Thanks Cathy! Honestly, I don't know why the audience likes us. I play simpler stuff than what gets posted here. But I guess it's the bartender that casts the biggest vote

Good stuff JW, good stuff.
So every friday night until March?

ok, learn 2 tunes:
- Happy Birthday. Some nice lady will tell you it's girls night, it's the girlfriend's birthday, could you please play it.
- Piano Man. It's a matter a time until a bunch of girls come shouting "pianist play piano man"


On a different note, I'll tell you a story that happened last week.
We played an airport lounge. Airport crowds are interesting because they're far from home, chat easily with strangers, and get drunk on a per diem.
We're playing the 2nd shift, 9 to midnight. Turns out that the evening we were hired for was a party organized by a cancer foundation. Some lady did introductions and announced one guy, the main donor, who's name I could not pick up, but who apparently had won 3 Grammies. Yikes.
That guy turned out to be a great audience, cheering on each solo, and often on cool lines we'd do.

Anyway, towards 11.30, he says. Hang on, I'll be right back. Comes back down with an alto, says, y'all haven't played many ballads tonight, let's do one. Someone had just requested Misty, so I said "Misty".
He's like, we'll, I don't know the melody but ok, let's improvise.
What happened after that is a great mystery. We started playing some changes that seemed like a long turnaround in Eb, vaguely related to Misty, at a ballad tempo. After maybe 32 bars, we double time it, and so we're starting to play a good tempo, perhaps 160.
At which points he says "hey, can we double time?"
And before you know it, he's blowing scales up and down and notes I've never heard of at a solid 300+ tempo. The drummer's ok, the bass and I someone stick to this improvised form... and the dude then sits and lets us solo. Thanks!

That was quite fun.

My biggest mistake was to ask a dude to take pics of us, but the guy was totally blasted by that time, and I failed to factor that in... Still, here we are:

Thanks Knotty. No it's monthly but each event is different. Mostly it's Fridays and they promote us at every event and the place was packed. The crowd was quieter this time. More attentive than in the prior recording. We play our music here, no requests. It's jazz only and more like a concert with 2 sets. We do alter the music more based on the last response. So this time it was more vocals and more blues.

I wish I made a recording but I think I sounded more confident this time around. No cluttered comping where I step on the soloist, that kind of thing. I have my teacher listen to our recordings and then I had worked on cleaning up my comping. So I'm sure that helped.

Now except for the vocalist (and I), the rest of the band are all professional (sax, bass, drums). They're hired guns so they're pretty solid. I took out the Guitar player.

But even as experienced as they are, Blue in Green was a struggle. And when they get lost, I get lost.

----------------

That was a fabulous story Knotty! Now who is this unknown grammy winner? It's probably someone we know. That's an amazing experience. It's also amazing you're taking all these gigs. An Airport lounge for a gig? So the audience kept changing as people caught their flights? Over here, they don't let you in the airport unless you have tickets.

So go on the net and look for pics of Grammy winning sax players and let us know

>> I wish I made a recording but I think I sounded more confident this time around.
I believe that.

>> Now who is this unknown grammy winner? It's probably someone we know.
I doubt it. I think he's a producer of some sort of rock music, or something like that. The name didn't ring a bell. Plus she said he was grammy after she said the name so I wasn't really paying attention.

>> An Airport lounge for a gig?
It's way outside the airport. People stay at the hotel at night. We had this party going on, travelers, and -evidently- a prom. Mixed crowd

>> So go on the net and look for pics of Grammy winning sax players and let us know smile
I'm pretty good at digging stuff on the web, but no luck. I even know the parents died of cancer.

So how often do you gig now Knotty?

For me with Jams, it's weekly now. It can get overwhelming since I don't do this for a living. You sound like you're occupied with more activity.

>> So how often do you gig now Knotty?
We did a couple of free gigs and few non-free one in the last month or two. Seems like everyone wants to play out now so we're getting busy. It takes 2-3 evenings a week. But what else am I gonna do ?
I'm working on getting some good lucrative gigs. Someone said on a thread that DC is starving for Jazz, and I think he is right. We'll see.

