Nothing like a curveball

Last night was the Valentine's Songfest Concert. Four bands playing six songs, and it really was quite a big success. The concert led off with the Wednesday night combo which I play in, then the "second" big band, which I also play in, then the Thursday night combo, which is just a trio, then the "big" big band.

At rehearsal in the late afternoon with the second big band, I was still utterly unable to play my six bar solo without flubbing it, and I started to become genuinely worried I was going to make an ass of myself when it came time to play. When I played it by myself or just for the director, I didn't have a problem, but when I played it leading into the band, I had to make it up. It was awful. But eventually, we ran out of time and I simply hoped to get lucky when it came time for the performance. I'm sure my band mates were hoping the same.

The curveball came at our next rehearsal for the combo. Over the last five weeks, we've play about six different songs, but since two weeks ago, we'd only played two: My Romance, and Ruby, My Dear. Last week, we decided we would play Ruby at the concert, and that was what we worked on all during practice, and that was the only song I practiced during the week. So, sure enough, our director comes in and says, "You guys know you're playing My Romance, right?" The guitar and tuba player both go, yeah, we know, whereupon I said, "You gotta be shittin' me." Then, for a brief second, I assumed the guys were playing a joke on me, and I asked them if they were, but they assured me, no. No joke. The program has My Romance, and we're the first act. Everybody said, don't worry you sound fine, and hey, it's jazz! And while I'm fully aware I can play some simulacrum of the song, I'm also aware I can't play it half as well as I can play Ruby. Oh well. We dive in. We sounded great during practice, we worked out some chording ideas, and my confidence returned.

So, showtime. My Romance did sound pretty good. We got through our solos, but somehow we got confused with the section on tradeoffs, and like the last time we flubbed a song publicly (which was a slightly different group), no one was quite sure what happened. But, we kept going, avoided the train wreck (where the song goes off the track and comes to a complete stop), signaled for the head, and finished the song safe. I don't think the audience even recognized we had goofed.

Then came My Funny Valentine with the big band. And lo and behold, while I did stumble slightly, I did not flub the solo by any means, and as a matter of fact, got it mostly spot on. I was overjoyed. The rest of that song and the original that we did were fine, including a solo in the second piece that was not as interesting as when I played it in practice but still sounded somewhat accomplished.

In short, then: I continue to progress. Slowly, but progressing nonetheless. And I have to say, I do have a lot of fun during the concert. The feeling of exhilaration after the concert is great, too, not to mention the feeling of being free from having to master some songs, patterns, solos, etc. Just liberation and freedom to plunk around the keyboard as I will.

There's nothing like a curveball to make the concert experience all the more rewarding!