Roger Ingram and High Notes

I had the distinct pleasure of spending parts of the last two days with Roger Ingram, who was the guest artist at the Schoolcraft Jazz Studies Program’s Up Jumped Spring concert yesterday.  Roger is a high register trumpeter who played on the road for 35 years with Tom Jones, Connie Stevens, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Maynard Ferguson, and was the lead trumpeter for the Woody Herman and Harry Connick big bands.

Roger is a great player, and a really nice, very encouraging person.

Here's one of the songs Roger played with us, as recorded with a different band.

Roger Ingram Live at the College Hideaway with the Jim Stewart Orchestra

At his clinic yesterday, he discussed playing in the high register, and quite a few times mentioned counter-intuitive thinking.  The first requirement for having a high register is having a strong, secure low register.  As Bud Brisbois, Stan Kenton’s lead trumpet player in the late 50’s, told him, you can’t build a skyscraper on a weak foundation.  

So what I take from this is that unless you really own the bottom of your horn - from low concert E to high C, you need to devote your efforts there before embarking on the high road.

Once you have that foundation, you can, as Roger’s friend and past guest artist Wayne Bergeron put it, “discover,” not “develop” the high register.  Wayne’s idea is that when you have this firm foundation, you then have the playing strength to be able to explore and map the new region above.  Counter-intuitive thinking.

Something that was a real eye-opener for me is that playing high requires less air, not more.  Bud Brisbois told Roger that if you use a tablespoon full of air to play high C, use a half tablespoon to play the F above, and a teaspoon full for double high C.  If you fill your lungs to capacity and shove a lot of air through the horn attempting to play high, you’re dooming yourself to failure.  Counter-intuitive thinking.

An exercise he recommended for discovering the upper region is to gliss from C to high C and back [Bb on trombone].  In demonstrating, he took a moderate tempo - about 1 second for each leg of the excursion.  Repeat the glissing exercise each half step higher, as far as you can go.  Recognize and accept that this will sound terrible.  Allow that to happen.  You aren’t going for sound, you’re going for a result.  Tone will come later.  If you have a good foundation, and do this for 15 minutes every day for one month, you should be able to play up to double high C at the end of that time.  This approach builds in muscle memory for the location of the partials, and helps to internalize the control needed to play reliably in the high region.   In his demonstration, he did not work hard, and it actually looked pretty effortless.

I’ve had some success building my upper register over the last year, but still would like to expand the next half octave to double high C [concert Bb,] and certainly need to discover control in my existing high range.  I’m excited to embark on this new adventure.

One last parting counter-intuitive thought.  Roger said he really enjoys playing in the middle register!

Opus one

Friday Night Music

I'm chagrined to admit that I never heard of this song, and - even worse - knew nothing of the iconic Leonard Cohen, until our oldest granddaughter did an ensemble dance to it in competition a couple of years ago.  It was somebody else's smooth-voiced cover - there are many and I never did find out whose - not Cohen's gravelly bass.

Knowing her dance studio as I do, I'm sure the more obviously suggestive verses weren't included - as indeed, they weren't included in Cohen's original studio recording.  The strange thing about this song is the coupling of two concepts - religious ecstasy and sexual gratification - that seem totally disconnected in modern culture.

It wasn't always so.  If I have the history right, back before the Old Testament Jews abandoned human sacrifice and tried their experiment with monotheism, they were not much different ethnically or culturally from the rest of their Canaanite neighbors.  At least in some parts of the Mediterranean basin - and I think this includes Canaan - sex, fertility and procreation were integral with nature and the earth, even if not specifically coupled with goddess based religion. 

Somehow, when the sky daemon replaced earth daemons, sex became dirty and sinful, goddesses became whores, and, thanks in no small part to the rabid misogynist Saul of Tarsus, whole civilizations became puritanical.  Or at least such was their claim.

That legacy haunts us today.  You see it in the insane objections to insurance coverage of birth control [which was never a problem until it became part of Obamacare], gender-dependent double standards of morality, and the Republican war on women.

Still, whatever our views on religion or lust, in the privacy of our own homes, we can experience a  hallelujah moment - and, for now at least - no matter how cold and broken, make our own decisions as to what that means.

Still More on Christie

Brought to you by two Bosses.

Friday Night Music - Glow

Not sure what's up with the wreckage, the floating, nor the hospital gown.  But this is pretty mellow for Kaki King, Just right for a Friday night.





Tux, in the comment, offers some insight that is to good to moulder there.  So I bought it up to moulder here, instead.