>>For me with Jams, it's weekly now. It can get overwhelming since I don't do this for a living. You sound like you're occupied with more activity.
who's hosting the jam? the bass player?

Jams - I'm the host. I ran my first jam last Monday and it was great. Good players showed up and the learning players were encouraged. But I'm not doing it at my house so there's no size limits.

This will end up being a 2-3 times a month thing and with better players, it's really quite fun. The networking is really good since you always have a pool of people to play with. Lots of pianists. We had 4 last time. So we're having a "live" version of the jazz threads. Everyone has been really cool. Half the people are music teachers

Jazz Gigs - L.A. is not starving for jazz. It's starving for an audience (so I'm told). You know others have posted here about the jazz gigs being gone. But I'm really suprised that the gigs can be found and the audience exists. But you have to go to them. They don't want to go to you. The days of visiting a nightclub for a night is long gone it seems. But if you offer to play where people already gather, it works out.

In my case, what I did was an experiment. The audience is not jazz specific and so we do wonder how they will receive us (the crowd is older). But I was surprised. I'm finding that a lot of people in the 50-60 range really like jazz, especially a milder version. Standards seem to go well with them. As long as they find something recognizable (for part of the time), they really like it. Jazz is also not loud so it's possible to have a conversation while watching.


Now I'm not particularly interested in just "gigs". I'm turning some down. I don't like playing casuals and I'd rather jam than do that. So I do set a limit to what I'm willing to do.

The growing audience size (it was probably over a hundred last night at the peak), and their increasing consumption of alchohol must mean something is working out for them.

So as a counterpoint to Rostosky's "I Hate Jazz", apparently there are lots of people that think otherwise in the general population. I think if jazz is reachable (solos not too long and full of melodic content), they seem to react well. If what I'm doing is an indication, I think we're adding people to the fold.

>> Jams - I'm the host. I ran my first jam last Monday and it was great. Good players showed up and the learning players were encouraged. But I'm not doing it at my house so there's no size limits.

I'm curious now. Are you posting ads somewhere and renting a storage place or something? Someone brings a drum set and you bring keyboard + amp ?

>>I don't like playing casuals and I'd rather jam than do that.
To me, casuals and jams are kind of the same thing, except everyone needs to bring the gear.

There's an audience for Jazz, for sure.

Good to hear stuff's happening for you. All the hard work (fun) is paying off.

Knotty, the musicians are from a list from the prior jam host so I just took over. At the moment the jams are moveable and I'm booking locations on a case by case basis (music stores, etc.)

So there's a big list of players that want to jam and there's a group that like's to attend every single one. Finding the players is easy. I could not have done it on my own but the prior host basically passed the list to me. It's a mix of levels. The rhythm section (bass + drums) is really solid so we have a nice core.

The only difference in casuals vs. the concerts that I do is that I don't get influenced by requests and such. No individual is payng the bill (the facility is). So there's a bit of independence.

Jams are a little rougher but they're great for experimentation. I typically try out new tunes at a jam and will likely mess up. I've taken a little responsibility to the help the less skilled to raise their skill level. This seems to get everyone excited.

Was it Jeff Coffin?

No. Played Alto, African american, tatoos on next.

Hey guys, at the last gig, 'All Blues' was quite a hit and high energy so perhaps you can all pass ideas for groove-based high energy tunes.

Two I'm adding for next time are 'Mr. PC' and 'Cantaloupe'. These are pretty uptempo so it should really get the mood up.

What else? Modal stuff is better so there's time to build a groove. For modal, I'll also add Footprints though the tempo is pretty moderate.

People like a good slow blues.
Work Song.
Killer Joe.

I already do so many vocalist Blues so I'm over "Blued".

So now I need a Groove tune.

Mercy, mercy, mercy
Canteloupe (sp?) Island
both groovy and pretty easy to listen to.

