Well I just got back from an exciting and jam-packed week in New York City with Jazz Mafia Symphony! We got to perform on Summerstage with the legendary Roy Ayers along with 30 young musicians from the Harlem School of the Arts! Here’s a video of us performing one of the songs I arranged for the group:
I didn’t really want to advertise this fact, but I actually arranged this tune in an insanely short amount of time: I basically started on the plane to NY, and after I arrived at my accommodations, stayed up all night to finish in time for our first rehearsal! (It’s a long story, but basically we ended up in a position to arrange most of Roy’s music for our group on very short notice.) I also did an arrangement of Roy’s soundtrack theme to “Coffy” which is one of my all time favorite movies, so that was also super special!!
The week was filled with rehearsals, clinics with the HSA kids, club performances from Shotgun Wedding Quintet & Jazz Mafia String Quartet, and a bunch of schlepping on mass transit! We somehow also managed to fit in some hang-time! I had my little camera with me, and luckily remembered to whip it out and capture some special moments, which I compiled them into a little video!
AND! we played a huge AMAZING show at Stern Grove days before flying over there!!! We premiered our new Emperor Norton Suite to a very friendly and energetic SF crowd. We lucked out with amazing weather, and a packed audience! We also were joined by special guests Martin Luther, Chali 2na, and Lyrics Born; AND we also brought up 60~ music students from SF schools to perform with us on a song. It was so inspiring to work with them the days leading up to the concert (trombone section was ROCKIN!!!) Here’s a video from the show!