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I find it hard to believe that it's just about a year since I joined the band to become 'a born again' saxophone player. The time has passed at frightening speed - but has been even more enjoyable than I expected.
We play one of our annual gigs, jointly with our concert band, next Friday, 14th December in Chalfont St Peter. This is a big occasion for us and we have been rehearsing hard for it over the past few months.
Our program will be :
A Blues Brothers Medley
What a Wonderful World
The Peanut Vendor
Christmas Carillon
White Christmas
We'll be playing the last two numbers jointly with our concert band.
The Blues Brothers Medley includes bits of 'Everybody needs Somebody to Love' , 'Gimme Some Lovin' and 'Jailhouse Rock' . I watched the film on DVD again over the weekend - sheer enjoyable escapeism - with some great music.!!!
In addition to playing with the band each week I have been having weekly lessons with a private saxophone teacher. Over the past few weeks we have begun to work on jazz improvisation. Although I am only in the "foothills" of the subject I love it. It creates a very strong incentive to become very familiar with all the scales, major, minor,blues and pentatonic etc. I also find myself listening more intently to all sorts of music and the improvised solos by the various players. The stuff we are working on at the moment includes :-
Blue Monk - by Thelonious Monk
Watermelon Man - by Herbie Hancock
Cantaloupe Island - by Herbie Hancock
Colonial Blues
Straight, No Chaser
The problem of course is time - practise time - and as a result I've had to postpone the garage clearance again !!!!!!!!
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