Vijay Iyer had a distinctly different demeanor from many musicians that I’ve met in the past. It wasn’t that difficult to spot him from my table when I arrived at the Birdland Jazz Club — he looked exactly the way I’d seen him in pictures: sharp, clean-cut, emanating professionalism. In fact, his image was so overwhelming that my father had to pull me out of my seat to go introduce myself to him. (Thanks, Dad.)

I can best compare Iyer’s music to that of Stravinsky’s. By the end of each piece, it’s challenging to come away from it with the melody ringing in your head; rather, it’s an array of innovative chords, unique motifs that you wish you could write down on paper to use later, and a strange image of visually disconnected yet completely intertwined group of musicians that’s stuck in your head when you leave the set. Initially I felt like I was watching three different performances from three different musicians at the same time — but as the tunes progressed, and as I grasped a better understanding of each musician, I also slowly could see a connection between the three. It seems like listening to Iyer’s music is somewhat of an intellectual pursuit.

Throughout my studies in jazz as a high school student, I’ve been told many different opinions about instruments and their respective roles in jazz — specifically, in a combo setting, I’ve been repeatedly told that it’s my job as the pianist to lay down the chords; the drummer’s job to maintain the beat; the bass’s job to set the groove; the horns’ jobs to establish the melody. These concepts have consistently held true through my high school combo and the jazz group at CalArts, but it’s as if all these rules were broken that night at Birdland. Justin Brown (drums) was often more colorful than beat-oriented; Iyer even held the bass line at some moments; Stephan Crump (bass) seemed to even have more of a melodic element than a groove at times. I believe what struck me the most was the fact that this all wasn’t confusing — in fact, everything that Iyer, Brown, and Crump played made complete sense, despite the fact that they were going against every rule I’d ever learned about playing in small jazz ensembles.

Perhaps the Vijay Iyer trio was a reminder to me that if jazz does have rules, they’re completely arbitrary.

I’ve been giving a set list for each performance I’ve attended this past week, but unfortunately the only tune Iyer mentioned was an adaption of Michael Jackson’s Human Nature, where he added: “I just met someone who was born in 1993, so I was afraid she wouldn’t know that one…I graduated in 1992, so…”

(That person, by the way, is yours truly.)

He also played some pieces from his recent album, Historicity.

I was also able to talk to Iyer afterwards:

On the same note as all the college tours I had that week, Iyer and I talked about attending a liberal arts college versus a music conservatory — as you might have seen in one of my previous posts, one of the highlights of my college tours was my trip to Columbia University, where I got a better look at opportunities in both the fields of jazz and journalism. Iyer received his B. S. in Math and Science from Yale College and a Masters in Physics and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Technology and the Arts from UC Berkeley along with his studies in jazz at both schools, so I got to get his perspective on the issue of higher jazz education. He expressed that liberal arts schools give musicians an opportunity to experience a breadth of topics along with jazz, preparing the musician for interaction with the outside world.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, come check out Vijay Iyer at the Levitt Pavilion in Pasadena on the 15th of August — I might see you there!

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: The “Pretty” Road/Maria Schneider Orchestra/Sky Blue

Tonight was definitely a contrast to the Fred Hersch show I went to yesterday night — I was at the Blue Note to hear the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band. I learned several things at the Village Vanguard show, one of which being the necessity of showing up early. I forgot to mention (embarrassingly enough) that I arrived at the venue less than ten minutes before the start of the show and wound up with a booth seat in the back of the room. It made for great acoustics, but not so much for actually seeing the performers.

This time I arrived with my father about forty-five minutes before the show and I scored a seat facing the bell of NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath’s tenor saxophone. This was the view from my seat:

And the view from my father’s seat:

Here’s their set list, accompanied by some notes I took during the show:

1. Hot House

2. I’m Beboppin’ Too

3. Emanon (which is “No Name” backwards. began with a killer piano solo by Monty Alexander, who was playing piano for the band that evening)

4. Without You, No Me (Jimmy Heath says that he was commissioned to write this piece by Dizzy Gillespie — “Do you know what a commission is?” he joked, “it was a commission impossible, because he didn’t pay me!”)

