Anatomy of a Gig, Pt. 1

This is the beginning of a series of narratives exploring the inner workings of selected projects and performances that I am involved with as the Director of the USAF Airmen of Note.  The intent is to share our philosophies, methods and approaches with regard to the world of the professional big band.

14 Mar 2006 03:15

I We were contacted asked to headline at this year's National Trumpet Competition with trumpeter Bobby Shew and saxophonist Jamey Aebersold as our guest soloists a couple of moths ago. The competition this year is at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, March 16-19 2006 (the end of this week).

We love playing with Bobby Shew and have done so on several occasions. For those of you who have been fortunate enough to play with him you know he is truly one of the great players of our time, and an absolute gentleman, a true joy to work with.

As the Director of the Note, it's ultimately my responsibility to make sure that the performance is not just a session with Bobby sitting in with the band, but a fully-produced show that is balanced and entertaining for the audience, and does the best job of highlighting the artistry of our guests.

Upon hearing about the booking, I asked our POC for the gig how long we would be playing, how long Bobby wanted to play, whether he would supply charts or if we would be responsible for putting a show together for him. I also needed to know how long Bobby wanted to play, as well as how much Jamey would be playing.

Turns out it would be a typical 90 to105-minute slot, that Bobby had some charts he wanted to send us, and that Jamey would come up for one song and wanted that to be with Bobby. During the months of January and February I was stationed in Alabama, attending the Air Force Senior Non-Commissioned Officer Academy so I was basically not attached to the band during that timeframe and my Assistant Director, Rich Sigler was POC'ing with Bobby and handling all of this while keeping me in the loop.

Bobby is a very strong player and even at his age has tremendous endurance, so one factor which often comes into play, pacing for the guest performer, was not going to be an issue with him. So what we want to do is our basic guest performer feature format, which is the Airmen of Note warming up by playing some tunes, bringing out Bobby, bringing out Jamey for one tune with Bobby, chasing Jamey, and having Bobby play out through the conclusion of the performance.

Rich received Bobby's charts a few days ago, and let me know that there were only four charts. We thought that was a little light, of course we can merely lengthen the "warmup" portion of the gig before we bring Bobby on. However one of the factors we try to consider that fall within what one might consider the "art" of performance production is the concept of balance -- there need to be a sense of "weight" to the guest artist portion of the concert in order for things to feel right to the audience.

Rich and I talked earlier today about coming up with a couple of tunes from our library to feature Bobby on. Doing this is hard, and is why I was glad Bobby was sending charts. When we do our Jazz Heritage Series each year, there is a lot of going back-and-forth between us and the artist well before the gig, since we write some or all of the charts for those concerts. The artists are all different, and even though we ensure we are thoroughly familiar with their strengths (and weaknesses) it has to ultimately be up to the performer the tune choices as well as the style, key and utilization of the music. When the artists are sending the charts, it's easy because they are sending what they are comfortable with. When we are initiating the process it becomes harder because you have to mock up versions of the arrangements (or record existing charts) and send them to them until they can find some they want to play on.

One idea Rich and I had that seemed to be a slam dunk was a version of Woody Herman's "Brotherhood of Man" that I had redone for an eight-piece brass big band -- as an alumnus of Woody's band Bobby is quite familiar with the tune. It is a dual trumpet feature, which would feature Rich or our other jazz trumpeter Tim Leahey up front with Bobby which is another positive in terms of programming - any time you can mix up solo formats, bring another person into the spotlight and have some cats trading up front it's a very good thing from the audience's perspective in terms of variety.

Another idea was a chart Alan Baylock did for Nicholas Payton at our Jazz Heritage performance with him in 2004, a very compositional treatment of "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise" which would be a good piece to the puzzle as well, a stylistic departure from a lot of Bobby's other charts.

Rich emailed Bobby today with the suggestions, Bobby like the idea of "Brotherhood" but upon listening to "Softly" decided it was not really his bag. Of course that's fine, the most important thing is that Bobby is comfortable and that we do music that will give him the best chance to shine. So Rich and I will talk again tomorrow and come up with another idea.

We had plenty of time to rehearse Bobby's stuff this week, but at the last minute a trip to Charleston Air Force Base for an event for a very high-level DV (not allowed to say who!!) came in that has us flying out Thursday and returning Friday night. This eliminated two rehearsals so all we have is tomorrow and some of Wednesday to get the stuff together for our rehearsal at Bolling with Bobby on Thursday.

I'll post more later...

14 Mar 2006 19:58

Rehearsed all of the Bobby music today. We are definitely adding Brotherhood of Man to the lineup, probably also looking at adding "Now & Forever" a Curnow arrangement of a Metheny tune that I know Bobby has done in the past.

I programmed the gig today. Here's the actual sheet I give at the gig:

18 Mar/NTC/Shew/Aebersold 1600A Opener 2059 Trolley Song (Tedd, Dennis) 2094 Quiet Lady (Steve,Sig) **KEVIN TALK** Four on Six (Geoff) **KEVIN INTRO PAIGE** 2085 Let the Good Times Roll 2101 A Timeless Place (Peacocks) (Joe) **KEVIN CHASE PAIGE** Georgia (Kevin) **KEVIN TALK** 2093 I Love You (Ben, Andy) Bobby Shew (order tbd) Magic Box Smoke Gets In Your Eyes Brotherhood of Man (With Tim) Bobby w/Jamey Aebersold There is No Greater Love Exit Jamey Always and Forever (or another tune tbd) **PRESENTOS** Terrestris

That's about a 90-minute show with no intermission. A good rule of thumb is to take the number of charts and multiply times six, I usually end up with a pretty accurate estimate of the length of the show.

