A Quick Wednesday Nooner

Get your mind out of the gutter; this isn't what you think it is. I had the chance to play on the Wednesday noon recital hour at the college today, backing up Susan, one of our alumni vocalists (who's now at UNT), along with Kris, our new drumset prof Gene, and a jazz piano grad student from UNT. It was in THE ARTS Gallery on campus, a cool-looking, interesting-sounding cube of a room with hardwood floors.

We only had one rehearsal--last night--but everything came off pretty well. Though there had been some notation issues with the charts last night, the arrangements were very cool and featured some interesting stuff with my tenor being either in unison or harmony with the female voice. Since it's required attendance for the students in lessons, we had an enthusiastic, partisan crowd. I wasn't overly happy with my solo on "Afro Blue" (both because I still need to work to get my improv on Bb instruments to match the level of what I can do in Eb, and because I decided at the last minute not to take a second chorus since the form is weird), but the rest of it was better. At least I think I learned some things from it, which is what it's all about, after all. The best moment of the day came during "The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines" when Kris threw the bass line from "The Chicken" into his solo.

At any rate, it's always good to play with musicians of the caliber of the ones we had today, in front of the "home crowd." There are still a few issues I have with my own playing (nothing like Dingus posted about recently, but some things I will definitely be working on this summer), but the people really liked it, and that's important too, especially when the music is on a really high level like this was.

Speaking of high levels, I'm back to Denton tonight to see the Two and Three O'Clock play the Syndicate (the subject of my next post, no doubt).

BLOW OUT THE CANDLES: Happy Birthday to Jervis, past national president of Sinfonia, current historian of the DFWAAA, and one of the fraternity's true national treasures. There may be one more candle on that cake, but you're still NOT OLD (sorry, inside DFWAAA joke there).

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "And the winner of our beauty pageant is....Miss Dakota!"--Me, to Kris, after the tune where the rhythm section had to repeat a section because they missed the coda the first time (Miss Dakota? Get it? Man, the TD/D guys are gonna foil me for that one..)