5. I Mean You

6. Una Mas (with a flute duet from the two altos)

7. Happy Birthday (where vocalist Roberta Gambarini was introduced)

8. ‘Round Midnight

9. Lover Come Back To Me (with a madly fantastic scat solo from Gambarini, especially when she began trading solos with the band members)

10. I Remember Clifford (with Hargrove on flugelhorn)

11. Things to Come (particularly featured the trumpet section

I’m now comparing my notes from the Hersch show and the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band show and it appears that the notes for the latter are much more sparse than the first. I’m thinking that it’s the case because this big band was generally more rambunctious and exciting, especially with such a responsive audience. Also, nothing beats the feeling of locking eyes with a band member in the agreement of something radical just played — and I had several of these instances tonight. Overall, this band was just so alive and wild compared to the sensitivity of the Hersch show. (The Hersch show, on the other hand, had me bent over and closing my eyes in thought the majority of the time — which is quite the meditating experience, a rewarding experience; but still, the complete opposite of the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band vibe.)

Though Roy Hargrove directed the band the majority of the time, there were several occasions where Heath did — like in the case of his piece Without You, No Me — and it gave me that same strangely nostalgic feeling that hit me when I saw Sonny Rollins at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. I’m more than likely going to be driven to exploring that feeling in a future post. I did get to chat with him a bit afterwards:

Tomorrow I’ll be attending the Vijay Iyer Trio show at the Birdland — I’ll keep you updated!

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Looking Back/Kneebody/Low Electrical Worker

The Village Vanguard immediately fulfilled some of my expectations the moment I went through that red door. It was crowded with people — a few college students, but mostly those beyond twice my age — nearly all the way to the back of the room by the time I arrived. It was frozen in time, the exact image I’d remembered from the pictures I’d seen of it from ages before now, except for a few new coats of paint and a shiny new Steinway — exactly the way I’d imagined it.

There was one thing, however, that was distinctly different from my romantic image of the Village Vanguard. As I may have mentioned before, one of my favorite albums was recorded here (Sunday at the Village Vanguard/Bill Evans Trio) back in 1961 — and one of my favorite aspects of this albums is its vivacity. Vivacity, not only in regards to the musical interaction between Evans, LaFaro, and Motian, but also in the subtle sounds of clinking glasses and chatter and laughter from that audience, undisturbed by editing, is what gives that album a genuinely raw feeling to me. It’s as if tonight those hints of conversation and laughter were replaced by complete silence, only broken by the occasional rumbling from the nearby subway and perhaps the scribbling of my pen against my notebook.

My question is, what is it that changed here? Is it the audience that’s reluctant to make any audible signals of appreciation? It’s absolutely not in the lack of appreciation, I’m sure. Are there new policies at the Village Vanguard? Is the recording equipment too sensitive for any extraneous noise? What do you think?

But without further ado, on to the set list, as well as some notes I took during the show:

Fred Hersch (p), John Hébert (b), Billy Hart (d)

1. From This Moment On

2. Still Here (a dedication to Wayne Shorter, whom Hersch declared his “hero and huge influence”)

3. Skipping (I’m still frustrated that I can’t figure out the shifting time signatures of this tune — anyone know? Otherwise, it sounded very Brubeck to me)

4. Whirl (inspired by a ballerina; a circular, spinning tune with minor sixths layered over triplets in the initial melody; reminds me of that Chopin tune that I desperately need to practice)

5. The Wind (Russ Freeman)/Moon and Sand (Alec Wilder) Medley

6. Played Twice (because Hersch declares that it’s a tradition to play a Monk tune at every set in the Village Vanguard; It was pretty interesting hearing this bebop tune played in a floaty Hersch style.)

