Jazz Band Heads to Peoria!

The DHS Jazz Band will be presenting a clinic session at the Illinois Music Education Conference in Peoria on Thursday, January 24 from 3:30-4:15. Our topic is "Seven Steps to the Blues: Beyond the Blues Scale." We'll be demonstrating how we learn to play the blues in a systematic method. Hopefully, we'll get a nice crowd of band directors who are interested in improvisation. We'll report back this weekend on how it went!

Friday Morning Run

My Friday morning, pre-dawn run, featured an excellent and varied playlist courtesy of the "shuffle songs" setting on my iPod:

• "Mean Old Frisco Blues" by Muddy Waters--One of the truly great voices in American music, and one of my all-time favorite musicians, even if he was a White Sox fan.
• "Englishman in New York" by Sting--Best decision he ever made was to bring jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis into his band. Great soprano solo!
• "Housequake" by Prince--From the album Sign o' the Times, his last album that I really like. "The kickdrum is the fault!"
• "Good Time, Bad Times" by Led Zeppelin--From one of the finest debut albums ever.
• "Every Picture Tells a Story" by Rod Stewart--Back when he was still hip, singing the musical travelogue of a young vagabond.
• "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaak--Never knew that the tuning peg on a guitar could be so expressive.
• "A Girl Like You" by The Smithereens--Bringing that early 60s Kinks-style garage rock into the late 80s.
• "Sleepyhouse" by Blind Melon--Alternative meets Indian classical music.
• "White Wedding, Pt. 1" by Billy Idol--A bit of a guilty pleasure here, but nice vocal stylings.
• "Cinnamon Girl" by Neil Young--"Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow, the drummer relaxes and waits between shows for his Cinnamon Girl." The most economical guitar solo of all time.
• "Stay Up Late" by The Talking Heads--David Byrne discovers the joys of fatherhood.
• "Loves Me Like a Rock" by Paul Simon--Always reminds me of my mom driving us around town as kids. Love you too, Mom!
• "Electric PowWow Drum" by A Tribe Called Red--Canadian First Nation deejays combine tribal chants and dubstep. Dig it!

New Repertoire Lists

I just finished updating our current repertoire lists on the DHS Band website. You can go to the page for your ensemble and click on the repertoire link 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!

Happy 2013!

Happy New Year from the DHS Band Family! What will 2013 bring? Why, a trip to Arizona, of course! Six weeks from tomorrow we leave with our orchestra friends for a trip to Phoenix and the Grand Canyon. More to come in future updates!

2013 will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of those two giants of Romantic Era opera, Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi. It would also be the 100th birthday of Benjamin Britten and Morton Gould, two giants of 20th century music. Their birth year of 1913 was the year when Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring premiered in Paris and caused a riot.

Fifty years ago, in 1963, The Beatles had their first #1 in the UK, "Please Please Me." Charles Mingus released his epic album, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and future rockers James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich of Metallica were born.

How will you make 2013 a memorable year in music?