Skat over this

Today's extra jazz choir rehearsal was a much needed addition to our normal schedule — which didn't actually exist this week. Our director Wayne was off in Alaska making high school bass-players cry while he adjudicated some competition up in the Klondike. Gav and I were good little tenors and took some time last Monday to hash through one of our charts. It's not one of the more difficult ones but we had simply overlooked it due to our intense effort to master an incredible arrangement of Body and Soul. And that's the song that the choir pushed itself through this last couple months of rehearsals.

It was today, however, that the PLU Vocal Jazz Ensemble sang Body and Soul from top to bottom at a tempo that we'll likely perform it at the 2001 Lionel Hampton Festival of Jazz... NEXT WEEK!

So we made it through that song, we're using two others from earlier this year, and then one more that we haven't focused on but will seem like a cakewalk compared to Body and Soul. We'll be ready for our trip next week and will probably be pretty excited to see/hear what other groups and our own singers have to offer. About eight of us are also competing this year at the festival in the solo category for our voice. Most of us took a spin through our sets two Sundays ago at a local jazz club in Tacoma called Jazzbones. It was a great chance to see what singing solo with a jazz combo is/will be like.

I've still a bit of memorization to achieve before the 22nd but I'm certain that I'll do my best once there. My motto throughout this whole solo thing: Sing hard. Respect the combo. Skat like hell.

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12/10/2004 @ 4:14pm

by Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Flim