7. I’ll Be Seeing You (I loved hearing John Hebert on arco; the way the piece was played reminded me of the recording of Granados on the Bill Evans Compact Jazz album)

8. Change Partners (Hersch started out with random-sounding single pitches that reminded me of a coding exercise I did in a surprisingly challenging CalArts computer music class, later contrasted by some lovely block chords. This piece was my favorite of the night — mostly because of the striking contrasts that Hersch set forward: random chaos/structure, dissonance/comfortable harmonies, random notes/repetition, block chords/melodic lines. A great end to a diverse and thought-provoking set. Not to mention that I was bouncing in my seat the entire show.)

(top: Fred Hersch; bottom: Billy Hart)

The moment Hersch began playing his first tune, I thought back to one of my old piano lessons at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts with John Adams when I was about fourteen years old. I remember we were working on an extremely sensitive part of a Edward MacDowell piece — Mr. Adams and I had gotten to the point where we were both frustrated that I couldn’t soften my touch a slight bit more. “Play it soft,” he kept repeating, “like a memory.”

And that’s exactly how Hersch played — like a memory. Even with his consistently active left hand and his tiny upper-register melodies, Hersch’s playing always sounded like some nostalgic echo of something already once played.

That night I sat there in the Village Vanguard in a room filled with memories from a time ages ago — and even though in reality I didn’t exist then, I think I felt a bit of that nostalgia as well.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Still Here/Fred Hersch Trio/Whirl

The title of this post says it all: I’m off to New York City. Tomorrow morning I’m leaving at about 4:30 AM to catch a morning flight on Virgin Airlines with my family to New York City with two main goals in mind: (a) tour colleges and (b) check out the NYC jazz scene. But perhaps what I’m looking the most forward to is wandering aimlessly along its busy sidewalks, mesmerized by the bright lights and the masses of diverse people — I have a certain fondness for big cities. I love how quickly anyone can switch from being an integral part of the city — like a jazz musician, for instance — to being an individual in complete solitude — another face drifting in an ever-moving sea of people.

Nevertheless, it is still my first time ever visiting NYC. As many of you know, I’m starting my senior year of high school this fall — which means that the next step for me is college. I’ll be touring several universities this week, including Columbia, NYU, and Juilliard — I’ll keep you updated on my college tours via this blog and thejazzpost’s Twitter feed.

I’ll also be attending (at the least) two jazz shows: the Fred Hersch trio (with John Hebert and Billy Hart) at the Village Vanguard and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars at the Blue Note. The Village Vanguard was the first place I expressed extreme interest in visiting upon the first notions of this family trip to NYC in its early stages — after all, it’s the venue where my favorite Bill Evans album was recorded. Frankly, I probably wouldn’t have minded much taking a cheesy tourist-y photo outside its old doors — so I’m absolutely ecstatic about this Hersch show. And I definitely can’t miss out on the opportunity to see a Blue Note show — especially a Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars show.

I’m trying my hardest to refrain from using the words “sick,” “awesome,”  “amazing,”  “fantastic,” and “excited” in these short paragraphs, and I’ve got to tell you — it’s extremely difficult. Just thinking about where I’m headed tomorrow is making me squirm with excitement. So since I don’t want to miss my flight, I’m going to end this post here for now — but trust me: it’s going to be an exciting week for me and TheJazzPost starting tomorrow.

Here’s a lovely good night with a lovely Sunday At the Village Vanguard track:

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Dr. Beauchef, Penguin Dentist/Kneebody/Low Electrical Worker

PHOTO CREDIT (top): Josh Liba @ Flickr

Last night I had the privilege of meeting bass player Kaveh Rastegar and drummer Jaydon Bean (as well as my teacher, Mark Nilan Jr.) at the Watermark on Main in Ventura. Let me tell you, it was quite the experience just watching the three musicians set up in such a tiny venue — a small space surrounded by already-inhabited tables — yet somehow it worked. I also believe that my heart did skip a beat when Nilan pulled out that lipstick-red keyboard — and the same goes for when he told me that Rastegar was the bass player for the jazz fusion band, Kneebody. It’s not usual for me to be that excited before the show starts — but in this case, I genuinely was.

