http://johnguari.com/music/novemberclip-lab09.mp3
I decided to splice up this clip to give a taste of what my chart “November” sounds like on Lab 2009. Previously I only had the version from my Graduate Recital up. Buy the album if you please!
My composition, “November” is on Lab 2009.
“Lab 2009″ by the UNT One O’Clock Lab Band, directed by Steve Wiest, has received Grammy nominations in these two categories:
- Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album
- Best Instrumental Composition (for “Ice-Nine” by Steve Wiest)
Hello to my threes of readers.
This post is me putting up links to mp3s of a BUNCH of music that I haven’t gotten around to uploading. I’ll copy this to the recordings page. Most of these are one or two-takes recorded and edited with bare bones audio software (Garageband).
An epic chart I wrote and revised last year. This is a 2nd reading. The tune with kinks worked out and face melting licks having been shedded will close my Grad Recital, which is Thursday, April 23rd at 8:00PM in Kenton Hall on the UNT College of Music Campus.
This is a recording from a performance by the Three O’Clock Lab Band featuring Melissa McMillan on vocals. This was meant to be Basie-ish, complete with stolen riffs.
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
Another arrangement for Vocalist and Big Band on one of my favorite Bob Dylan tunes. Tatiana Mayfield is singing on this recording.
A vocal jazz ensemble arrangement with accompaniment. Rhythm and vocal tracks were recorded separately and combined.
My first a capella vocal jazz arrangement. Pretty chords.
Scant posting is my pattern, but I’ve been filling in the gaps of my musical listening.
On the classical side, I’ve listened to Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, Holst’s Planets and Copland’s Rodeo. These pieces are about as well known as classical rep gets, and I had listened to portions of them, but not the whole things in their entireties.
On the jazz side, I’ve discovered the joys of Stan Kenton’s Portraits on Standards. We played it last week in the Three O’Clock Lab Band (more on that later). Also John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman is of course superb and essential. Lastly, I finally picked up Snarky Puppy’s latest album, Bring Us the Bright. It’s vastly different from their last record, which was vastly different than the one before that. It’s amoebic music, through and through. Snarky Puppy can exist as a quartet/quintet or have as many as a dozen or more people onstage, and the various styles mash and intermingle with each other. It’s pretty cool stuff.
I’m well into my final semester at UNT. I’m back in the Three O’Clock Lab Band, and excited to be there. The level of musicianship is very high in all sections and we can put stuff together quickly. I’m only taking Lab Band and doubling up on jazz composition lessons this semester, but I always feel like I could use more time. Deadlines are a good thing though, as they make you just cut the crap and do things.
Speaking of which, I should probably hop back on Finale now.
I’ve been thinking about who the most important people in my musical life have been.
I recently visited my home of Minnesota and spent some time with my high school trumpet teacher Brad Shermock. I began taking lessons with him during my junior year of high school. It was through him that I first learned about the UNT Jazz Program. He did his undergrad there in the late 80s and early 90s and played 2nd trumpet on the album The Translucent Two by the UNT Two O’Clock Lab band. He stressed trumpet fundamentals and we rarely (if ever) worked explicitly on playing in the jazz styles. Regardless, he made sure to warn me that UNT is an easy school to go to, but a hard school to stay at.
We hung out for about 4 hours, and I could’ve hung out for 4 more, but I was meeting some friends in St. Paul. Talking with him during my trips home usually encourages and re-energizes me about music. I’m ready for my sixth and final year at UNT, after which I’ll receive my Master’s in Jazz Composition.
So Brad is one mentor in my life, the second is Phil Holm. I think I’ll collect my thoughts and write about him soon.
Steely Dan is coming to the Nokia Theater in Grand Prairie on August 21, and (assuming the ticket price isn’t outrageous), I will be going. I took a look at who the band is for this tour, and it’s (of course) filled with heavy, heavy players.
A name I immediately recognized was Keith Carlock’s, whose band Rudder I’ve seen a few times. He’s incredibly energetic and is pretty influential among the young drumming crowd, even though he is still young himself.
I also recognized the names of trombonist Jim Pugh and saxophonist Walt Weiskopf. Jim visited UNT last fall for some master classes and the inaugural performance of the U-Tubes. Steve Wiest and I listened to some of Walt’s nonet music during composition lessons this past spring.
Steely Dan is one of those groups that I start appreciating way too late. Only in the past couple years have I really gotten into them, and I still haven’t seriously listened to either of the Donald Fagen albums, the Walter Becker album, or Steely Dan past Gaucho. Almost everything on the Citizen Steely Dan Boxset I’m at least slightly familiar with (if not deeply love). I need to step up my listening and get those albums on rotation.
I spent some time today helping Lauren Hendrix prepare for her Graduate Oral exam. This is basically where you go into a room with three professors and they ask you to tell them all about jazz. They will also expect you to have a fairly extensive knowledge of your concentration. As a bass player, Lauren has been cramming her brain full of jazz bass information.
She and I talked about how strange the gaps in our knowledge can be. For instance, at this very moment in time, I could tell you more about the first Miles Davis Quintet than the second. I know (hopefully) a lot about the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, but couldn’t tell you very much about the Mingus Big Band.
My trumpet teacher from my high school years, Brad Shermock, told me not to let people try and insult me for not having heard a record or not knowing the names of all the players. It is good to know these things, but everyone’s experience is different. Last fall in Dr. Murphy’s graduate jazz history course, we talked about the difficulty in establishing a true jazz canon. There are so many levels of “importance” that one can ascribe to any given figure. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are two artists that everyone, even people with even a cursory knowledge of jazz will deem important. Of course, if you were a stupid person that wants to argue just to argue, I suppose you could even dispute those two, but you’d be wrong. After them and a few others, it’s pretty much impossible to judge importance and relevance objectively.
I have been and will continue to slowly fill in these gaps, so that my knowledge of jazz will become more comprehensive. Specifically, I need to listen to more of the second Miles Davis Quintet and the offshoots from that group: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. All of these guys are too important for me to continuing not knowing that much about them.