The End of March, The End of Madness: My latest trip to New Orleans

This week I’ll be writing about my latest trip to New Orleans, which had me in the Crescent City for the front end of March Madness, making a lot of things difficult, but in the end turning out well. Mrs. S and I met virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell (again!) and we got lucky and met Ellis Marsalis, too. I even got an autograph.

Speaking of which, one month less one day to the date, here’s the photo of me and Mrs. S meeting Wynton Marsalis early last month:

Two jazz musicians and a fan

You can see he’s an impeccable dresser and he’s friendly. I actually had the opportunity to listen to his program on Sirius XM radio on the drive home from New Orleans yesterday. Very informed and very informative, it was one of the most educational radio programs I’d ever heard. I’ll probably have to go sit out in my car on Saturday morning from now on, unless I spring an extra $3 a month for computer access to the radio channels.

Finally, I’m starting my Post-Bop piano book experiment today. Wish me luck.

Another realization on the road to understanding jazz

For those who have been reading this blog for more than a year, you are probably aware that I graduated from college a mere three years ago this May. I’m proud to say that at the tender age of 43, after achieving credits at 6 different colleges over a period of 26 years, I obtained my BSBA degree. Quite an accomplishment, if I do say so myself. I would say, however, that as hard as I worked, with as many solo and team projects, assignments, papers, etc. that we had to complete, no single project that I undertook toward my degree required as much time and hard work as the project I just completed for my jazz arranging class: a seventeen piece arrangement of Bill Evans’ “Peri’s Scope” with a lick from Thelonious Monk’s “In Walked Bud” thrown in for good measure (or eight good measures).

To complete the 150 bars or so, I estimate that I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty hours. It required complete reworking of the saxophone soli – twenty four bars of five parts. It required at least five hours just learning the software (Finale) to compose. It required two critiquing sessions with my instructor and classmates (three if you count the one for the soli). It even took about forty-five minutes just to print out the parts, make adjustments, reprint them, etc. etc. Then yesterday evening, the big band sight read it, got some tips and insight from me (not much), then played it through once more.

Finished.

All that said, I really enjoyed it. As much work as it was, the feelings of accomplishment and completion were just exhilarating, and it makes me feel good that I can get back to my regular, non-scholastic life. First order of business is to buy myself some jazz CD’s and get all my music that’s been laying about organized. In order to do that, I’ll have to find some shelves to put it on.

And I’m looking forward to keeping up with this blog once again.

Yoity Tot Big Band CDs

So, as I said some time ago, I thought that in order to get more CD’s on the Yoity Tot list, but to be fair to all, (that is, never have to relegate any CD from the list because I come across something I like better) I thought it expedient to break the list into two. One is for “regular” jazz CD’s, the other for big band CD’s. (I could go even farther in expanding genres, and I might someday as the list expands.) My big band CD collection is not that big (oops) yet, so the list is basically everything I own that is big band. The regular list is my top 25 as I see them today.

I still have some CD’s I haven’t even listened to yet, leftover from my crazy buying spree a month or so back. I’m having fun and enjoying them, going through them slowly, finding gems, learning things, just loving jazz.

Anyway, check out the lists over on the right.

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.