This Easter wasn't really busy, but because I'd been away from home for so long, I spent quite a lot of time with my friends back home, catching up, and generally just having an awesome, relaxing holiday. The week before the Easter holidays, I was back in Belfast just for the day to help out with my old school's Spring Concert, which I was more than happy to do! I paid for my own flights and everything. The main highlight of the concert was the Karl Jenkin's The Armed Man (A Mass For Peace), which if you haven't heard it before, is an absolutely breath-taking piece of music. It took up the entire second half of the concert, the first half just being the school groups. Released a day before the 9/11 attacks, the mass is based around world peace and the effects of war. It was dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis. I came back home and played alongside a very special school orchestra, consisting of the top players in the school, instrumental tutors, invited guests, and past pupils such as myself. I sat second trombone this night, inbetween the former music teacher at our school on first trombone and my old teacher on bass trombone, which is quite a stressful place to be!
I eventually got roped into playing with the trombones in the whole concert. It brought back a lot of good memories, as I absolutely loved the music groups in school, and I still really miss them. I even got to play an improv solo in the big-band during Ghostbusters, an old favourite of mine! All in all, it was an amazing night, and I just wish it could've been my final year concert!
I did play in a solo concert at my church the last week I was home, as a favour to my cousin who is the bandmaster at our church. I attend a Salvation Army church both here in Manchester and back home in Belfast, and music is central to worship. I didn't just want to come back and play technical music or anything complex; I just played some famous hymns and melodies. I started off the program with Henry Mancini's "Moon River", which is one of my favourite tunes of all time. The arrangement was originally for Tuba, but it was soo good I just had to transpose it up the octave and play it! After that I played a selection of hymn tunes, such as The Londonderry Air, O Waley Waley, The Old Rugged Cross and Ray Bowes' Jesus Loves Me, all Salvation Army-published solos. I finished off with an old favourite of mine, Gershwin's Summertime. Back home I don't have my own instrument, and I'm playing on a very different trombone, but I tried my best! I have recordings of the concert, but I'm going save myself the embaressment by not posting them up. Well, I might post up 1 or 2. It was great experience, being in that environment.
I also picked up an alto trombone, but instead of buying one I was given one by a guy from church, which saved me £150! I was soo pleased when I got it, I just walked about the house all day playing it! I'll post a video up sometime soon with me playing it (badly).
Aside from that, I didn't really do any playing over Easter, just a bit of practise!
I'm back at college now, and I'm finally back in Jazz Collective! Unfortunately because of the flights and stuff, I wasn't there for the first rehearsal. We're playing some fantastic charts this time, including Gil Evan's and Miles Davis' arrangement of Concierto Di Aranjuez, from their Sketches Of Spain album. So I'll keep you posted on that.
I don't really have a lot of new nuggets for you to listen to, I've really just been listening to some old favourites. But here is one of my favourite albums of the moment -> Weather Report – Night Passage. I'm going through a bit of a Weather Report phase again, and it's AWESOME. It may not be your cup of tea, but I find the opening track just so driving and energetic, I can't help but smile!
I've just got one track for you here, by someone I need to do a bit more research on, but I was on YouTube today and I found a pure AMAZING track from Billy Cobham, one of the greatest fusion drummers ever. Check out this track on Spotify -> Billy Cobham – Red Baron
Here is the video I watched -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN9Vaml0dZE
I'll try to keep the posts a bit more frequent, I've been quite bad since Christmas...
Anyway.
'til next time...
Thanks ~ The Jazzbone
