Concert today went well. More on that later.
Last night, my sister T arrived home with two friends: she sort of forcibly recruited them to come to listen to my concert. For that I am grateful. The two girls are very nice; one of them even wants to be a math major, though she seems rather undecided about what she want to do. Perhaps I can convince her to do analysis.
The sun came out today. It was a pleasant surprise. I left some of the house plants outside so they can get some solar radiation. Hopefully the light from sol will rejuvenate the rather sorry looking greens.
The two friends left for campus just before noon: one to look for a friend (who goes to Princeton), and the other to search for a place to study on campus.
So for lunch I took T out to the local Chinese place. They have dim-sum buffet there on weekends. It was rather disappointing. The varieties are few, and much of them not very tasty. But we did eat A LOT. Enough to justify the price we paid for the meal. Though I probably will never go back there for dim-sum ever again. (Their regular meals are tasty. It is just the dim-sum that is bad.)
T brought a ton of laundry home. While she did that and studied Organic Chemistry, I napped. (I need to conserve energy for the long afternoon/evening.)
We left home in time to get to sound check at 4:30pm. Richardson is getting stricter about cases: we used to be able to just leave the cases on stage while sound check and take them down afterward. They now don't want any cases left anywhere except at the designated areas under the stage. It took a really long time to sound-check the drums. They kept having reverb problems. The technicians spent a lot of time taping random pieces of paper-towel to the drum head to dampen the sound. Apparently they have a method to find out exactly what spots on the drum head is causing the extra ring and by taping something soft to it they can make the drum sound better when miked.
Today is the first time that I played alto in Richardson (for the past four years I was the de facto Bari player in PUJE2). Sound check works rather differently for CJE compared for PUJE2. There's a lot of fiddling about with individual tunings and volume levels. And the microphone stand turns out to have more available adjustment knobs than I could have possibly imagined. After adjusting the mics and volumes for all instruments, Ralph led us through some spot checks on tunes and ran through the basic layout for solos and such on various tunes. We let out at 5:50p.
The sax section stayed behind to work on a line at the end of the closing tune. It is a standard bebop scale line in concert F, but for some reason we could never play it together in rehearsal. We finally let out at quarter past 6.
Found T, got dinner at Panera, and came back. Changed, and warmed up for the concert.
The Jazz Septet opened for us. They played three tunes. The second is Chuck's. He really writes amazing tunes. And even more amazing is the fact that he is a drummer.
CJE played the Kansas City Suite, in the following order
The concert turned out nearly perfect. There were little spots here and there from various people, but they were not really noticeable, and for five rehearsals, I think we did great. We even manged to end that line in Rompin' at the Reno together!
So, while we split up the solos, I ended up with one in Meetin' Time, a gospel/swing piece that is in concert C major. All Happy Happy Sounding. To my ears it sounds so cheesy, and I really dislike tunes like that (the fact that the chord changes are really boring doesn't help). So I was not optimistic about improvising over it. During my 2.5-hour-long practice session yesterday (I don't know what happened. I got in the practice room, and played until my chops hurt, and had tons of fun, and came out, and realized that I spent 2.5 hours in it), I even contemplated playing in a modal style over the tune--I figured, my solos already sound weird enough over it, I might as well make it weird and cool. I even talked to Ralph a bit about that idea.
So during warm-up, I worked a lot on arpeggios and modal scales over concert C major and C lydian (just because I love the lydian sound). I was all prepared to do this heavily Oliver Nelson style thing with arpeggios all around the horn and very few bebop-style runs. I even figured out a good starting spot for the solo.
And then, when it was my turn to play, I stood up, and was inspired.
I don't know what exactly happened. After playing the 16th note phrase that I intended to start my solo with, I realized all the nice, soulful possibility I could follow it with. I was hearing music in my ear. I know what to play. It was an absolutely amazing feeling. I've only felt that way a few times before on some nice hard-bop tunes and a few standards. And always when I am practicing, never in front of a crowd.
Instead of playing with a fiery edge of cool jazz, I played with the nice reservations of Paul Desmond and the west coast school. I played soft and light and mellow, much in line with the character of the tune's composition (though my playing was definitely moodier than the happy-sunshine of the melody). But rather than running beautiful lyrical lines like the west coast school, I was playing a more arpeggiated sound like that of Eddie Harris. Ran triads, thirds and fourths, and played very symmetric lines. My playing, though not as off-beat and non-conforming as modal would be over a gospel tune, was nonetheless very much different in style compared with our other saxophonists. RW is definitely a hard-bop player, and Dylon's vocabulary is also heavily bop and blues influenced. So I was enjoying playing the tune.
After the tune I wasn't quite sure how well I played. (I am extremely confident when it comes to math and intellectual stuff, but I am the exact opposite when it comes to music.) But after it ended, I was affirmed: someone in the crowed whistled in approval. That is, like, the highlight of my playing, ever.
Time to head off to bed.