What happened was that she created a rock band for her previous album (Junior), and found out that touring with a rock band is a lot more expensive than touring with just herself and her guitar. So the new album (Glow) was written for just herself and her guitar to tour, though the album itself has other instrumentation on it. And most of the songs on the new albums are instrumentals like back when she was starting out because she can't do fancy guitar picking and sing at the same time, it just gets to be too much. So that's the story on why the album has so much acoustic instrumental guitar work on it. As for the video itself, beats me :).

Friday Night Music

There are only a few moments of Friday night left.

Bach and Michael Hedges - a match made in heaven.

Sad Obit

Today, we lost a great musician and composer and a thoroughly wonderful human being.

He would have been 92 tomorrow.

Let us all dance unsquarely while we may.

As a humanist, he was at the forefront of integration, playing black jazz clubs throughout the deep South in the ’50s, a point of pride for him.

"For as long as I’ve been playing jazz, people have been trying to pigeonhole me,” he once told the Tribune.

"Frankly, labels bore me."

                           --From The Chicago Tribune obit.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Today we lose one more

Great - He gave us the sound track 

For life's Unsquare Dance

What the Hell?!? Friday - "Romney Girl" Edition

Via the Ed Show on FB or ABC News.

H/T to the LW.

Castamere Revisited

Followed a link to this full version of The National performing this song.  The instrumental section gives a better take on the melody than Matt Berninger's near-talking vocal.

What the Hell?!? Friday - The Rains of Castamere

The conversation about the current season of Game of Thrones here, (where SEK has some great insights on the cinematography) led me to this excellent site, which led me to this review of Blackwater, the most recent episode.  As the forces defending King's Landing are preparing for battle - or more accurately, waiting for the enemy led by Stannis Baratheon to arrive by sea - they fill the long hours drinking and whoring.  And singing.  Since these forces are led by the Lannisters, they are singing a traditional Lannister song, The Rains of Castamere, along with the sellsword Bronn, who Tyrion Lannister has made head of the King's Guard.  It goes like this.




We hear this song again, over the closing credits, this time performed by Indy band The National.  The Rains of Castamere, even the relatively upbeat version sung by drunk Lannisters is not a jolly song.  But the treatment given by The National's Matt Berninger darkens it to a smoky ebon hue.





I'm only vaguely aware of Leonard Cohen, but this clip immediately brought him to mind.

Here, at no extra charge, is the Leonard Cohen song the oldest granddaughter danced to in competition recently, as an ensemble routine.

This is Beyond Awesome

What the Hell?!? Friday - Castoria

Sunday Music Blogging - Live Jazz Edition, Part 2

Last week I posted  a couple tunes from our Up Jumped Spring Concert.  Here are a couple more.




Blue Samuel is a great Sammy Nestico tune, based on Blue Daniel, an original composition by the Motor City's own tragic trombone genius, Frank Rosolino.  Solos by Vince on guitar,  Marion on alto, Patrick on tenor,  Mike on trombone, and Ryan on piano.  Kodos to Tim for his soaring trumpet lead.  I'm really happy with the way this turned out





Howdiz Songo? is by Gordon Goodwin.  It's more tricky than difficult, but the layered complexity, especially in the ensemble section following Ryan's piano montuno, makes it quite a challenge.  I'm pleased with the ensemble performance here.  Solos by Joe on alto, me on trombone, Vince on guitar and Marion on soprano.

Sunday Music Blogging - Live Jazz Edition

From our Up Jumped Spring Concert, April 23, 2012.


Just Friends, featuring Tim on trumpet




Things Aint What They Used To Be; solos by Kristin on tenor, Patrick on tenor, me on trombone then Fred's alto brings us home on the high road.

What The Hell?!? Friday - Moscow Flash Edition

H/T to Sharon

Sunday Music Blogging

My wife - she's a-love me!

Sunday Music Blogging

A truly outstanding performance of this show-stopper by a high school cast.

I played for this show my senior year in H.S. - 48 years ago.  I see now that you miss a lot from the orchestra pit.

Granddaughter Rebekka has a part in the play right now, and a nice little feature in this number.

There is no set choreography for pieces like this.  It's all up to the creativity and ability of the local talent.





"Show-stopper" is used advisedly.  When I linked the vid on Facebook, one of my friends commented, "This is one of those 'mandatory' song-and-dance numbers that adds nothing to the story line."  This is true.  But I feel that musical theater isn't just about story line - the stories tend to be on the weak side anyway.  It's about a balance among story, song, and dance - and in the case of the Music Man, lots of particularly snappy and clever dialog.