Moanin'
So What

I'm already practicing Canteloupe. I really like the energy that Herbie brings to it.

Keep 'em coming. Great ideas!

Talking about Blues...

My vocalist does Blues in Eb so it takes more thinking than before. I can play Bb and F blues with my eyes closed. Then my drummer suggested 'Mr. Day' in F#...Never ending woodshedding...darn.

Why would a drummer suggest a key for a tune? Is he playing the timpani or something? Also, what is 'Mr. Day?' I've never heard of it.

Mr. Day - Coltrane F# Blues. I think that's the standard key for it. Yeah that's a good question, maybe there are licks specific to Sax or bass? Don't know.

But I did choose to add Mr. PC so that's another Coltrane tune.

BTW - the last tune I decided to play was Windows. There was considerable debate because the bass player said "I don't get the tune", and the sax said "It's Chick so it's not going to make sense"...but the Drummer and I voted to go with it.

Well now I realize that there are two sets of changes to Windows and I was playing it in B and the Sax was playing in the Bb. It truly sounded outside...The worst musical moment of my life ended when the sax solo ended. Not a single note belonged to the key.

The audience probably said -- "sounds like jazz"

But rather than panic, the Sax player said, when you've screwed up, DO IT TWICE. LOL.

I warned you earlier about Windows :-). People play it in 2 keys, because in the old fakebook, it was in Bb. So many have it this way.
And so usually it just gets skipped for simplicity's sake.

Other Tune:
Mr Magic. Can give a nice funky beat.

We all have IPhones/Ipads so that' how we were calling the tunes. So in theory, it's all in the same key in the app. Well at least I didn't screw up though playing it at 200bpm was a little manic.

We had another interesting event. We were playing a tune for the vocalist called "Indian Summer" but the vocalist sang the tune in the wrong key. So she was out of tune. Now I just calmly let her know and she stopped after 4 bars and we went directly to solos. None of us knew the tune so we didn't know the head. No big deal. The first 4 bars were quickly forgotten and we ended the tune without a head as well. Just a couple of short solos and we were done. That's quite a recovery

I don't think the audience ever figured it out. I think they figured it was just some obscure tune and they didn't recognize the melody.

what did you do for intro on indian summer ?

Great fun reading about your foray into the world of live performing JW.

At my trios gig last Friday I pulled out Windows, handed it to the guys and said: -"let's play."
Blank faces . . .
After a looong drawn out piano intro we stumbled a bit, I goofed here and there, the bassist occasionally swore behind my back, and the drummer went "oh, it's 3/4. or is it???".
Kept us on our toes . . .

http://www.box.net/shared/h4s6cyrgi0

We played the first 4 bars as a vamp...

I encounter some people who can't hear rootless voicings.

I'm discovering a lot of ballads that sound great in double time feel (Latin or swing). Very modern sounding...

The ones that crossed my radar are Soul Eyes, Naima, Here That Rainy Day. I heard these on the radio. I suppose they sound a little bit like smooth jazz when done that way but the the first two have really interesting harmonies.

LOL. Sounds similar to the grumbling on my end!

That was a very beautiful laid back version. Very nice! I might try it like that too. You had some really nice voicings/reharms there, perhaps you'd like to notate?

I'll have my band members listen to this if you don't mind. I think they'll be surprised at the different approach here.

Now my bass player grumbled (he's never played this before) but he soloed on it and sounded good. So hopefully it made up for the outside/wrong key sax solo.

I try to pass the tunes to the band early on but they don't really want to learn a new tune. They just want to play it when it's in front of their face. Good thing they're good enough to do that.

Naima is a really cool tune. Even on solo piano, the harmonies are just exquisite. This has to be my new favorite.

anything from this Coltrane era is amazing. Try Central Park West

How about Impressions? Coltrane has several versions of it, and McCoy Tyner does fantastic things with the tune on his version. Fine thing for a beginner like me is that the tune has only two chords, so there is a fine opportunity to try out chord voicings, and use of the left hand. McCoy Tyner does a nice job with that.