MC blog: Tonight's the Night

Tonight's the Night

... for my solo debut

Well, my wrists are sore, my embouchure needs a rest, and I think I'll get most of the notes right. And I also think I'm ready to have a good time. These are signals indicating it's time to put away the horn and rest up. (And to avoid spend too much time here at the keyboard, either!) I'm going to play 30 minutes of "incidental music" at a spaghetti supper put on by a local community center this evening. I'll be in the entrance hallway, playing as people mingle before the chow line opens. One of the community bands that I play with normally plays at this annual supper, but not enough musicians could make the gig this year. So I offered to play solo bass clarinet. Well, not exactly solo: I'll be playing with CD accompaniment. But the CD is the result of my efforts. Seven pieces are clarinet duets, where I have previously recorded voice two. The other four have piano accompaniment. My keyboard player is a computer program, Finale Guitar, into which I entered the sheet music note by note. The software does a decent job of producing piano voices, so I have recorded those onto my CD as well. And the music, in a sense, is all "mine". It is mostly well-known jazz pieces that I really like, with a handful of 1960's and 1980's rock numbers thrown in. And one classical piece, which became a theme song for a popular TV show in the 1960's. None of the pieces are something you'd expect to hear from a bass clarinet. But, hey, that's the voice I know how to use, so I'm gonna give it a shot! So I'm looking forward to expressing myself publicly in a few hours. I'll let you know how it goes...