Last night we played New Orleans and Dixieland styles for Fat Tuesday/Mardis Gras for the great folks at The Glebe. We prepared such classic selections as Basin Street Blues and Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans, and more that weren’t all necessarily strictly NO style, but fun music nonetheless. Kansas City is at least on the Mississippi, and also full of jazz. We also played the classic latin tune La Bamba and the Jamaican island feel Bobby Ferrin’s Don’t Worry Be Happy.
Selecting music turns out to be more work than you might imagine. You have to pick music that fits the theme of the event, and it has to be sheet music you can acquire one way or another if you don’t already have it, or you aren’t going to write it yourself. Then you have to be able to practice it into performance shape.
The Glebe has a fantastic facility, and 3 of the group had played there for New Years Eve with the Let’s Dance Band. (We loved this gig, since The Glebe is imminently practical, and they did the midnight count down at 9:30 pm instead of midnight. Really love that!) The music community in Roanoke is tightly intertwined, and musicians are shared between many different groups.
If you pay attention to the photos, the personnel changes from time to time. Last night I was covering the tuba part on bass trombone. Several people in the audience were actually interested in seeing the instrument close up. Bass trombone has 2 valves and has a deeper sound than the normal tenor trombone. Some quintets play with this configuration instead of using the more standard arrangement with tuba. The tuba gets more of an Ooom-Paaah sound, while the bass trombone gets a bit more bark.
Here’s a picture of the bass trombone I was using. The big difference between this and a normal (tenor) trombone is the size of everything (mouthpiece, tubing diameter, bell, extra valves and extra tubing). It takes a lot of air, and it’s heavy.
Our next scheduled public performance is at a church for Easter. We’ll be sure to keep events posted.