Here's That Rainy Day

A cold, breezy and drizzly Saturday is a great day to play jazz. Well, every day is a great day to play jazz but cold, breezy drizzly days reduce the chance of competing interests.

Here's a quick reminder about the Jazz Workshop schedule. The McRae Park building will be closed on Saturdays beginning Memorial Day weekend so the last Saturday workshop will be 5/22/10. We will resume Saturday workshops after Labor Day. Annie will be looking into the availability of a week night slot at the park building and I will update the blog as soon as we know something about this. Last summer we met on Monday evenings and the year before that on Tuesdays.

On June 5th the Jazz Workshop will be performing at the McRae Park Fun Day. This is an annual event. When the schedule is finalized, I'll post that to the blog. On August 7th is the Freedom Jazz Festival at Minnehaha Falls Park in South Minneapolis. This is an annual event started by Sam Favors, the founder of the Jazz Workshop. We hope to have a set at the FJF again this year and we're already working up some songs. Stay tuned for more information.

This week at McRae Park we had two new participants, Will (guitar) and Brett (guitar). Both of them are high school students interested in guitar and jazz. They joined Evan (bass) who's also in high school and has been to a few workshops now with his upright bass. Also returning to the workshop for an hour or so was Peter (baritone sax) joining the usual suspects: Sam (trumpet and trumpet synth) Wes (tenor sax), Gene (drums), Craig (guitar), Owen (accordion), Annie (vocals), Tim (guitar) and Toria (vocals). It is wonderful to have young folks turning up because they are the future of jazz.

The song list for today included "Blue Bossa," "Doxy," "The Nearness of You," "On The Sunny Side of the Street," "Ornithology," "Am I Blue," "There Will Never Be Another You," "Day By Day," "Now's the Time," "Autumn Leaves," "Take the 'A' Train," "Here's That Rainy Day," "Someone To Watch Over Me," "What Is This Thing Called Love," "Bye Bye Blackbird," "Inchworm," "Georgia On My Mind," "Dream," "Summertime," "East of the Sun," "Four On Six," and "Jordu."

That's it for this week. We'll be back at McRae Park next Saturday (5/1/10) at noon. Only four weeks of Saturday workshop sessions left unti fall- hope to see you there!