Jamming All Day!
Thursday morning started bright and early with an 8am visit to Jam Bake, the honors high school jazz combo at George Stevens Academy. On this, the first of two visits with them, we got to know each other personally and musically by sharing some recent repertoire. What an AMAZING start to the day to hear this excellent 8-piece band play Rondo à la Turk (Dave Brubeck), Come and Be a Winner (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings), Guataca City (Paquito d’Rivera), and Watermelon Man (Herbie Hancock). Everyone took solos and showed off impressive improvisational and ensemble skills!
In the next class, we met with the full concert band and got things started with an improv game where we composed chains of melodies by having each person in the room add a note, one by one. Next, we shared the second movement of Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello -- it’s easy to hear inspirations from jazz, including a full walking bass line in this one! Thanks to the handiwork of Tom Bergeron, our trumpet player and expert arranger, we embarked on a fun activity to expand the orchestration to include all 60 or so members of the band! We used different sections of the band to reinforce key moments of the movement such as the introductory ostinato, a pointillistic transition point, and the very bluesy walking bassline in the middle section. We are quite sure that Ravel, a master of orchestration himself, would have loved it!
In the afternoon we made our third stop at Blue Hill Consolidated School to perform for eighth grade band and music classes. We shared music by Takemitsu, Ravel, and Richard Rodgers and had a great Q & A session with the students.
Our last stop of the day was at Parker Ridge Retirement Community, always a favorite place to visit and share music. We played in the living room for about an hour, trying out Sam’s new arrangements of music by Baroque composer Francois Couperin along with Tom’s arrangements of music by Liszt and Takemitsu, a few standards, and the Ravel duo. We loved that when we played the piece by Takemitsu, entitled Romance, one of the eighth graders at BHCS reported that the musical landscape made her think of Luke Skywalker on the arid Sand Planet from Star Wars, while the residents of Parker Ridge reported that it made them think of a lazy afternoon in the forest or by the ocean. It was inspiring to hear such a wide range of images!
After a long day of music-making we ended the evening at Barncastle enjoying delicious pizzas and salads!