But it was watching the three of them create this intense musical sphere right there in that busy restaurant — uninterrupted by bustling waiters and rowdy customers — that was probably the most mesmerizing part of the show. And it was even more astonishing to know that this crazy musical bond was created by three musicians that had not once played with one another — in fact, they’d just met only minutes before the gig.

I can’t describe their performance that night as anything else but organic. Organic in the sense that they rapidly caught each others’ idiosyncrasies as the pieces progressed — even the slightest bit of a catchy phrase was repeated and answered and echoed and turned through each player, as if their music was some living, growing, breathing being. I especially enjoyed this nonverbal exchange of ideas and the way Bean’s face lit up every single time something interesting was played (or perhaps he was smiling at the fact that I reveled in this so much).

Their set included Green Dolphin Street, the Beatles’ Blackbird, Someday My Prince Will Come, and my all-time favorite, Alice in Wonderland.

(left to right: Jaydon Bean, Kaveh Rastegar, me, Mark Nilan Jr.)

I also got a chance to talk a bit with Rastegar during their breaks and gained some pretty insightful advice on being a young and ambitious jazz musician. Probably the most valuable piece of advice he gave me was on working with other musicians — recognizing your place and position as a part of the group you are playing with is one of the most important parts of being a successful player. Also, like I’ve read and heard from many musicians, he noted that the most important part of being a musician in any situation is developing yourself into the best musician you can be. It sounds like a given here, but I’m beginning to notice that it’s very easy to get caught up in petty concerns — age, race, gender, equipment, length of study, money, personality issues, even placement or chair seating in a band — which hold the potential to lead you astray from this fundamental goal.

After talking to Rastegar, I now have an appointment at the CalArts library to go on a music-hunting spree, as well as a transcription bucket list nailed to my wall. Not to mention that I’m even more intent on continuing my Joseph Campbell-esque hero’s journey out on the East coast. As you read this I’m most likely staring dreamily into the pages of a college application in some deserted library as I begin the last summer before my senior year.

I’ll conclude this post with the video that introduced me to Kneebody:

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Brother Mister/Christian McBride and Inside Straight/Kind of Brown

After a grueling two weeks with four AP tests, I can finally open my computer for reasons other than the College Board. But still, these past two weeks were also a collection of some valuable experiences in jazz. (Not to mention that the last few months of life in front of AP review books and coffee has strengthened my gratefulness for it.)

Last week I decided to take advantage of my high school’s required job shadowing activity by using it as an opportunity to go hear some live jazz — so I shot an email to my former CalArts CAP teacher Tina Raymond about it. It turned out that Tina’s currently the drummer of the all-female jazz band Maiden Voyage that’s going to be playing at the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. this week; although I knew that yes, female jazz players do exist, I’d never heard of anything like Maiden Voyage.

Tina invited me to go attend a Maiden Voyage rehearsal at the Musician’s Union (thanks again, Tina!) where I was able to meet Ann Patterson, accomplished female sax player and band leader:

Of course, it’s nothing new to see a talented female jazz musician. There’s Mary Lou Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, and Toshiko Akiyoshi from back in the day, and Hiromi Uehara, Esperanza Spalding, Dee Dee Bridgewater performing right now. But I didn’t expect it to be that big of a shock for me to see so many talented female musicians playing together. I suppose it’s the fact that whenever I do see female jazz musicians, they’re either playing alone or they’re being featured as part of an otherwise all-male group. And even though I initially approached the Maiden Voyage rehearsal with questions revolved around the experiences of being a female in the jazz world, it suddenly felt strange to even ask those questions — the fact that being a female player in the jazz world was even significant suddenly seemed disappointing.

It was later that week that this disappointment settled in even further. As I sat on my piano bench at my school district’s honor jazz band first rehearsal and watched each musician walk in, it began to dawn on me that I would be the only female playing in the band.

Yes, jazz is a genre that succeeds most of the time at embracing differences and highlighting individuality, and being the one female in this jazz band is only one more difference that I have in relation to everyone else. But after watching the lead trumpet player of Maiden Voyage hit all those screaming high notes, I begin to wonder where her younger counterpart is in my younger jazz sphere. It’s not as if females have less accessibility than their male friends to jazz bands at my age, so where are they?

