set up my itinerary, and decided to make a stop at a place that over the phone told me they didn't have what I wanted, and from there, I would go in order to two other stores where I knew I could purchase what I wanted.

Well, there's something to be said for doing legwork. The first place I stopped at, although they had said they didn't have stands, happened to have one really nice one, still in the box, that met my needs perfectly. It was more than I wanted to pay ($65), but the salesman said he could knock it down a little. I asked about a case, and he said he didn't have any, but he might have a gig bag that would work for an 88-key instrument. I told him, that's what I'm looking for, even though I said "case". (This is probably where some confusion hindered my search: these guys differentiate between bags and cases. I just consider a gig bag as a "soft case". Oh well.) Again, he had one that was still in its wrap, and again, it was more than I wanted to pay, so I asked him to do a package deal. I ended up getting the case and stand for around $175, tax included, out the door. List for both would have been between $200-225. Online would have been around $130, or $200 with fast shipping, so all in all, I got what I needed when I needed it, pretty much within budget. I didn't even bother to visit the other two music stores.

I guess I still know how to do procurement of music equipment after all.

How to prepare to give a jazz concert

Here's a list of things a jazz ensemble should do to prepare for a concert:

1) Make sure you have a designated practice space that will not be commandeered by other musicians or groups, forcing you to cut short or cancel your own practice sessions.
2) Decide well in advance where the concert will be held - don't wait until less than one week before to finalize the venue.
3) Decide the date of the concert also well in advance - don't wait until the week before to decide, "Well, Tuesday, not Thursday." (This, together with #2 is also important in being able to tell folks who might attend your concert when and where it will be held - two of the critical factors in getting people to show up for... like... ANYTHING!)
4) Practice together every week for four weeks leading up to the concert. That is to say, one group session a month before is probably not enough preparation.
5) Decide on the songs you will play at least a month in advance so everyone can work out everything to their satisfaction. Whatever you do, do not wait until less than a week before the concert to finalize the repertoire.
6) Make sure everyone knows they are responsible for bringing their own equipment or otherwise making arrangements for having equipment at the gig - again, don't wait until a week before to tell everyone and expect them to be able to comply.

I'm sure there are a number of other things a jazz ensemble needs to do to get properly prepared for a concert. I'm sure our jazz ensemble didn't do any of those things, either. We sure didn't do the six listed above...

Our concert is Tuesday, Nov. 18. Hey, baby, it's jazz. We're going to make it happen, and it will be all right.