Introduction
Alongside this project, I had the opportunity to lead a jazz quartet in a performance at the AOC conference which was being held in the ICC in Birmingham.
The Quartet was made up of Leah Mellor on Vocals, myself on piano. Cain Watson on bass and Fraser Allan on drums. We were required to put together two sets of a combined 75 minute length.
Plan
Originally my plan was to approach a set list of 15 songs by splitting them into the 3 weeks we had to rehearse the,m, thus meaning we needed to address 5 per week. We would continually practice the songs we had already completed whilst adding in the newer ones to solidify our set list. My original plan was to have 3 practice sessions a week lasting between one and 2 hours, these three sessions would take place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 4.30pm, however the Wednesday practice session was more flexible as none of the members of the band had any lessons on that day. To boost our chemistry and confidence as a band we would then play the Thursday lunch time concert on each of the 3 weeks rotating our set list each time.
Set List
Originally I had put together a set list of mainly jazz standards of my choice and preference, however from the beginning of this project I continually promoted everyone’s opinions and opened up the decision making to a democratic approach. Although I had a vision of how I wanted the band to come together, I have always found that group decision making allows for a more diverse approach which can pleasantly surprise the participants and overall benefit the development of the project. After we began making decisions together as a band I felt much more comfortable and I felt that the band started gelling together quicker. Whilst having conversations in the band and with Leah when working out keys for different songs, we decided to try doing jazz covers of pop and rock songs which can be seen in the set list below, for example seven nation army and I’m yours. As band leader although many of my duties were being shared, I was still in charge of organising the band both in terms of practice sessions as well as the structure and key of each song. In our first practice session, I worked with Leah through most of the set list to understand which was her preferred key to sing in. I then wrote out chord charts for these songs which also displayed the structure of each one. Here is our final set list.
Set 1
Take the A Train
Due to the fact that we approached this concert in such a short time space, I decided to bring in some classic instrumental songs that I was already very confident in. The first of these was the swing classic Take the A Train by Duke Ellington. I thought that by starting with a couple of instrumental songs it would allow us to gel together as a rhythm section before adding Leah’s vocals on top. Take the A train is always a fun song to play and we kept to a very simple structure a piano intro at the start before playing the head once through followed by 2 improvised choruses and then coming back to the head. In the second chorus I decided to swap 4ths with Fraser in order to switch the feel up slightly. Although I am developing as an improviser I still feel slightly uncomfortable with taking 2 choruses, hopefully by studying more solos by different Jazz artists I will become more confident in my soloing ability in the future.
Here’s the sheet music we used –
The Days of Wine and Roses
The days of wine and roses is another classic standard that I have played a lot at lunchtime concerts and my final performance last year. I decided to add a piano introduction into this song which was me playing the second half of the head in free time in a more decorated style, this included my left hand developing a lot more and playing different arpeggios and bass lines which is an area that I am very keen to improve we then played the head through as a band followed by a piano improvisation chorus followed by a return to the head. I decided to keep most of the structuring for this concert relatively simple as arranging isn’t an area that I have a lot of experience in and we needed to get quite a lot of songs sorted in a short amount of time.
I’m yours
I’m yours is the first song in our set list that we played with Leah therefore I wanted to choose a relatively simple and well known song which would make us feel comfortable as well as to appeal to the audience.
We began with a small intro before Leah joined in. The majority of the song is made up of 4 chords and although it is very simple, it is still a skill to be able to play a song like this with energy and to a decent standard. A balance that I initially struggled with was between over playing and under playing which is a general theme throughout a lot of my piano playing. It is sometimes hard to get your head around the fact that playing less increases the enjoy ability of the listener especially in solos, where space can help to develop a them or idea more than a note could.
Sunny
Sunny, originally written by Bobby Hebb in 1966 is a song that I have heard many different versions of. Boney M was the first version I believe that I heard and although it is a classic, there was no way we could get anywhere near Boney Ms sound with the improvisation that we had. Therefore we decided to approach Sunny in a Latin style, as Latin is a very fun style to play in.
Imagine
Stand By Me
Set 2
Seven Nation Army
Autumn Leaves
When approaching Autumn leaves, the band came from two different directions of thought. The first can be heard in the beautiful version above that is Eva Cassidy’s rendition of this Jazz classic which was Leah’s preference, however Cain was very keen to play it in a more upbeat style. After careful consideration by looking at multiple factors, I decided to compromise and include both of these aspects into the final version. My reasoning for this was to try and create a balance between the slower and more upbeat songs in the set, Autumn leaves has always been a significant song to me since I started playing jazz and I wanted to approach it in a different way that would play to strengths of the whole quartet. It was also the song that I wanted to start our set with therefore we needed to make a statement with it.
All of me
Crazy
Hallelujah
Fly me to the moon
Don’t get around much anymore
Don’t get around much anymore is covered in my solo performance.
New York
High and Dry
High and Dry is covered in my Solo Performance.
Rehearsal Structure
My basic rehearsal plan can be seen in the general plan introduction at the top of this page. Generally we stuck to
Transporting Equipment
Mock Performance
Overall, this mock was a really positive experience and although there were slight timing problems in some of the songs, I was not overly concerned by these as they would be easily rectifiable with more rehearsal time. The only song I felt went badly was Georgia as we had not practiced it enough even though it was a very technical piece. I therefore decided to drop it from the lineup completely and to focus on a couple of easier songs for the final performance. These were Imagine by John Lennon and Picking up the pieces, however only Imagine made it into the final cut.
Final Performance
I was incredibly proud of our final performance as in just over three weeks, we had developed a strong repertoire of mixed genres to an almost professional standard. We performed with little mistakes and were tight on most of our songs, with maybe exception to Imagine which probably needed a few more rehearsals. It was a blast to play in such an incredible space and although we were playing background music we were received well by the crowd and were subject of a lot of complimentary chat. Hopefully , we can play more spaces like this in the future and we will look to gig more as a band off the back of this.