Make it Shine!

Great job at practice last night. We got a lot of work done of the kind which pays off in the long run. Fixing the little lines, the hits, the fanfares. In Malaguena trumpets have those huge perfect fifth fanfares. They're so easy to pull out of tune and to destroy by reckless timing or attacks. Last night was the best we all heard that part. Precision, precision, precision. If five trumpets (and it makes sense why there's an odd number of trumpets for that piece) can balance correctly, hit the notes with absolute precision and be in tune, there will be no better trumpet section playing anything in this area.

We have to push the tempo and stay on top of it. Samba Ti Kaye (last night) was the best we'd heard it from all the practices, and it was because of a decent amount of cleaning throughout, especially meas. 108, and because of the control of the tempo by pushing it. Now we just have to cut the volume and add back in the dynamics. The rest is there, though.

Ride the Wind is pushing the tempo, but it's also phrasing. There's a lot of room to experiment with this piece - it's a new one, it's the original version. I really like what we did dynamically in creating huge "phrase sweeps" (that's the only way I can describe it) that dominate; that's really the essence of the piece. The way the piece is structured - it's so lyrical. It's really a gem and probably will be played a lot in the coming years as it gets ordered and has more performances.

The First Circle we will be working on again next week since we did a lot of cleaning with the other charts next week. Listen to the recording(s) of First Circle. Apply the work done last night, the precision and control, while you practice The First Circle. If we can all do that, we will succeed in playing the whole thing through at the next practice. I do believe that.

Count Basie once said a great thing about this music, about polishing it and the feel and the phrasing. He said, "I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch."

A definite punch. I like that.