I actually give out this sheet, it usually has more production detail but production wise there's not much going on at this gig. On our typical community relation concerts there's more intricate stuff, sponsor acknowledgements, recruiter acknowledgements, Air Force messaging.

We'll have time to rehearse a little more tomorrow. Most of the music is pretty straight up, there's some challenging stuff but nothing we can't handle. We just want to make sure that it all sounds free and easy by the time we do it with Bobby.

I'll post again tomorrow.

17 Mar 2006 21:09

im posting on my pda from the back of a c17, returning from our dv arrival at charleston afb - the dv was the vp, dick cheney, i can say that now since its over.

2 very long days down here, however the rehearsal with bobby yesterday went very well. he is great to work with, hes been a working pro most of his career as opposed to a "star", so he has none of that prima donna ****.

he sounds beautiful, of course. soundcheck is at 1:00 tomorrow and the gig is at 2:30. I'll report back after the gig, probably Sunday.

17 Mar 2006 21:13

the c17 broke and we had to return to charleston even though we were halfway to dc. this whole trip has been a series of worse case scenarios. my back and neck has been in horrible condition, and we were made to do marches so i had to conduct. we had to get marches in pdfs emailed down and printed out and the guys sightread them.

life in the big time...

19 Mar 2006 14:47

OK, gig happened yesterday and it was absolutely a tremendous performance even from my perspective of being very self-critical of my band.

The only glitch is that Jamey Aebersold missed his flight and missed the gig. As planned we opened with Trolley Song and Quiet Lady. Our Tenor Saxophonist Tedd Baker tore up Trolley and Brian MacDonald played one of the loudest double Cs I've ever heard in a performance situation, and that includes pretty much every top lead trumpet player you could name. While I am partial to musicality, there is a sheer, brutal and universally palpable truth to trumpet players playing very, very high notes very loud.

We axed Four on Six (a guitar feature) in favor of Rich Sigler playing Always and Forever (a flugel, feature) since it is a trumpet convention.

Paige was dynamite on Good Times and Peacocks, and Kevin Burns tore up our recently-acquired Doc Severinsen chart on "Georgia".

Ben Patterson (yes, Ben Patterson aka bonedaddy the Online Trombone Journal Forum mod) wrote our arrangement of "I Love You" which is one of the hardest and most unusual arrangements we've ever tried to play, lots of metric time changes and superimposed rhythmic patterns with independent parts that are hard to integrate. He wrote himself a solo at about quarter note=330 (with a stoptime chorus to boot!), I don't think he would consider yesterday the best solo he has done on that tune but he has incredible technique that blows me away every time.

We brought out Bobby who has recently had knee surgery and is not walking so well, of course he has not really been getting around so good for the last 12-14 years or so. He sat in a stool pretty much the whole gig.

Bobby sounded absolutely brilliant on all fronts. He can do everything he has ever been able to do, and plus his soloing and musicality is better than ever. We had convinced him to add our Alan Baylock arrangement of "Softly As in a Morning Sunrise" that we did for our Jazz Heritage Series with Nicholas Payton. He accepted it as a challenge since it is not really his bag, and was talking himself down in relation to nicholas, which was the recording we sent him.

But I'd be damned if he did not at least equal Nick Payton on that tune. He sounded so incredibly smooth, stretching out the phrases on the head, stretching phrases across barlines, playing sparing and dry statements early in the solo. There is so much logic, symmetry, elegance and passion in his soloing.

And he is funny as hell on the mic. He has mastered what so many showmen have mastered and that is the art of telling the truth on the mic. So many people who front bands try to present themselves and the band so much that they manufacture everything and they are so afraid to say what pops in their head. Guys like Bobby and Doc and other frontmen are just naturally funny, understated and relaxed guys. At one point Bobby said, "We're going to do one more tune for you but after that we have an encore for you, usually performers go off stage and wait for the ovation but I'm not walking anywhere so I'm just letting you know up front."

Another one that happened at our Doc Severinsen gig last week in Tennessee:

Doc (in his charming, slow drawl): "Have you folks noticed that a lot of the music we're playing has a Southern flavor?"

Audience: **Half applauds, half murmurs amongst selves**

Doc: **Pauses** "Well, maybe not then."

Audience: **Half laugh**

Doc: **Pauses** "You know, it's all up to you!"

Audience: **Falls out**

Good stuff.

Anyway, great gig, we tore down all the gear, loaded truck, truck goes back to Bolling for rehearsal/saxophone auditions on Monday, band goes home for a day off. All in all another day at work for us however sometimes I step back and think how different our average day is from 99.9999 percent of the working world, and how many folks out there probably would give an arm to be in our shoes. Of course if they gave an arm they wouldn't be able to play so good but that's another story.

By the way, have you noticed that most instruments have "conferences", "workshops", "symposiums" and the like, but the trumpet players have the "National Trumpet Competition"? Just a thought.

Regards,

Joe

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