Taking the initiative: The best thing you could POSSIBLY do

The new school year began on August 24 and now everything’s getting back into shape for what I would consider my “normal schedule”.  At the University of Houston there are two jazz bands: the Jazz Orchestra and the Jazz Ensemble.  I rehearse the latter (also known as the “second”) band twice a week.  A couple years ago, I started a Google Group for each band in hopes of making communications easier and to share music (NOT for illegal downloading!) as listening examples.  The following email showed up on the message board from a student:

Looking to get together with fellow students to work on tunes and general playing/reading/improvising. I'm booked solid Tuesdays and Thursdays unti 2:30. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I'm free after 11:00 a.m. Please don't wait until rehearsals to practice your parts.  I've been in too many bands and ensembles that waste time learning parts during valuable rehearsal time. We can make it fun and a valuable learning experience.

To which I replied:

Everyone,

This is great to hear!  Whether it's working on the ensemble's music or combo tunes and improvising, the outside practice and self-rehearsing will help your overall musicality in bounds.  My advice?  Take advantage of your time and situation while you're in school to put yourself in as many different musical situations as possible NOW.  Don't put it off, because you'll never get this time back (and you'll probably continue to put it off), it's important to practice as much as possible now when you have the luxury to do so.  It's important because you need to test your limits as a musician and then try to break through those limitations.

If anyone is interested in rehearsing combo tunes and improv, I'd suggest talking to some of the students in the Jazz Orchestra about this, since they're always looking to learn new material.  That group meets from 12-2pm MWF in room 175.  Also, if you haven't already done so, please go check out some local jam sessions around Houston.

Here's a short list:

Monday: Straight-No-Chaser Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Jam @ Smitty's Cafe and Bar Tuesday: King Biscuit Jazz Jam @ King Biscuit Patio Cafe Wednesday: Latin Jazz Jam @ Smitty's Cafe and Bar Thursday: Mike Owen Jazz Jam! @ Legends Jazz Cafe More info can be found at http://www.jazzhouston.com

Don't worry about showing up to play if you're new to this, but as a musician, you should definitely see what these are all about.  Then, maybe you can work up a small repertoire of tunes to play within a month or two.  It's just as important as going to see the symphony or opera!

Since then, a great deal of communication has been taking place on the group, planning for after-school jamming and rehearsing.

So what’s the point of all this?  I constantly stress to students (both new and senior) that they can’t sit around waiting for "it" to happen.  The "it" can be the gig you've been hoping for, or just simply progressing in your playing level.  We're not guaranteed anything in life, and the phone just isn't going to magically ring for work.  One popular saying is that "a good jazz musician is never at home alone every night of the week".  What this means is that hungry, motivated people are always out there seeing and hearing new things as well as meeting new people.  In the music world, this is especially true.  A quality musician is aware of what is going on in their world and yearns to interact with people on the bandstand.  Because a good percentage of this business requires a great deal of social networking, it is critical that you get out there and be seen, heard and liked!

We all cannot afford to waste any more time just simply hoping that "it" will happen for us.  Motivated students in turn motivate me to be a better teacher, player and person.

The largest production of 'The Music Man' ever!

"Seventy-six trombones" is nothing compared to this!

From The New York Times, review by Anthony Tommasini:

"Frank Lloyd Wright might never have anticipated this. But the rotunda of his late masterpiece the Guggenheim Museum — which opened in 1959, six months after his death — is an ideal place to perform one of the most mesmerizing and eclectic musical works ever written: “Orbits” for 80 trombones, soprano and organ by the Montreal-born American composer Henry Brant. The East Coast premiere of this 1979 work, conducted by Neely Bruce, took place on Sunday night at the Guggenheim, part of both the museum’s Works & Process series and the daylong citywide festival Make Music New York. There were two performances of Brant’s 25-minute piece. The fire code allowed for only 300 listeners to mill on the floor of the rotunda during each one.

Brant, who died in 2007 at 94, experimented with unusual sonorities and spatial placement of instruments. He regarded space as the fourth dimension of music, along with pitch, time and timbre. “Orbits” was first performed in 1979 at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. This primordial, organic piece, by turns brutal and celestial, unfolds in thickly layered clusters and a maze of individual trombone lines. Brant’s vision was to have the players surround the audience.

That vision was excitingly realized at the Guggenheim. The trombonists were lined up on the walkways that encircle the rotunda, facing in, so that they could see down to Mr. Bruce, who conducted from the path leading up to the lower ring. An enormous rented organ with a row of loudspeakers was placed in a corner of the floor. The soprano Phyllis Bruce sang from on high, though what she sang was not angelic in the conventional sense.

Brant came to believe that music written in a single style could not evoke the “stresses, layered insanities and multidirectional assaults of contemporary life on the spirit,” as he once wrote. “Orbits” is defiantly polystylistic and multilayered. It begins with quiet trombone grumblings, like dinosaurs of our imagination stirring awake. The organ enters with a splattering of pitches in its high register, to contrast with the deep, indistinct sounds of the trombones.

As the music gains in intensity, there are captivating antiphonal effects, with ferocious outbursts passed back and forth among groupings of trombones and the organ erupting in a fit of cascading chords, holding its own against the din of brass. But there were also strangely spiritual episodes in this fitful and overpowering piece, as when the trombones played gently rising harmonies built from scores of individual lines while the ethereal soprano sang a wondrous mix of slinky slides and wordless melodic fragments.

Lining up 80 trombonists to play this piece could not have been easy; according to the program, there were 89. Before the performance, I asked one player whether he knew how many trombonists there were in New York City. He said, wryly: “About 85, I think. A few more came from other places.”

The scene in the rotunda was inspiring. As the audience entered, there were children in strollers, elderly people with walkers determined not to miss the event and some enterprising folks who brought along compact folding chairs. When the music started most people walked quietly around the space to hear from different vantage points. For once at a museum, people were allowed to take videos and photographs."

Welcome!

It's about time I published something official on the internet! As my first news update to this site, I would encourage you, oh sacred visitor, to return here often to check for updates. Or better yet, subscribe to my site via RSS feed! Right now, you'll only find some small sample audio tracks of my trio, but this place will soon be swimming in photos, videos, blog posts and even MORE audio samples galore!!! How can you NOT want to come back here regularly?! - Ryan