On Stage

This year, I’ve been play­ing the UW Lit­tle Big Band. The smaller of the school’s two jazz ensem­bles, it’s really more of a combo than any sort of big band. We had our first con­cert of the semes­ter last week, and I’m mark­ing the occa­sion by finally get­ting around to post­ing the record­ings from last semester’s con­cert. Last semes­ter, our group con­sisted of me on bas­soon, Mike Bailly on vibra­phone, Kyle Strohmaier on piano, Ben Willis on bass, and Ali­son Jeske on drums, with our coach Les Thim­mig on flute. Vocal­ist Mandy Comp­ton joined us for a cou­ple of tunes, and Mike Mix­tacki and Ian Dis­jardin pro­vided some Brazil­ian per­cus­sion for Ser­e­nata. Our instru­men­ta­tion is slightly dif­fer­ent this semes­ter, but I’ll get to that when I post our lat­est concert.

Any­way, the way the group is set up, we play a whole bunch of tunes in our rehearsals, then vote on actual con­cert reper­toire a few weeks before a con­cert. Once the pro­gram is set, each mem­ber of the group is respon­si­ble for arrang­ing one tune. We do a bit of work­shop­ping of the arrange­ments dur­ing rehearsals, and arrive at the con­cert with more or less fin­ished prod­ucts. A cou­ple of rehearsals before the con­cert, we also pick who will take solos on which tunes.

One thing we haven’t decided on by con­cert time is the nature of the blues we’re going to play. Les, our coach, sim­ply announces that we’re going to play the blues, gives us a key and a tempo, and we’re off. Unfor­tu­nately, the record­ing cut off his pat­ter (not to men­tion our pen­sive looks as we silently pray that he won’t call out an awk­ward key).

You can find the con­cert at davewells.us/littlebigband.html. Enjoy — after all, it’s not every day that you hear a bas­soon play­ing jazz.