All-Region Jazz Band & Saturday Night Live Returns

This weekend was our Region's All-Region Jazz Band weekend, and I was very fortunate to have been asked to conduct the second high school Jazz Band (although, in jazz you don't really conduct very much, so I guess I directed it).

I was getting increasingly nervous about teaching for such long stretches of time (three hours on Friday and basically six hours on Saturday), but with the energy of the good band and their solid work ethic, we made quick work of those nine hours and gave (what was in my estimation) pretty dang good concert. (Come to think of it, nine hours sounds like a long time, not a short time, so I shouldn't have ever thought that I didn't have enough time, but you would be surprised how quickly those sessions go by!)

Anyhow, the concert was last night and it featured my little group first, then the top high school group (kudos, too!), then the Amarillo Jazz Orchestra, which is comprised of area music educators and other jazz enthusiasts. What a band! They sounded great and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The guest clinician and artist for the evening was Mr. Glenn Kostur (glennkostur.com) who is the head of the jazz department at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He, for a number of years, was in the sax section for Maynard Ferguson's band and was also the music director. It's pretty safe to say that he has chops and street cred that puts all of us to shame!

What a nice guy too, a pleasure to sit down to dinner with (as we were able to do twice). It was funny watching all of the sax guys who teach in our Region ask him endless pedagogical questions and, "do you have an alternate fingering for this," or "what is your tongue really doing in the altissimo register?" Those are the sorts of conversations that I like to listen to, but I can assure that a very low amount of comprehension is actually taking place in my brain. There was a lot of "trophy wife" look on my face: sit there and look pretty and try to pretend that you know what we're talking about. (I think I can fake comprehension. Pretty? Maybe not...)

When Glenn was featured with the AJO, he pulled out his tenor and finished one of his solos playing so high that it was reminiscent of Lenny Picket's playing on every opening of every Saturday Night Live. (You know the playing... It's so high, it doesn't seem humanly possible.)

Well, what a great segue way to my next topic: Now that the writer's strike has come to a close, my guilty pleasure has returned with all new episodes: Saturday Night Live.

Now, let's be honest, I don't love every sketch from every show, but I find that SNL's humor is really closely in line with my own.

Where was Maya Rudolph? I'll be mad if she has left the show. Kayla and I actually re-watched the introduction of the show to make sure she wasn't mentioned, and, she wasn't mentioned in the opening credits! This is disastrous! She's one of the funniest ones! Thanks goodness that Kristen Wiig is still on. She's my new favorite.

Anyhow, the first half of the show was pretty funny (including a pretty good Weekend Update), but I couldn't help but to think that the first SNL back from the strike would be overwhelmingly funny. Well, it was pretty good, but it wasn't near the caliber that I thought it would be. For real, what were those writers doing for all of that time? I know they weren't writing, but you're telling me that they weren't thinking about ideas to use when the strike was over...???

The highlight of the episode was an appearance by Mike Huckabee. Without giving away his segment on Weekend Update, I'll just say to scoot over to NBC.com and watch it -- if it's posted...

Now off to grill chicken on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Then, tomorrow night is our first Percussion Ensemble Concert of the spring. After that, I am remarkably open schedule-wise, as we await baby number #2!