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

Being involved in many music programs as a high school student has its perks, but sometimes I find myself diving head first into weekends like these:

1. Saturday, 7:30 am: The SAT.

There’s nothing much to say about this one except for the fact that it pretty much rendered me useless for the rest of the day.

2. Saturday, 2-4 pm: CAP @ CalArts

I’ll elaborate further on my experience with this program next week, when we’ll be having our last class. But in a nutshell, I’m taking two classes out of the ten or so offered: Theory II/Composition and Jazz Ensemble. I took the composition class in hopes that it would help me with improvisation — but I’ve learned so much more than just that. I’d tried composing before, but this is the first time I’ve actually successfully started and finished a piece — I wrote it based on some of the ii-V7-I chords  in the Alice in Wonderland performed by Bill Evans (it’s my all-time favorite jazz ballad). On the other hand, I’ve taken this Jazz Ensemble class for about a year and a half with several different teachers (including Jon Armstrong) — this year, it’s James Lewis and Tina Raymond.

Currently we’re rehearsing Lady Bird, Alice in Wonderland, and a B-flat blues piece we wrote as a class. But sometimes James takes the liberty of sitting us down and teaching us “life lessons;” he’ll give us a short speech about how to be better musicians and better people in general — it’s often a humorously serious experience. This week it was about the importance of humility — in James’s opinion, one of the most important requirements of being a musician is having a sense of humility: “there’s no ‘there’ in music,” he says, “you’re never ‘there’…never think more of yourself than that.”

3. Saturday, 6:30 pm: SCVYO Concert @ COC Performing Arts Center

I’ve been involved with the SCVYO program for a little less than three years — I’m a firm believer in keeping a balance between jazz and classical (especially when I listen to someone like Hiromi Uehara). I got to play along with the orchestra in a Corelli double concerto. There’s definitely something comforting about having all the notes in front of you after being in front of play-what-sounds-right chord changes every morning. And there’s this sense of security in the fact that each orchestra part is like a cell of a living, breathing organism — each part isn’t much without the other.

4. Sunday, 9:30 am: West Ranch HS Jazz Band Concert @ Westfield Valencia Mall

That picture at the beginning of this post? Yup, I’m standing right next to Jeff Babko — he’s my jazz band director’s (Robert Babko) son. Hopefully my standing next to him allowed some of his amazing piano skills to rub off on me; I’m really depending on it. :)

Remember that combo I was talking about earlier? We finally got to perform for the first time — given that we only had one rehearsal to get Santa Claus is Coming to Town together, I think we did a pretty great job. The combo includes me on piano, Omer Benyamin on the tenor sax, Josef Staley on trombone, Diego Kiner on drums, and Brandon Canada on bass. (Watch it below! My solo starts 1:30.)

As always, thanks to Mr. Babko and everyone in the jazz band — they’re all the reason that I love jazz this much.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Give Me The Proof/Tower of Power/Urban Renewal

I recently sent in a self-recording for an All-California Jazz Band audition (check it out at CBDA.org) — it was the first time I’d ever done a recording for anything to do with jazz. Like any good musician, I waited until the weekend before the audition tapes were due to begin recording — because recording three short pieces is no biggie, right?

After nearly fourteen repetitions of the audition requirement’s “Samba” piece, I finally think I’ve got it. I turn around to press the stop button on the recorder and…yup, it’s out of battery.

And then when I finally get (what I think is) a good take of “Samba,” I go to listen to it on my computer. But there’s someone running the tap water in the background.

Yes, I was completely proven wrong. Recording these pieces took a good entire afternoon-plus-most-of-the-night — and after an examination from my jazz director — another frustrating evening with the piano and the recorder. I think the biggest thing I learned was the painful difference between a CD audition and a live audition — in a live audition, it’s a lot more holistic; the judge can physically see you in person, watch you move, watch you play; a couple mistakes here and there can be made up for by some (hopefully) fantastic improvisation later in the audition. But while you’re recording, not only are you haunted by the image of a few completely disgusted judges listening to your feedback-y CD, you realize that every time you see that red recording button light up, your fingers turn to mush. (I tried hiding the recorder; it didn’t help too much.)

I did end up finishing the CD after countless hours of this — next time, I’m definitely doing it much earlier. This coming February I’ll be auditioning for the All-Southern-California Jazz band, which’ll be a live audition in Westlake; wish me luck!

