Jazz Band: Concert

Tonight was the High School Fall Concert for ISK's choir, HS band, and Jazz Band. We've spent the past couple of months preparing pieces for this concert, including: Blue Bossa arr. by Mark Taylor, Locked Out of Heaven arr. by Paul Murtha, and What's Your Poblano? by Mike Collins-Dowden.

There were several challenges leading up to this performance. For example, because the meetings are before school on Wednesdays and Fridays, several people are unable to make most meetings, which severely limits what we are able to accomplish during our practices. Unfortunately, this can't be helped because of people's busy schedules, so a lot of our communication occurs on the Facebook group page and the pieces must be practiced individually at home. Finding the time to practice was also a struggle. My heavy work load prevents me from devoting a lot of time to practicing the clarinet, but I try to devote at least 20 minutes to practice every few days. Also, because Jazz Band is only able to meet twice a week, there's a limited time available to cover fairly advanced pieces, and Mr. Ligon decided to cut out a piece because we weren't ready to perform it. I found Blue Bossa a particularly difficult piece as well because of its funky rhythms and rapid shifts in octaves, and I feel that we could have done a more refined job if we had a few more practices. All in all, though, I believe our performance went fairly well. It went by quickly because we only performed three pieces, but I enjoyed being on stage and sharing my passion for music with the other band members.

I find Jazz Band particularly challenging to me because I am normally not comfortable performing in front of people, especially when it comes to improvisation or challenging pieces. I know during the past practices I have kept to myself and shied away from any opportunities of improvisation or solos, so I hope to build up the self-confidence to grab those opportunities one day. 

Now that the Fall Concert is over, we will be performing Christmas-themed pieces at Village Market on December 12th. This leaves us with only a couple weeks to prepare them, but I'm looking forward to the early-morning meetings before the mayhem of semester exams begin.