Took the day off yesterday but still feeling a bit frazzled today. Part of my concern is this afternoon’s 3 PM recording session. Keith Walker asked me to bring along some of my own tunes. Jordan and Nate have both mentioned tunes of mine they would like to perform. One of them is “Why Did the Elephant Cross the Road.” A quick glance shows that I don’t have this tune up on my web site anywhere. I looked at my Finale copy this morning. This tune requires a lot of energy from me to sing. I wonder if they are thinking of me singing it. Today. Yikes.
Oh, I see. I just found a more recent version (pdf) that mercifully is transposed down a third and is already arranged for C, Eb and Bb parts. Thank goodness. Also going to bring along Moneyland and the third section of Dead Man’s Pants called “You Must be the Animal.” That should be plenty for today.
I have been asked to write some music for the local expression of the world wide “Global Water Dance.” The performance is scheduled for June 25th at Tunnel Park. This means that it would be best if the music was written for instruments easily played outdoors. I am going to ask members of the Barefoot Jazz Quartet if they are interested in playing. Also the manager, Keith Walker who plays trumpet. I notice on the Barefoot Jazz Quartet shared google calendar that the drummer is on tour that weekend. Dang. I was thinking it would have been pretty cool to have him play snare or congas or something.
Anyway if the rest of the group agrees, I could have sax, trumpet and string bass. It seems to me that Nate the bass player might also play bassoon. I think it would be more interesting to use bassoon. Anyway, I’ll run it past them. I keep thinking it would be fun to drag the marimba out to the park. But then I think what a hassle plus I would probably have to practice anything I wrote pretty thoroughly.
I also have my eye on using oboe. A final ensemble might look like sax, oboe, trumpet. Once I have the instruments committed I will start writing this in earnest. The closer the date gets the simpler I am thinking of making it. I think it would be cool to write a rhythmic melody and treat it in trio or quartet form. That would be pretty simple.
When Linda the chair of the Dance Department at Hopeless College asked me to do this, I made some notes on some melodies and rhythms. I will return to that once I have a clear idea of what instruments I will be writing for.