It did give me hope, however,  to see several talented female jazz players in the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts’ jazz band this weekend at the Workman High School jazz festival. There’s also reassurance in an article I read in the March 2010 Downbeat — Marian McPartland’s Gender Barriers? Observations of a Working Pianist and Bandleader, in which she asserts that “if women seem to be in the minority in any field,” her advice is still the same: “you have to have talent and motivation, be dogged and persistent, believe in yourself, and not be deterred by anything or anyone.” Also, she notes that she believes “people with determination and a desire to succeed” move ahead, “ignoring all barriers,” despite the stories she initially heard from other female musicians about the difficulty of beginning a career in music. And considering the fact that Marian McPartland is an influential figure in both jazz and in journalism (if you haven’t checked out Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz of NPR, do so now), that’s some powerful advice.

But in the meantime,  events like the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival that highlight the talented jazz women of today are also accompanied by a certain degree of pride from both those jazz musicians and aspiring female jazz musicians like me — and that’s some pretty indispensable and irreplaceable passion in the growing jazz sphere.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Van Gogh/Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra/Portrait in Seven Shades

Listening to this album reminds me that I’ve forgotten to mention my essay that’s published on the Jazz At Lincoln Center’s website as part of this year’s Essentially Ellington essay contest, check it out here! (I received this autographed album as part of the prize package.)

Also, here’s Jeff Jarvis of California State University, Long Beach (left) and  Chris Stevens of Long Beach Polytechnic High School (right); I met them both this past weekend at the Workman High School jazz festival, and they’re both very inspirational band directors with fantastic bands. (Check out this post for a bit about the CSULB band at Newbury Park High School.) Thanks for saying hello!

It’s thirty minutes before we leave for Newbury Park: thirty-six of us are packed into our small jazz rehearsal room, staring at the unbelievable amount of  equipment in disbelief. Three amps. Forty music folders. Two keyboards. A drum set. Two basses. Some of us take a slightly extended trip to the restroom. Some of us push up our sleeves and roll up the cords and cables, lock down the amp cases, count and re-count our music folders. By the time we get on the bus, it’s already groaning at the weight of our trumpets and trombones and saxophones, each wrapped up in comfortable cases. I rub my hands together to warm them up — there’s a slight imprint from the corner of the Yamaha S90ES on my left palm. As the bus rocks back and forth from the asperous freeway, I fall asleep.

This past weekend the two West Ranch High School jazz bands traveled a good hour to the Newbury Park High School Jazz Festival after months of preparation. Our set included Time Check, Dave Holland Does it Like This, Black Orpheus, and In a Sentimental Mood. Have a listen at some of our pieces from both the upper jazz band and the combo:

We left the NPHS Jazz Festival at the end of the night with a second place (WRHS Studio A Jazz Band), a third place (WRHS Lab Band), and another third place award for our new WRHS Jazz Combo. But for me, the greatest part of the festival was the people that I was able to meet — both student musicians from schools like Camarillo High School and Golden Valley High School to professional musicians like CalArts Jazz Program Director David Roitstein, Cal State Long Beach Director of Jazz Studies Jeff Jarvis, and Hemet High School Jazz Director/Idyllwild Jazz Summer Workshop Chairman Jeff Tower (he awarded several full and partial scholarships to this camp to many students at the NPHS jazz festival!).

In fact, David Roitstein was our clinician for the WRHS jazz combo. Meeting him was like meeting some sort of jazz celebrity — for the past three years, I’ve heard my jazz director talk about him; I’ve heard my jazz director’s son (Jeff Babko) talk about him; Even my jazz teacher has talked about him with great respect — he’s often started many pieces of advice with “this is what Mr. Roitstein would tell me to do…” Luckily enough, Mr. Roitstein put much emphasis on improvisation. “It’s something we do every day in conversation,” he told us. Of course, I was pretty skeptical. But after he had us trade fours several times with the Kind of Blue tune So What with the aim of repeating/reflecting on the solo preceding our own, Mr. Roitstein brought us a brighter light to improvisation.  After he told us to imagine having this musical conversation with ourselves, jazz improvisation has lately been starting to make much more sense. The concept of developing smaller, simpler ideas before starting a solo (and even while comping) has become an increasingly more valuable core to developing my own understanding of improvisation.

