Saturday Afternoon Jazz

A few days ago when I was writing the weekly ad for Craigslist about the workshop, I was reflecting that we "play" music rather than "work" music, and that maybe the Jazz Workshop should be the Jazz Playshop. Well, that's maybe just a little too precious but maybe it makes the point- this is fun!

Today it was a lovely, atypically beautiful November Saturday. 64 degrees, sunny, deep blue sky. We all had a choice to make: play outside or play jazz. Maybe we should have played jazz outside! We had a good turnout anyway: Gene and Ken on drums, Jack on trumpet and also drums for a couple of tunes, Ira on alto sax, Wes on tenor sax, Pete on bari sax, Rob and Tim on guitar, Owen on accordion, and on vocals we had Dick, Toria and Sheila (and also Jack on one tune). One such a beautiful day, ten musicians was a great turnout.

The Workshop kicked off shortly after 1:00 with the "instrumental hour." Songs played included "I Remember You," "In Walked Bud," "When You're Away" (an original by Tim), "I Thought About You," "It's Only a Paper Moon." The second part of the workshops with the vocalists swung into gear with "It Could Happen to You," "Days of Wine and Roses," "I Cover the Waterfront," "The Very Thought of You," "I'll Remember April," "Lover Man," "Dancing On The Ceiling," "The Midnight Sun," "What Is This Thing Called Love," "How Deep Is The Ocean," "Four," "The Song Is You," "Again," and "Embraceable You." 19 songs in four hours.

Upcoming workshop schedule: next week (11/14/09) Norman will be playing piano. The week after that, which is the Saturday after Thanksgiving (11/21/09), we are not sure whether the park building will be open so watch this space for news about that. We also had some preliminary discussion about looking for some occasional gigs out in the community. Nothing concrete yet, but a few possibilities were identified.

In the photos: that's Jack (trumpet/drums/vocal) up in the first photo and Tim (guitar and nothin' else) in the middle photo and Toria (vocals) in the bottom photo.