Jazz

A snap of the finger at a repeated rhythm. The subtle hit of the bass, the snazzy sound of the saxophone, the precision attack of the trumpet. These are just a few of the things people love about jazz. Don't go thinking I'm only saying this because in the jazz band at school. I'm saying this because this is one genre of music that most large crowds can listen to and not complain with each other.

I heard jazz before last summer. I heard a few bands play. But, I never really unlocked the spirit of jazz until August of 2009. I went to the jazz summer camp (not as dorky as it sounds) at my school and we just played. We jumped right into the songs. I was taken by surprise, being a 12 year old kid, I had never just started into the song. Scratch that, I had but when we did it in the concert band at my elementary school it sounded terrible. No one knew what their part was supposed to sound like.

But this was different. Everyone knew what they were playing. They just looked at the music and played it. Not to the full potential (which we did by the end of the week) but over enough to amaze me. I had never heard a full jazz band live and this was awesome. One of the other things that made it awesome was that I was the only trumpet for a few days. I had to figure out what to do by myself (and from the help of Mr. Kooi).

When I was in concert band, I didn't practice much. I knew the music and it just kind of came naturally (I mean that in the most unsnotty way possible). In this band, you weren't required to practice so, naturally, I did practice. As my parents will tell you, I worked on those pieces until I got every bit of them right. Another thing concert band didn't have were trumpet solos. I got to solo for twelve measures. It was awesome, just making it up as I went along (which is how I've gotten through life so far), I had never felt so much freedom on the trumpet.

Just hearing all of that was great. Ever since, I have been obsessed with a few select trumpeters such as, Louie Armstrong and (my personal favorite) Dizzy Gillespie. I hope that one day, I can be listed as one of those trumpeters. It is one of my great dreams.

But for now, I'll settle for getting through middle school.