We were also awarded by an incredible performance by the Cal State Long Beach jazz band directed by Jeff Jarvis. Their set included Airegin, The Days of Wine and Roses (featuring their lead trumpet player), Songbird, Captain Hook, High and Mighty (written by Jeff Jarvis himself), Trumpets Forever, and Got a Match. My two favorites that night were The Days of Wine and Roses and Jarvis’s High and Mighty. Wine and Roses had this romantic, Bill-Evans-esque feel to it (probably because the last time I heard it was in a recording of the Bill Evans trio); it’s also a personal favorite of mine when a jazz band’s horns hits a no-rhythm-section a cappella part with goosebump-evoking perfection — and that’s exactly what happened with this tune. On the other hand, High and Mighty was an upbeat piece that Jarvis said was inspired by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. Personally, though, I saw that the piece reflected the entire city itself: Jarvis began the piece with morning-sunrise-like bell-tones (which, by the way, reminded me so much of Bernstein’s West Side Story) and progressed towards busy nighttime tones behind the tenor sax solo. What CSULB gave us that night, in fact, was exactly the subject of the conversation I had with a few jazz music students only a several hours prior:

Project Improv Part I

(From left to right: Carlos Rodriguez, Sean Doane, Brett Lopez, and another Camarillo HS student)

I asked Omer Benyamin, a tenor sax player from my jazz band, to help me seek out some high school students at the Newbury Park High School jazz festival — and I was able to talk to Carlos, Sean, and Brett from Camarillo High School about our own experiences and desires regarding jazz. All three students were introduced to music via an outside influence: for example, Brett was introduced in watching his sister play the clarinet, and Carlos was intrigued when he heard Mickey whistling on the old Disney cartoon Steamboat Willie. But Sean what asserted — and what we all seemed to agree on –  in regards to exposing jazz to primary school and high school students alike was something that I’ve known all along but never even thought to say: we all need to see someone amazing. Since jazz has an increasingly older audience as the years go by, it’s difficult for a young person with little exposure to jazz to perceive it as anything but music that’s, frankly, music for old people. But many of us know that this isn’t the case with today’s successful and young jazz musicians like Vijay Iyer, Hiromi Uehara, and Christian Scott — however, how is it possible for anyone still in high school to know anything about them?

Sean, Brett, Carlos, Omer, and I came to the general consensus that we want and need jazz musicians to reach out to us while we’re still in high school — we want them to perform for us and our high school friends; live jazz is physical proof that (a) it’s still alive, (b) it’s not just for an older generation, and (c) it’s actually a pretty fantastic style of music. We get this bubbly kind of feeling when we hear someone like  Miles Davis or Joe Lovano or David Sanborn on the radio — and as student jazz musicians, we want our friends to get and understand that feeling as well.

This is only the beginning of the answer to the question that I recently received from jazz musician Richard Frank of PTJazz: “How do we make jazz relevant and accessible to youth today?”

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Red Clay/Freddie Hubbard/Red Clay

Time is a common problem in jazz band. Before competitions, we constantly fret over time — is the music too long? do we have enough of it? are we speeding up? are we slowing down?

But yesterday, my jazz director made an interesting remark: “If I catch anyone playing hacky-sack in the courtyard while we’re there,” he warned, wagging an assertive finger, “I’m going to be pretty upset.”

I came to the realization that there’s another problem we have regarding time: we’re arriving at the host school at 9 in the morning and we’re coming home at 9 at night, and there’s no way that any combination of big band performances, combo performances, and clinics adds up to twelve hours. I’ve been to quite a few jazz competitions over the past few years, competitions that facilitate the mingling of dozens of different schools in my area. I’ve eaten lunch and I’ve warmed up in the same room as hundreds of different high school students from hundreds of different backgrounds, all with common experiences in jazz. But have I met any of them?

