John Guari Graduate Recital. April 23, 2009. Kenton Hall, UNT College of Music. 8:00PM

All tunes written or arranged by John Guari

No Hesitation, quintet. Solos: John Guari (trumpet), Sylvester Onyejiaka (tenor)

Lilacs and Landmines, nonet. Solos: Adam Hutcheson (alto), Sylvester Onyejiaka (tenor)

Blue Lobster, jazz trombone ensemble. Solo: Nick Wlodarczyk

Someone To Watch Over Me (Gershwin/Gershwin arr. John Guari), a capella vocal. Solo: Melissa McMillan

Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Dylan arr. John Guari), big band. Solos: Tatiana Mayfield (Vocals), Thomas Eby (Trumpet)

Rifts, big band. Solos: Evan Weiss (trumpet) and Kelyn Crapp (Guitar)

November, big band. Solo: Brian Girley (alto)

Architect Flagmen, big band. Solos: Sylvester Onyejiaka (tenor), Kelyn Crapp (guitar)

This is now linked on the music page as well

I have the uncompressed .aiff files of my graduate recital. As soon as I convert them to a smaller size (mp3), I’ll post them to this site. It was a great night and there was music made that I’m really proud of. Videos on youtube will also be put up, once I do all the technical stuff.

I’m in New York right now for a week. Hanging out and seeing shows. I saw the Le Boeuf Brothers at the Jazz Gallery last night.

Here’s a live video of Tatiana Mayfield and The Two O’Clock Lab Band playing my arrangement of “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.” It’ll be performed on my Grad Recital, which is this Thursday at 8:00PM in Kenton Hall on the UNT Campus. Quality recordings of that night will be available here when I receive and upload them.

I have my grad school orals on Monday, as well as a lot of Finale related business. This blog has a chance of becoming something actually interesting to read, but not until I’m done with school. Ugh.

My Graduate Recital is on April 23rd in Kenton Hall in the UNT College of Music Building. Recordings will be made and posted when I have them.

After a 16.5 hour drive from Minnesota, I’ve arrived back in Denton for my final semester. There were exciting events after the new year. I rehearsed once more with the Nova Contemporary Jazz Orchestra and had a rehearsal and performance with the Stan Bann Big Band. I also took a trip with Siri to Chicago. I walked around DePaul a little bit and met with Bob Lark to say hello and introduce myself. Siri and I caught a show at the Second City, which was hilarious. There wasn’t enough time in the trip to see any music, but perhaps next time, there will be.

I’ve only been back in Minnesota for a few days, and it has already been a most musical experience. I sat in on a rehearsal with the Nova Contemporary Jazz Orchestra. I’ll be seeing them at O’Gara’s in St. Paul tonight (Tuesday) and quite possibly sitting in a few tunes. They’ll be playing quite a few Dan Cavanagh tunes. I rehearsed a couple of them with the band and thought they were pretty cool!

I also brought in three of my own charts. They were read to positive responses, which made me happy. The group has 4 trumpets and 4 trombones as well as no guitar player. I may revise my charts someday to better suit that instrumentation instead of the 19-piece Kenton style monstrosities we have at UNT. I moved some guitar solos to other instruments and had the bones play parts 1, 2, 3 and 5.

After that rehearsal, I went back to St. Paul to see Happy Apple play at the Artist’s Quarter. Both sets were great and the Dave King banter was in top form. Comical highlights include King calling the soprano sax “the money stick” and the band playing about 15 seconds of “The Cult of Personality” by Living Colour (which would be a bitchin’ tune to play in any circumstance). I also ran into some musician friends who I hadn’t seen for years. This jazz is a small world.

After the Christmas festivities at home, I’ll be seeing the Bad Plus at 9:30 next Sunday. I always forget to buy tickets early, so the seats are mezzanine level and quasi centered. Next year I’ll hop on the tickets early and get a table down by the stage. The Bad Plus brought it last Christmas and they’ll bring it this one too for sure.

This coming Wednesday, September 10, I’m playing at the UNT Syndicate with the 3 O’Clock Lab Band. We’re playing some pretty nuts charts, including an arrangement of Elvin Jones’s “Three Card Molly” and a less often heard arrangement of “Frame For the Blues.”

Roommate Betsy told me that I may have some more gigs at Hector’s starting next week. I’ve yet to get confirmation on this, but it looks promising.

I’m in Minnesota for a short while, then it’s back to Texas in order to gear up for fall auditions and the school year. Also, I anticipate to be recording some original pop/rock tunes when I get home.

Last Thursday, I subbed for my roommate Betsy playing solo piano at Hector’s on Henderson, a fancy restaurant in Dallas. She usually plays and sings, but I just played piano. I did a mix of standards and well known pop tunes. I got a few requests for Elton John and Billy Joel, which is fine, because I knew both the tunes (”Tiny Dancer” and “New York State of Mind.”)

This coming year, I’m going to try to focus in on practicing for these kinds of gigs, as they are pretty good. Solo piano offers you a lot of freedom to do what you want. It’s a little lonely playing without other folks, but the independence allows me to take such gigs on short notice, without having to organize a group of people. Also, it’s easier to get weekday gigs on solo piano rather than a larger group.

I played most of the gig from memory, only needing a list of tunes and their keys. I read some of the standards out of the real book. Ideally, I’d like to be able to do a whole show with just a list, and possibly add singing to it. That will take some work, but will probably be worth it. I don’t know where I’m going to move to once I graduate, but I want to be able to hit the ground running and go out and hustle some gigs, both on trumpet and piano.

Okay, so it hasn’t been exactly a year, but I haven’t written in a blog for a while.  The blogs I used to write were overly personal and sort of sloppy. I think I’ll try to make this one a mostly music related. That probably won’t be too difficult a transition, seeing as a good percentage of my old posts were about music anyway. I’ll just try and minimize the amount of “24 is the greatest TV show known to man” type posts and focus more on thoughts on music concepts, recordings and performances that interest me, as well as ruminations on my transition from student musician to professional musician.

My friend Q will be designing me a bitchen new website. I have no doubt that it will look awesome. A lot of my friends who are registering their own domain names are opting for the popular Dynamod Web Portals. These generally look good and do their job well, but I don’t think they are for me. That my friends are using Dynamod and not just Myspace Music, is a fact to be applauded. Sometimes you have to dress for success.

The completion of my last final exam this coming Wednesday will mark the end of my first of two years of grad school at UNT. Thursday will be my first rock music performance since the dissolution of my old band, Chestnut House. My band will now consist of me and members of The Grasshopper’s Dying Words, who will also be playing the show. The Grasshopper’s Dying Words is an amazing band led by ridiculously talented and soon-to-be-degree-holding multi-instrumentalist and composer Brian Stark. I would advertise this event, but it’s doubtful anyone will know of this blog’s existence in the next few days. For posterity’s sake, the show is at 9PM this Thursday, May 8th at Art Six Coffee House in Denton, TX.