3 Minutes of Awesome!

I'm starting a new series for the summer months called "3 Minutes of Awesome!" I've found that as I surf the web I run into all kinds of music to check out, but I'm either too impatient or too short on time to listen to an extended track. So, I decided that I would share some of my favorite recordings that run three minutes or less. You'll hear classical, jazz, rock, and world music throughout the summer, with new posts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (I hope...). Enjoy the series!

"Night in Tunisia," Charlie Parker

We'll start with this classic jazz tune that Dizzy Gillespie wrote sometime around 1945. Its chord progression with a D-6 to Eb7 vamp implies various scales, including dorian and phrygian modes. This gives it an exotic flavor that is vaguely Arabic, at least to his mid-20th century, American audience. The DHS Jazz Band performed a version this spring that incorporated a traditional Tunisian tune, transcribed by our oud-playing bassist, giving the number a more authentic sound. My personal favorite recording of "Night in Tunisia" (and there are dozens out there) is by alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker. It features Miles Davis on trumpet, Lucky Thompson on tenor, Dodo Marmarosa on piano, Arvin Garrison on guitar, Vic McMillan on bass, and Roy Porter on drums. The rhythm section is not the most famous, but Bird's solo break and improvisation are quite amazing. Enjoy!

Check it out on Spotify:

Spring Band Concert and 25 Years

Now that the dust has settled and the final concert of the year is in the books, I can sit back and enjoy what was truly a great night for the entire DHS band program. First, I must say that I was deeply honored and humbled by the special alumni/student ensemble that gathered to celebrate my 25 years here at Deerfield. Thanks to my colleague Ron Velleuer and senior trumpeter Mitchell Steindler, we had a band of about 50 or 60 made up of students from all three current bands along with graduates going back to the class of 1999. There were a couple of band directors, a teacher, college students, and others who performed Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, conducted by Herr Velleuer. Then he spoke and said many nice things before turning the baton over to me. I got to conduct two of my favorite band works: a transcription of an old Russian chorale, "Salvation is Created," by Pavel Chesnokov, and a classic Sousa march, "King Cotton." What a joy it was to have all my "kids" back on stage, playing together.

The rest of the concert was successful as well. I was so proud of the Concert Band; they played very well, avoiding the frosh mistakes that tend to plague the typical CB. I received many compliments on their behalf, especially on the fine flute playing. Symphonic Band took on a program of epic proportions, tackling a pair of grade 4 works and making a lot of great music. Wind Ensemble also had their work cut out for them, with the 11-minute Sketches on a Tudor Psalm, a grade 5 piece that really challenged everybody's counting and expressive skills. It was the first time I had ever conducted it, and I enjoyed the experience immensely. I spent a lot of time practicing and studying it, and it was quite rewarding.

The final group of the evening was the Jazz Band. Highlighting the set was our own take on "A Night in Tunisia." Since we have a bassist who is precociously well-versed in playing Arabic music on the oud (an Arabic lute), I asked him to find a traditional Tunisian melody to teach us. He transcribed a malouf and played it along with flute, accompanied by drums, tenor, bass, and darbukka (an Arabic hand drum). We did an accelerando and segued directly into the well-known Dizzy Gillespie bass line. Then the horns came in for a mini-big band arrangement of the bebop classic. Of course, we had to end with a crowd-pleasing, sustained scream chord at the end to make sure the audience got their money's worth.

And then, at 9:27, three minutes shy of two hours, it was over. Another year of great music and memories is coming to an end. We still have a couple of less formal jazz performances to do, and the Warrior Marching Band will once again be part of the Memorial Day ceremonies here in town. The annual awards dinner is Monday night, so I still have a ton on my plate, but after such a memorable evening, things feel like they are lightening up and drawing to a close. It's hard to believe that it's been a quarter of a century since my first one-day band camp in the fall of 1988, back when the entire program numbered 45 students. I can't think of any other place I would rather be, and I am grateful to have had this opportunity. I look forward to several more years of teaching and conducting my beloved Warrior band students!

A New Way to Notate Music

Those of us who read traditional Western musical notation are used to symbols that date back to the 1300s or so:

There have been other systems proposed, like shaped note symbols that were used in American hymnals in the 1800s:

Now, there's a brand new notational system that is supposed to make things much easier to learn. Watch the video and decide for yourself:

Pretty interesting, eh? Learn more here.

My Musical Weekend

This weekend I got to see one of my musical heroes, Kenny Garrett, play at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. Garrett is a post-bop alto saxophonist who has played with Miles Davis, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and Art Blakey. He has a very successful solo career, most recently releasing Seeds from the Underground, which features tributes to many of his mentors (including his high school band director!)