I’ve come to notice that over the past three years, I’ve missed out on hundreds of different stories.

Nevertheless, I still have little over a year left. That’s why I’ve attached such a blatantly tacky name to an outrageous idea: Project Improv. From here on out, I’m going to meet, interview, and take pictures with at least three random groups of high school students from three different schools. I’m going to get their perspective on how they perceive jazz as teenage jazz musicians; why they’re so crazy about it (or not?). I’m going to find out how and when they met jazz; where do they see jazz going from here? And how can we make jazz more appealing to younger generations (or is it fine just the way it is?)?

So if you’re looking to find a way to get today’s younger generation increasingly more involved in jazz, Project Improv will hopefully open a window for you to the current opinions of today’s teenage jazz musicians. The first Project Improv will start this weekend at our first jazz competition; I’ll keep you updated on who I meet via Twitter (@thejazzpost) this Saturday.

Wish me luck on making new jazz buddies!

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Take Five/Dave Brubeck Quartet/Time Out

Being a teenage musician in a place like Los Angeles has got its perks. I’ve got access to the Hollywood Bowl, the Baked Potato, the Monterey Jazz Festival, and the California Institute of the Arts — not to mention access to thousands of musicians associated with LA-based music organizations. Nevertheless, it’s still exciting to meet those people that you only see in websites and magazines; the faces behind the names that show up on the songs that you play every day.

It was on the last Sunday of January that I met Antoinette Perry, the Senior Lecturer of Keyboard Studies at the University of Southern California, for a master class in a home of a quiet suburbian neighborhood. If you know anything about master classes, you’ll know that they can be absolutely frightening — in front of a large, judging audience the student has to perform a piece, knowing that in the next few minutes an intimidating master class instructor will be hovering over her shoulder, exposing tiny mistakes, insisting on minuscule nuances. It’s not one of the most pleasantly exciting things to do.

But my experience with Antoinette Perry was quite the opposite. To tell you the truth, the first thing I noticed about Perry — before her tall, lanky stature and her youthful smile — were her hands. I was nearly infatuated with them. Her fingers were bony, slender, delicate; they stroked the keys of the piano with the grace of a prima ballerina. I’ve constantly tried to justify playing piano with my short, stubby fingers by pulling up names like Thelonius Monk, insisting to myself that he probably didn’t have Rachmaninoff fingers either and could still play a killer B-flat blues — but Perry flat out dissolved those comforting thoughts. Even she noticed that my elbows aren’t even close to being perpendicular with my hands when I play, leaving me in an awkward angle above the piano keys — a realization that she quickly dismissed by hastily moving on to a different topic. It’s a pretty sensitive subject for a compulsively-obsessive pianist like me.

Still, she had fantastic critiques about my performance of Schubert’s Impromptu No. 2 in E-flat Major — everything from inner melodies that needed more emphasis to small fluctuations in pedaling to help me out with my E-flat major scale runs. And Perry was an exciting instructor — as she had me try out her tips with the Schubert, she’d flail her arms wildly in imaginary conducting, passionately singing along. She was definitely a great window into the music program at USC.

(P.S. I later won a $300 scholarship from the local Music Teacher’s Association of California playing the same piece!)

Just as exciting was a clinic with Don Menza, the composer of one of our currently most challenging pieces: Time Check. (Menza’s also the composer of the popular piece Groovin’ Hard.) “You can only play as good as you can play,” he told us in regards to being nervous before a performance, adding, “I talk about this with Sonny [Rollins] all the time.” He only ever took off his shades when he wanted to emphasize a crucial point — putting air through the horn; playing lines together; hitting the drumset with confidence. While Perry was a window into a prospective college, Menza was a window into the past — a place where jazz was a taboo gateway into violence and drugs and alcohol. It seemed like jazz had this fountain-of-youth effect on Menza — as he spoke, he moved his body energetically, visually showing us what he wanted us to do, throwing around in his speech the colloquialisms of a jazz kid from the sixties.