Speaking of which, have you guys ever practiced with Aebersolds? I never really used them until I started working with the CalArts CAP program this year — one of my instructors, drummer Tina Raymond, seems to have collected nearly all of his albums; thanks to her, I’ve got a lot more access to his books. They’re definitely just as frustrating as recording a CD — when you’re playing with this pre-recorded rhythm section, you’ve got no wiggle room, no chance to slow down or speed up, and very little room to make even small mistakes — initially, the chords seem to rapidly fly by. But hey, it’s a good thing — after you get a feel of a B-flat Blues or a Lady Bird rhythm track, it really helps you out in regards to keeping time and developing your ideas in a restricted amount of time. So when it comes to actually playing with a live rhythm section, you’ve got a way better understanding of the chord changes — it’s helped me get over the fear of hearing the chord changes fly by unacknowledged, putting my focus on developing a melodic solo instead.

Plus, the Aebersold books have really sweet vintage-y looking covers.

Anyways, one of the SCSBOA Honor Jazz band requirements is to be able to play along with the standard, “What Is This Thing Called Love?” (from the book pictured here).  Since I’m not too familiar with it, I’ve been collecting several recordings of it so I can get to know it a little better. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. What Is This Thing Called Love/Art Pepper/Modern Art: The Complete Art Pepper Recordings V2
2. What Is This Thing Called Love/Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette/Whisper Not (Live in Paris 1999)
3. What Is This Thing Called Love/Wynton Marsalis/Standard Time, V2 — Intimacy Calling

I found this when I was buying a track from the Whisper Not album — did you know Jarrett had a ‘fro back in the day?

This is totally different from my current mental picture of him. (On a side note, don’t you just love it when he hums along with his solos in every recording he releases? I do.):

So since I’ve only got a list of three What Is This Thing Called Love, what recordings of this standard do you recommend? Let me know in the comments or @thejazzpost. I’ll see if I can find anything in the January Downbeat I just got today in jazz class. :)

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Yesterdays/Act Your Age/Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band

For Gordon Goodwin, it was probably just another solo. But for me, I couldn’t fully grasp it — I was sitting on the same bench as him, watching him improvise on the keys of the old upright Yamaha that I play every morning. I was balancing myself on the edge of the bench so I wouldn’t get in his way (Goodwin seems to like the upper register on the piano) — but at the same time, I was leaning in as close as I possibly could, hoping some of his musicality would rub off on me.

Great jazz piano solos are things that I only see on stage and hear in recordings. So being able to sit right next to a legend play the solo that I’d been working on for ages — let alone have him help me with it — was absolutely insane.

Another reason to be grateful for living in Los Angeles: we had a song written for us by Gordon Goodwin (commissioned by our principal, Bob Vincent — isn’t it fantastic to have a music major for a principal?) entitled Principal of the Thing. Since my jazz director, Bob Babko, knows Goodwin, we had a chance to work with him for about an hour and a half on playing his composition. (Even though we’re definitely not the Phat Band, it still secretly kind of felt like we were.)

Some of Goodwin’s advice:

1. Empty space in a solo is just as important as playing a melody.
2. Other ideas for soloing: blues, chromatic, holding notes, playing a melody, and of course, leaving space.
3. You’ll get a better understanding of harmony if you figure it out on the piano.
4. Don’t bring your personal issues into your playing — you can’t afford to think about extraneous things when you play.
5. There’s always a few places in a composition that show the full maturity of the band — bring those places out.
6. Be proud of being a band geek. :)

There were so many other great tips Goodwin gave us, but I’m still trying to get over the fact that I was sitting on the same piano bench as he was improvising. It’s incredible, isn’t it?

Principal of the Thing will most likely be part of the CD our band makes in our first professional recording session in the spring — I’m definitely looking forward to sharing it with you soon.

Check out Gordon Goodwin and the Big Phat Band at www.bigphatband.com.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Alice in Wonderland/Bill Evans/Sunday at the Village Vanguard

If you haven’t got the slightest idea what I’m talking about, check out yesterday’s post to see what’s been happening with the West Ranch High School jazz band.

Today we opened the Real Book to Erroll Garner’s Misty:

It’s one of those romantic sitting-in-a-bar-contemplating-life tunes. This recording’s got a bit of a classical touch with the whole cadenza-esque bit at the end, don’t you think?

We also checked out  My Favorite Things – check out Coltrane’s recording of it if you haven’t yet; it’s genius. (Oh, and speaking of Coltrane’s genius, here’s an interesting post by Peter Hum of jazzblog.ca calling out someone who thinks a bit differently.)

