Funky jazz

I've spent the last 3 days been at a nation-wide Bigband competition. It's been fucking amazing.

Schools from all over Australia come down to Mt. Gambier (a city built around a dormant volcano) and either play or listen to jazz the whole time. Naturally after so long I'm all jazzed out.

On Friday, we met at school at 8 in the morning and started on our 6 hour bus ride down from Adelaide. It was horrible. After arriving at Mt. Gambier, we had about 10 minutes to go into our motel room and get ready to leave for the opening concert.

The competition is called Generations in Jazz and it's very well known. James Morrison, an amazing trumpet player, is hugely involved in the running of it. There were also other brilliant musicians there including Ross Irwin, Greg Spence, the vocal quartet Idea of North and the one and only Gordon Goodwin. Generations is somewhat unique amongst other similar competitions in that it's held in a paddock in the middle of fucking nowhere. It rained on the 2nd and 3rd days, so the ground was disgusting,

For those of you that don't know Gordon Goodwin, he's a musical genius. He runs the Big Phat Band who consist of some of America's finest musicians. He's also an amazing saxophonist.

Being able to hear James Morrison and Gordon Goodwin playing together for the first time ever at the concert on Friday night was an amazing thing. They continued their amazing playing on Saturday night. They're both simply brilliant. It was a huge inspiration for everyone.

The competitions took place on Saturday. Our school entered 3 ensembles. A 3rd division band (lowest division), a 1st division band and a vocal group. I'm in the div 3 band. Our performance was at about 8 o'clock in the morning. Anyone that's ever been to Mt. Gambier knows that it's fucking freezing there that early. Because of the cold, I didn't play very well, although I pulled my shit together for my big solo in our last piece.

None of out bands won anything in the end, but none of us cared because of all the amazing bands we heard. One of the students in our div 1 band was chosen into the div 1 superband. The superband rehearses on Sunday morning, then plays in the closing concert that afternoon. The best students from the div 1 bands are chosen into it, and our fucking brilliant trumpet player was chosen as the lead trumpet. We were proud of him.

I really enjoyed myself this weekend. I've heard so much amazing music. I'm really tired, though, as it was a full on experience with late nights and early mornings. It was also tiring for my arse, as I spent most of my time there sitting on it.