And then there was his saxophone. Before he arrived, we already knew that he’d written and played with Maynard Ferguson’s orchestra and Buddy Rich’s big band; we knew that he was an amazing tenor sax player. But the word amazing is used everywhere in nearly every circumstance imaginable — it can’t even come close to describe what came out of Menza’s horn.

On a concluding note, here’s what I’m failing in an attempt to describe in words:

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Roustabout/Simple Citizens/Me and Miss Lemona K

I was just finishing a post about my experience so far with the combo that I’m currently in, but I’m going to be telling you about my day instead. You see, I had an audition this morning with the SCSBOA honor jazz band program. I’ve done auditions before, but only classical ones — auditions with stiff-necked judges and staring audiences and billowy black dresses. But today I exchanged that dress for a pair of black slacks — if that really symbolically means anything at all — and walked into an audition with a whole different atmosphere — an atmosphere with muffled Aebersold recordings emanating from the audition rooms; predominantly male; brassy instruments. And for some reason, it was a lot warmer, too. I’d never noticed how cold the buildings of my classical auditions were. It was warm in the sense of comfort — it was bubbly, swingy, devoid of threatening glares.

But I’m going to tell you right now that I did not make it. When I looked up from the keys to play the next etude during this audition, I was able to catch a glimpse of the judge’s face. It was blank; there was no epiphanic light in his eyes — it almost seemed as if the awkward movements of my short, stubby fingers were far more interesting than what I was actually playing. I’m familiar with the small idiosyncrasies of a musical judge — if I can see that he’s retired his pen to the corner of his desk and he’s leaned backwards, closing his eyes, then I know that he’s listening to the music. Thumbs up (unless, of course, he’s sleeping). On the other hand, if he’s avoiding eye contact and focusing on the curly scribbles of his writing, then it’s a no-go. Two thumbs down. Of course, there’s always exceptions (like a time when I walked into an audition with two very, very Russian piano judges whose main critique was that I moved too much when I played), but there’s always small patterns like these that pop up at nearly every audition I go through.

There’s a lot of feelings that come with not making it. The hurt claws at me; it gnaws at my insides; I try to rationalize it — maybe I forgot to play something; maybe I didn’t prepare enough. I can’t look at my piano without wincing. I hide all that audition music under the songs that I love to play. I make two lists. One list details my achievements, and the other details all the stupid things I’ve ever done. It’s the same process every time — the achievement list has things like my first piano concerto with an orchestra, my Louis Armstrong jazz award; the stupid list include all the auditions I forgot to practice for, that one chemistry lab that I set on fire and had to redo twice, the friends I lost when I joined the marching band, and finally, this audition I didn’t make. And every time, the stupid list is about three times longer than the achievement one.

But then I remember that this isn’t the first audition that didn’t go well. Actually, it’s probably one of very many auditions that will not go well. And I’m probably not the only one who’s staring at my instrument and wondering, “Why on earth did I do this to myself?”

I remember that I’m doing this to myself because I love my keys; I love the way it tingles under my fingertips at the touch of a dissonant chord; I love to spoil it with Chopin and Cole Porter and Schumann and Scott Joplin. Billy Joel knows it too –

I’ve come far
From the life I’ve strayed in
I’ve got scars
From those dives I’ve played in
Now I’m home
And I’m weary
In my bones
Every dreary one night stand
But my baby grand
Is coming home with me

Ever since this gig began
My baby grand’s
Been good to me

(Baby Grand/Billy Joel)

I’ve found that after things like this happen, my best releases lie in both music and in words. These words are usually written down on a loose sheet of paper, outlined several times with several different pens, and then crumbled and tossed into the trash bin. But I hope that as I share these words with you, you’ll find some release in them, too.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Baby Grand/Billy Joel & Ray Charles/The Essential Billy Joel

P.S. Please contribute to the Haiti Recovery Fund by visiting the Red Cross Website.