When I played this back in the jazz room I was imagining a softer, whispery tenor sax melody — but I guess Coltrane’s always full of surprises. It’s so moving, though: the juxtaposition between this floaty melody and the sharp sound of the soprano sax. (But too bad whenever I hear soprano sax I think of Kenny G and his cascading Tarzan mane.) Oh, and they throw in Eric Dolphy on the flute to stir things up even more.  And adding in McCoy Tyner on the keys really ties it all together for me.

In the midst of playing My Favorite Things with my friend, Omer (donning the pink cast here), I discovered that my jazz teacher can play the bass. Woah. He joined in spontaneously on upright bass while we played — we both know that he plays trombone and piano (and he’s pretty darn good at the guitar as well) — but he plays bass, too?

I seriously have the coolest jazz teacher in the world. (Maybe if he reads this I’ll get a really great grade in the class. Just kidding.)

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Devil May Care/Diana Krall/When I Look in Your Eyes

Back in the jazz room at West Ranch High School I’m lucky enough to have these three things: a trendy Yamaha keyboard (a similar one to the Motif model), a jazz band-exclusive standup Yamaha piano (unfortunately, the choir has already claimed the baby grand), and the fifth-edition Real Book 1 & 2.

But the keyboard’s got a massive amount of buttons that I’m still yet to figure out, and the acoustic piano — even with the lid up — can’t really be heard when the drums are playing.

This Real Book, however, has been one of the biggest facilitators in my exploration of the jazz world.

A bit about our jazz band — we’re the advanced band of the two jazz bands at West Ranch High School (otherwise known as the West Ranch High School Studio A Jazz Band) and we practice every day in the wee hours of the morning. At least that’s what 7:00 in the morning is for me. But having jazz as a first period is really nice in the fact that I’m waking up it every morning — even if it means blindly fumbling through blues warm-ups and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes at the same time.

It’s pretty difficult to describe my jazz teacher in words — he’s one of those sage, older teachers who are always, always right. And he’s actually always right, too. You’ll see what I mean when we get into jazz competition season in the spring.

Anyways, I just wanted to tell you about something kind of amusing that’s been going on this week in jazz class:

I have this habit of messing around with the Real Book after class (it’s still pretty early in the morning and the room’s always nice and quiet) — I either look in the table of contents for a song or I flip open to a random page and try to read it. It’s really soothing, especially right before I dive into AP Calculus the next period.

But yesterday the Real Book was already opened up to Alice in Wonderland, a wonderful tune on Bill Evans’ Sunday at the Village Vanguard album.

It’s such a pretty tune; I’ve got a huge soft spot for two-five-one-ish ballads like these. And I’ve been sitting at the piano for ages trying to figure out Evans’ chords on this recording. I know there’s transcriptions out there, but having someone else do the transcriptions for me kind of feels like cheating to me — I dunno, it’s a weird conscience thing.

Usually the room’s pretty empty — my jazz teacher leaves for his office in the next room, and there’s only a few musicians like me hanging around and practicing some music. But this time, my jazz teacher stayed and listened for a bit — and when I finished, he told me that since he knew I usually played the first thing I saw in the Real Book, he’d opened it up beforehand to Alice in Wonderland to see what I’d do.

This was yesterday — I think now he’s going to make his own habit of opening up the Real Book to what he wants to hear me play. And hey, I think I’m right — today it was open to Lady Bird:

What do you think he’s going to pick tomorrow?

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: In a Sentimental Mood/Duke Ellington and John Coltrane/Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (We’re playing a tenor feature arrangement of this and it’s super lovely — I’m looking forward to posting a video of it soon.)

P.S. Thanks to A Blog Supreme for mentioning thejazzpost –  be sure to check out other thoughts on today’s jazz at this blog here.

So now that my computer’s finished its anti-internet rebellion, I can finally show you some of the new jazz that the West Ranch High School Studio A Jazz Band played in the past few weeks. Our lineup included How High the Moon, Out of the Doghouse, and Ride the Nightbeast. Here we’re performing the second tune of our set:

This is from our performance last night at West Ranch High School’s Back-to-School Night — be sure to watch for more of our performances on thejazzpost’s Youtube channel.

On the same note, my friend Omer (pictured here with the blinding neon-pink cast) and I are working on establishing West Ranch’s first jazz combos. Although it’s only been about three weeks into school, we’ve got about three tentative combos set up and we’re already beginning to rehearse — we’ve played around with tunes like Blue Monk, Afro Blue, and All the Things You Are.

Any ideas for what we should play? (All of our combos have a drumset+bass+piano rhythm section plus a few horns.)

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Ain’t Misbehavin’/Fats Waller/Jazz Piano Anthology – In the Beginning