Surprise Jazz Concert

Spring 2018, right after the Big Broadcast that year. One of our usual ringers, Bruce Kasdin (amazing player and super nice guy) asked a favor. You see, Bruce is on staff at Smith College and they were in need of some musicians for a cafe-style concert they were having. They needed two saxes to round out their section. Lauren Ferrera, our first-year bari player, was one and I was the other, playing tenor. Anyway, he tells us some of the details: it’s for the following weekend on the Smith campus, just a couple of songs in a cafe area, shouldn’t be a problem for us. People will be drinking their coffee and stop by for a couple of minutes before moving on. No big deal. He gave us the email for the director of the ensemble and said she’d be in touch with the logistics.

We wait for her email, which we get a couple days later. Now remember, it’s ONE WEEK from when we were asked to play. This email with logistics comes midweek. And it did not contain any music! We’re starting to get a little nervous about not seeing any music at this point.

So, Saturday comes and I run to MHC to grab Lauren and her bari and we’re on our way to NoHo. We park a couple of blocks away from the building, Lauren having to drag her bari through the streets of NoHo! We eventually find the green room and wait for whoever has the music. That person finally arrives. About 10 minutes before we are to go on! Eep!

We take the stage. Turns out, it’s not just a cafe concert like Bruce had led us to believe. It’s the Five College Jazz Fest. The group before us was the UMass jazz band and they were incredible, as always.

Now, I’ve been a musician most of my life. I was a theater major in college. I am conditioned not to get stage fright. But let me tell you, I was nervous as heck to play this gig with music that had barely just touched my hands!

We take the stage. Thank the universe that the music was easy! Mark had done such a good job teaching us how to read and play jazz that Lauren and I had no problem sight-reading the whole thing! That’s not to say there weren’t wrong notes here and there, but there were no complete train wrecks.

We finish the set, pack up, and head back to MHC - giggling the whole time that we were able to pull this off and help out at the very last minute by sight-reading an entire jazz concert!