After having my senior recital and performing my last show with the CCM Jazz Orchestra, I'm left with an open schedule. A schedule that I now must fill. I have the natural urge to wait but if I don't start being a bandleader now, there's no evidence that I ever will. If I only had a year to live, I wouldn't wait. So why should I wait now? Time to hold myself accoutable.
-AGD
Got a fun gig coming up. First higher heights gig in a bit. After some discussion, we decided that we want to perform a memorized set of music. While we haven't decided on the tunes, I'm looking forward to playing in a group like that. Recently, I've been thinking about how some big bands would play their music memorized. I can't imagine how tight that would feel. Especially with a group like that. There has to be some level of musicality that is only unlocked with that much internalization. I'm just very…
Read moreWhile I have yet to get the video/audio, I just recently held my undergraduate senior recital. While it wasn't perfect, I feel satisfied with how it went. It makes me want to do more bandleading, as I rarely flex that muscle. I found that I'm not the best at running a rehearsal. It's hard to know when you need to tell people they played something wrong or just trust that they will correct it. Overall though, I could benefit from having a better mental picture of what I want arrangements to sound like. That…
Read moreA few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to collaborate on a big band arrangement with my friend and skilled singer Dan Klimko. Him and some of his friends had originally got in-touch with me concerning an Off-CCM Cabaret, which would eventually be called “Jazz On Broadway”. One of the arrangements I wrote for the show was a version of Frank Loesser's “I've Never Been in Love Before” featuring Dan on vocals. A few months later, he reached out to me asking for some help getting a big band together to play some…
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