School Jazz band?

[bassist15]

Anybody here in their school jazz band? Im in high School and I play bass in mine . We really dont play stuff to interesting . Anybody play any cool like Miles , Herbie Hancock , Jaco?

[werbo1]

Well, our Jazz Ensemble had two bassists this year, a dude on upright and myself on electric. I took the funkier numbers, some Jeff Jarvis tunes and Latin Numbers. I think I also helped prove to the director that electric could pull off the whole walking thing - He was really impressed with my performance on an uptempo Old Man River


We played Hancock last year...

[Aaron Saunders]

I was in our school jazz band for the last two years of high school. The bandleader is well known in Canada for arranging/composing (Greg Runions) and, in addition to being a great guy and fantastic musician, did all of the arrangements tailored specifically to our band. It was pretty awesome, a really invaluable experience.

We played a lot of Ellington -- Take the "A" Train, Isfahan last year, along with Straight No Chaser (Monk,) an Eb blues called Drum Boogie (I don't remember.) We also read through a lot of other tunes, but nothing that we played regularly. IIRC, we also did Bluebird of Deli and Blue Pepper as well.

In past years (before I was in the band) they also did It Don't Mean A Thing and I Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues as well...I loved watching 'em.

[Bard2dbone]

I was in my schools' jazz band for the last three years of high school.

The coolest thing we did was for contest, all of the members who could competently double on other instruments would start our opening number on their alternate instruments and then switch during solos.

At the top of the tune, I was on valve trombone. Mark was on drums. Sandy was on guitar. Glenn was on bass. Lonnie was on trumpet. Michelle was on alto sax. And Terry was on piano. Most of us got at least a short solo break on the instrument we were playing at the beginning of the show.

During the first extended solo(piano), Lonnie and Mark swapped seats. During the second long solo (trumpet) Terry came to the trombone section. I took over on bass. And Glenn went to his alto sax. And Michelle went to the piano. Sandy and I did a guitar-bass-flute soli with Jan, who switched from sax to flute without changing seats, but took over piano later on a different tune. At the end of the soli, Sandy put down her guitar and stepped over to the trumpet section to catch the next solo break on flugelhorn. Nobody actually took over guitar for the rest of that tune. But a guy named Dan played guitar for the rest of the show. On the first song he kind of flailed at a set of congas that were really only for show, because they had pillows in them and were, therefore, very quiet.

But the judges loved seeing everybody move around and switch instruments. In their commentary they seemed to always assume that whatever we started the show playing was our primary instrument. Sandy got great comments on her Flugelhorn solo. Glenn got great comments on a sax solo in a different song. They weren't impressed by a trombone player switching to bass. But a drummer going to second trumpet amazed them.

[tplyons]

I played in two different jazz bands in high school. One was for upperclassmen only and I always played tenor and soprano sax there. Did a lot of great stuff, not much that I remember.

In the jazz band for everyone, I played bari sax and alto sax for two years, before switching to bass duties. Definately did some classics and some obscure tunes.