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Saturday February 22, 2003
What's up g?
Hey, I had this absolutely fantastic honor last weekend of rehearsing and conducting the Texas All-State Jazz Band at the Texas Music Educators Conference in San Antonio, Texas.
What a great experience, and a great group of young adults.
I arrived on Wednesday, February 12, and this wonderful guy who was the All-State Jazz organizer, Mr. Roland Sandoval, picked Linda, Jimmy, Josette and I up from the airport. Roland is the director of, I believe he said either the largest or one of the largest high school band programs in Texas. 400-something kids. He said he marches close to 400. Jeez. Can you imagine 400 people marching on a football field? And it's high school - the logistics of getting 400 high school kids to football games and marching festivals and getting them transported and fed and trying to keep half of them from getting pregnant must be pretty intimidating.
The rehearsal schedule, as planned, was pretty brutal: Wednesday night from 7:00 to 10:30, then Thursday from 9:00 AM to Noon, 1:30 PM to 4:30 PM, and 6:15 PM to 9:45 PM, Friday from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM, 12:30 PM to 4:00 PM, and Saturday sound check from 10:15 AM to 11:30 AM, and the gig on Saturday from 11:30 AM to 12:20. WHEW!
We tried very hard to do things as fairly and democratically as possible, and one of the things we decided to do was make a lot of changes to the rehearsal schedule. On one hand, you have a group trying to prepare music for a concert, a process which would normally require a few weeks of 1-to-2 hour rehearsals per day, and trying to get it ready in just 2 1/2 days.
But on the other hand, I as a professional player can't even remotely justify the physical and mental stress of rehearsing intensely for 9 1/2 hours in a single day.
Anyway, to top it off I had brought some very difficult material, in fact I would imagine some of the charts I programmed represented the hardest material many of them had probably ever seen or would hope to see (for those of you who know big band repertoire: Little Pixie II, a Harlem Airshaft transcription, Alan Baylock's Struttin With Some Barbeque, etc.).
Well, after a couple of days of really intense work I was profoundly gratified that these young players absolutely rose to the occasion. I mean the distance they came on the material was really immense. Upon the first reading of some of it, train wrecks (where we would have to stop and restart at a double bar or something) were common.
By the time we did the concert, the vast majority of the material was not only played, but in an awful lot of cases played with lots of polish, lots of dynamics, and great solos. There were very, very good soloists in the band (most notably the pianist, Chris Villanueva, bassist Marcos Varela, a great trumpet soloist who sounded like Lee Morgan, Jeremy Sinclair, a tenor player who had a very Joe Farrell-like approach, Kyle Wilson, and an alto saxophonist from my alma mater - Arts Magnet High School @ Booker T. Washington in Dallas - Matt Marantz, ironically the son of my good friend and former director at BTW Bart Marantz).
I think coming into it a lot of the students were nervous about having this guy from the Air Force Band in front of them for three days, probably assuming that I would be a stiff control freak, and I think they were pretty relieved that I'm mostly a big kid like them. In fact, they found out that I am a fairly accomplished Super Smash Bros. player and invited Jimmy and me to their room for a game (although in the best interest of professionalism I politely declined...).
Anyway, we got through it and I think it was a very rewarding experience for most of the players, and it was incredibly rewarding for me. It was my first chance to really spend substantial time in front of a big band and rehearse it, and contrary to my fears going into it I knew exactly what to do to address the problems when they arose. At least most of them - I tried to think a lot about things I could have done better.
After the concert on Saturday, Linda, the kids, and I went and hung out with my Dad and my Mom and their spouses who had driven down from Dallas, and that was pretty neat.
Sunday was the day we were to fly back home, and of course there was a gigantic snowstorm, the storm of the century (so far), and our flights and subsequent rebooks kept getting cancelled. And believe it or not we did not get home until Wednesday at about midnight. We finally got to the remote parking and I used the panic button on the keyless remote to determine which giant pile of snow was the honking one (and therefore ours). No shovel, so I dug into the passenger door with my hands, started it up, put her in 4WD high gear and let it rip. Fortunately I got it moving.
Davidsonville had gotten about 17" or 18" of snow, and when we pulled in I had to just leave the truck in the street and dig out a place in our driveway to park it.
1 1/2 hours.
Then, knowing I had to go to work the following morning, I had to dig out my Prius.
Another 1 1/2 hours. I'm still sore today.
Anyway, got to bed at 3 AM, and that's the end of my San Antonio story.
Vio Con Dios!
©2003, Joe Jackson. All rights reserved.