I got to the Showcase nice and early. It's a wonderful place to hear jazz--most everybody there is a serious jazz fan, and it's much more a listening room than nightclub. The band took the stage and immediately began blowing furiously. The standard pattern of attack was for Garrett to play a fairly simple, catchy tune over jazz harmonies that sound like a cross between McCoy Tyner and pop tunes. Then he would go into his solo that built from short phrases into longer, angular bebop lines and finished with frenzied wails and screams. He cut a striking figure in his black suit and trademark skull cap, bobbing up and down in time with his playing, giving hand signals to his band to control the intensity level. He also had an excellent percussionist who played everything from a variety of shakers and tambourines to a pair of congas and the wind chimes.

Now my band students will immediately tell you that I hate wind chimes. I usually refer to them as "the devil's plaything" because someone in the percussion section always bumps into them at the wrong time, and then you are stuck listening to their annoying tinkling for what seems like forever. Band composers use them way too much, in my opinion. Anyway, Garrett's percussionist, Rudy Bird, was a master at choosing just the right instrument to play just the right sound at just the right time. He gave me a new appreciation for the chimes. I stayed for two sets. Garrett played a good amount of soprano sax as well and sounded great on a ballad later in the evening. The rest of the band was strong, too. The drummer, McClenty Hunter Jr., played furiously and non-stop. It was easily the loudest acoustic jazz performance I'd ever heard--like sitting through an intense thunderstorm from the safety of a screened-in porch. The music was certainly not for the timid, but if you like your jazz a little more avant garde, then I recommend you check him out.

Then Sunday morning, I had the pleasure of hearing a bell choir from Augustana College play in our church. Bell choirs are not often heard outside of Protestant church services, but they are a fascinating ensemble. Each musician has two or more handbells to play, each one a different pitch of the chromatic scale. The bells range in size from tiny, fist-sized bells to giant ones bigger than a foot around. When you play in a bell choir, you look at a full score and only play when your notes come up. It's very challenging to be able to pick your individual notes out and play them in perfect time in the middle of the group. As band musicians, we're used to playing long lines of music--this is like performance by pointillism. The group from Augustana did a wonderful job, filling our sanctuary with their lovely ringing.

This reminded me that every summer I say I'm going to the Chicago Botanic Gardens to hear one of their carillon concerts. A carillon is a bell tower, and every Monday night they bring in a professional ringer to perform their favorite selections on their 48-bell carillon. This year, for sure.

New Repertoire Lists Posted...

I just finished updating our current repertoire lists on the DHS Band website. You can go to the page for your ensemble to hear recordings of our pieces and read about the composers. There is also a link to the Spotify playlist that has professional recordings of a number of the pieces, as well as related pieces. All students should take advantage of these great resources!

• Concert Band
• Symphonic Band
• Wind Ensemble
• Jazz Band

Happy browsing!

Some Ellington and Bernstein...

The Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band just finished a mini-unit on Duke Ellington as part of our African-American music theme for the year (we've already studied Scott Joplin and William Grant Still). We learned about his career and why he was so important, listened to a few recordings, and then played short arrangements of "Sophisticated Lady" and "It Don't Mean a Thing." To wrap things up, here is a video of the Duke Ellington Orchestra in action. Note the great jazz vocals, reminding us that this was the pop music of the day. The violin solo is a bit of an anomaly; trumpeter Ray Nance doubled on fiddle, and Duke liked to feature him from time to time.

We're also studying the music of Leonard Bernstein this spring. SB is performing "America" from West Side Story, and WE is playing "Slava!" Here's a scary video of the latter, as performed by a Japanese middle school band. Note that they are playing from memory!

Here's the production number "America" as performed by Rita Moreno and the original movie cast. Ms. Moreno is famous for winning the Tony, Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar awards, one of the few artists to have won all four. She has had a very successful career on Broadway, in movies, and on television, including a stint in the cast of Sesame Street.

Happy Jazz Appreciation Month!

Every April is "Jazz Appreciation Month," as proclaimed by the Smithsonian Institute. We here in the DHS jazz program hope you take some time over the next few weeks to enjoy to this quintessentially American art form. It's a busy month for us with Jazz Night on Wednesday, April 24 as well as auditions for next year's groups. We'll also try to take part in International Jazz Day on April 30, when musicians all over the world will join to "celebrate jazz, learn about its roots and highlight its important role as a form of communication that transcends differences." More to come...