And when he dances, certainly boys, what else - the piper pays him! 
Yes, sir.  
Yes, sir. 
Yes, sir.

Sunday Music Blogging

Brandi Carlile and the twins at the Mt. Baker Theater, Bellingham, WA. March 19, 2010.



If you have come to expect anything from my Sunday Music offerings, it would certainly not be this.

I'll admit that I never heard of Brandi Carlile or this song until it was featured in this NPR All Things Considered spot.

Then, it became pretty special.




Enjoy.

Some Thoughts on Writing

 Here's Sarah Vaughan with the Basie band doing a great old song, Just Friends.




Funny sometimes, how one thing will play into another.  After rehearsal last night we were talking about the horrible job the publisher did with the parts for a terrific Tommy Newsome arrangement of Just Friends, written for Don Severenson and the Tonight Show Orchestra.  It's nothing like the rendition by Sarah Vaughan with the Basie band above, which I included because I like it, and I can't find Newsome's on YouTube.  However, you can listen to a sample here.

The trombone parts are 6 pages long and every page turn but 1 is impossible.  Playing the trombone requires two hands at all times.  Ditto the bass, and the bass player showed me how his part had impossible turns - leading into the most important bass passages.  This type of scoring is lazy, thoughtless, and disrespectful of the musicians who have to deal with it.

The thought the bass player left me with, after some conversation, is that when you write something, you should make it impossible for your reader to misunderstand or misinterpret.  This applies to prose as well as music.   I try to write clearly, but I've never thought about it in quite this way.  The idea applies not only to the mechanics of writing, but also to organizing and presenting your thoughts and maintaining focus in your presentation.

Which reminds me of this criticism I wrote of Tim Worstall's Forbes piece.   There was a lot of commentary at the cross-post at AB, and Worstill had a lot to say there, including, "I am getting really rather mystified at all the people who seem to be so deliberately missing the point I was making," and finally, "To repeat, I am critiquing the use of the insurance model to provide such desired health care: not determining how such desired health care should be provided nor even venturing into the question of whether such health care is desirable or not."  You can read it all over at AB.

Maybe I was too impetuous, and should have read the article I was critiquing more carefully.  Now that I know his point, I can't go back, re-read, and figure out if I would have gleaned more with more care.  But Worstall did not make it impossible for me to misunderstand or misinterpret.

Even before rehearsal, I wrote a comment back to him, containing what I think is some pretty good advice..

 So we learn that, contra the title and the extended quote from Sandra Fluke near the beginning, your article really has nothing to do with either her or Limbaugh, and is only marginally related to contraception.  The real topic, if I understand it correctly now, isn't even the subtleties of insurance vs assurance, but rather idealized health care funding.  So, yeah - I will now freely admit that I missed your point - totally - but it was not deliberate, as you asserted in your first comment.

If you want to have your readers get your point, then, instead of glibly riffing on a current hot topic, I'll suggest that you actually write about whatever it is you are writing about, and not require your readers to either do a click-through to discover the actual topic in a different article, or have a close familiarity with your publication history.  When you put something out in the public sphere, you lose control of what readers are going to make of it, and you can't expect them to know your implied context.  So you need to help them along if you have a specific agenda.  An article that is intended to make some point really needs to not only stand alone, but also explicitly make its central point, without a lot of distracting digressions.

I'll also suggest that you use links to show source data, to corroborate assertions, or provide further reading for whoever might be interested in digging a little deeper, not to illustrate the implied point of the current article.   I had to read your comments here to discover what I think you might have been talking about there.  And my next thought was that your point was the difference between insurance and assurance, though I guess that isn't it, either.

That is not communicating effectively.  When you find yourself mystified by the problem of people misunderstanding what you say, then I'll further suggest that blaming your readers will not move you very far toward a solution.   

Is that harsh?  I can't decide.  I don't know if Worstall read these words.  But I'm going to take them to heart.  I've noticed that people will sometimes ignore the main content of my post, and go down a side track due to a flip comment or marginally relevant value judgment I made.  So - there is a lesson here for me as well.

I hope I'm wise enough to take my own advice.

Sunday Music Blogging

This is dedicated to those unfortunate denizens of Wall Street - street people in a different sense, I suppose - now forced to live on their measly $350,000 per annum regular incomes, since the bonus pool this year is reduced to a paltry $19.7 billion.

I can't say I feel their pain.  “People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress."  It's really true.   I have no earthly idea what that must be like.

Maybe this will help.