To catch you guys up from a while ago, I need to tell you all about my encounters with some studio magic. A couple weekends ago, the band was invited to an ASCAP young composers scoring session at FOX studios. The event was held at FOX's huge scoring stage where they record for films. Several composers had won a spot in this program, and at the culmination of their classes, they got to conduct and record a film cue they had written. The coolest part about the whole experience is that they had a full orchestra of some of Los Angeles's best studio musicians sitting in front of them. We got to sit in the room and be flies on the wall for the session, which was pretty mind blowing. I was most impressed with the musicality that all the players brought to the compositions on the first read through. It's one thing to sight read everything technically perfect; it's a whole other level of professionalism to actually make music on your first time through a piece.
The studio guys were welcoming enough to let us hang out next to their sections and even glance at their parts over their shoulders. Alex Iles, Jim Thatcher, and John Lewis deserve big shout outs for letting us hang with the brass section during the session!
I tried to take a lot of pictures while at FOX, so hopefully you can get a sense of how impressive this room was. Check it out:
That's the scoring screen behind the orchestra. Watching how the music lined up with the film was pretty cool!
This is a cimbasso, which is a trombone/tuba hybrid instrument. Apparently it is the loudest instrument ever. Think of the soundtrack to Inception, and it will all make sense.
The band got in on a little studio magic of our own when we went to our recording session for out CD. Every summer the AACB records a selection of some of our jazz material and street tunes. The CD isn't produced for retail- it's simply a way for all of us in the band to take home a recorded memory of how our band sounded this summer. Our recording session was at Warner Brothers studios on their gigantic scoring stage. It was probably the nicest studio I've ever visited (sorry, FOX!). We were picked up from the dorms at 7:00 AM that Tuesday, then we traveled to WB, recorded for 4 hours, traveled back to Disney, and played 3 sets that evening. It was an exhausting day, to put it lightly, but everything went about as smoothly as possible. We were able to record about 5 or 6 jazz tunes and most of our street set material. If anyone wants to check out the recording after I get it, I'll be happy to share it with you!
Our recording room from the sax section's point of view. Check out all the rich mahogany!
The board to end all boards. Gear nerds, feels free to geek out.
We've had an "embarrassment of riches" in our guest artist department over the past two weeks. Saxophonist and woodwind doubler Sal Lozano was with us for a concert of July 30th. Sal has a terrifically dry sense of humor and is a wonderfully generous musician. He's also played with everything and everyone in town from Disney to Gordon Goodwin's band to Dancing With the Stars. Sal was kind enough to meet with the saxophone section previously in the summer for a group masterclass, so it was great to see him again. As a special bonus, he brought the whole saxophone section goody bags of reeds from Vandoren! You can never have too many of those around.
Singer Sunny Wilkinson performed with us this past Thursday. Sunny has had a long career as both a musician and music educator. She's a really brilliant and talented jazz vocalist who certainly has her own musical voice. Now, to be honest, I'm always a bit wary of charts that singers bring in for the band to read. However, all of Sunny's charts were excellently written and really fun to play. I was impressed with how knowledgeable she was in all aspects of jazz- the history, the theory, and the music business. The concert was a ton of fun, and I learned a lot about musical phrasing just by listening to Sunny sing melodies.
Following that, trombonist Jiggs Whigham performed with us in a concert on Saturday. Jiggs has an unbelievably impressive resume, and he's played with just about everyone from Dexter Gordon to Mel Lewis to Cannonball Adderley. He's also recently been appointed artistic director of the German Youth Jazz Orchestra BuJazzO. BuJazzO is made up of German students from the ages of about 17-25, and it's a very prestigious jazz ensemble that finds the best students from all over Germany. Since they're currently on a U.S. tour, they actually got a chance to come hang out with us a Disneyland for a morning. We played for each other, and then did a couple charts together. Our band was incredibly impressed by their playing, and it was a really fun hang when we mixed up the ensembles and played together. It was a great international moment, and I realized that the students in BuJazzO are much more similar to all of us than they are different. It's pretty amazing that even though they're from the other side of the world, we can all share our love of jazz music and perform it well. Even though jazz was made in America, it's become an international music, and to me that's really encouraging.
Our concert with Jiggs went really well. He still sounds incredible, and it was a blast to share the stage with him. Jiggs was our last guest artist concert scheduled for this summer, and I think it was a pretty good choice to close that portion of the summer with him.
We officially have one week left performing in the park before we leave- to be specific, 4 days. I'm pretty blown away that the summer has zipped by so quickly. Everyone in the band is starting to get really sappy, and I'm sure we'll all be a mess after our last set next Friday. Right now I'm just trying to spend as much time as possible with the 20 other people in the band I've come to know as family this summer. I'm having a very strange conflict of feelings as the summer heads towards a close. On one hand, I'm incredibly sad to say goodbye to everyone and to leave California. On the other hand, it's starting to feel like it's the right time to wrap things up. Even great things must come to an end at some point- it's just a fact of life. I know I'm incredibly excited to stay in touch with everyone after the summer and see what incredible paths everyone will take. The College Band program wouldn't be nearly as meaningful if it didn't have some sort of long-reaching impact past August 14th. I know my friends will go on to do great things, and I can't wait to brag about all of them as they go on to conquer the world.
I'll leave you all with a story about one of my most meaningful experiences of the summer. Ironically it taught me much more about people than music, but I think it's one of the most important things that's happened to me in the past two months. One of our band super fans is a guy named J.J. We see him just about every week and sometimes two or three times a week at our shows. Now, J.J. has Down syndrome and possibly some other conditions I'm not completely aware of. Before you feel sorry for him though, you should know that he probably enjoys what we do more than any other audience member. He stands up and cheers for the entire show, and he even knows some of our dance moves that he'll do along with us. It's incredible to watch his sister's face light up (she's the one who brings him to the park all the time) as she watches him watch us.
One day last week after our train station set (the last set of the day), after we had already walked backstage, Patti our stage manager rushed us back onstage to take a picture with J.J. This was definitely a special situation because we don't usually go out of our way to take group pictures with guests. J.J. was thrilled to see the band and ran up to us. We all gathered around him and the whole time pictures were being taken, he was smiling and laughing and yelling in happiness. I was so overwhelmed by his joy that I literally started tearing up and almost outright crying. (For those of you who know me well, you have to understand that this is a pretty big deal, as I don't get choked up too often.)
What that simple picture with J.J. taught me is that we have the power to change lives in this band. Every day, with every encounter we have with guests, we have the chance to make their day a little better. The band obviously means a lot to J.J., but what he may not know is that he means a lot to us. It's guests like that who make this job worth every long rehearsal day, every cramped van ride to the park, every sweaty and hot set, and every sore muscle. If you've ever been blessed enough to make a career out of being a musician, I hope you never take your job lightly. Though it sounds cheesy, I think it's really true- we have the power to change the world, one life at a time. Never take that for granted.
I'm sure there is going to be a sappy and emotional post about my last days here in the near future, so be on the lookout for that! Have a great week, and I'll be back with you soon :)
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