April 15: Frequent reader(s) will know that I have been learning to play the electric bass, so it’s exciting to announce that I had a recording gig last night at Koerner Hall with the Hot Sardines. Based in New York, the Hot Sardines play funked up jazz written by everyone from Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker to Duke Ellington. The concert was recorded for a future CD and, along with 1,134 other souls, I will be on it, making a continuing contribution to musical history in Toronto. The band includes trombone, trumpet, reeds (clarinet and sax), drums, bass, piano and a singer. And a tap-dancer.
At first, the tap-dancer seems a bit odd. He sits in the middle of the band with his arms 
hanging over the side of his chair, quietly tapping away to the rhythm of the song. At some times, with the shifting feet and flailing arms he looks a bit like a man having a seizure, but when the solo arrives ( does one “solo” on taps ? ) he leaps up and belts out a texture that adds a new dimension to the music. At this point he looks more like a demented marionette on black ice, but it all works.
My musical weekend started the night before when I played at Chamber Sweets, an event put together by the New Horizons Band. Chamber Sweets is a concert to promote small groups of musicians from within the NHBT organization. Students form a group, pick the music and rehearse a short number. Each band is limited to 2 minutes, and there’s a wide diversity of music given the range of experience and ability within the NHBT universe.
My band chose a version of Pachelbel Canon in D Major played on trumpet, French horn and bass. It was arranged with my bass doing a 4 bar solo introduction: 8 notes in total repeated throughout the piece. I managed 7 of the 8 notes, skipping one in the middle somewhere. Arriving at the beginning again, I recalled our instructor saying that if you make a mistake, the best thing to do is own it and continue playing like there’s nothing wrong. Which I did. Having managed all 8 notes the second time through, the rest of the group joined in and we had a more or less uneventful performance from then on.
As I listened to the other bands I realized that most people made some sort of mistake during their performance. Some were more noticeable than others, but none were fatal to the outcome. It reminded me that music is an art-form that must be performed. You can look at the notes on a page and have some idea of how it might sound but until it is actually played by musicians – mistakes and all – it is lifeless. It is in the playing and interpretation that it gains life.
Even my band-mates in the Hot Sardines have miscues: The tap dancer sat thrashing in his chair through a half-bar when he should have had the lead. So it gives me comfort to know that, as I practice for next years performance with them at Koerner Hall, my best is good enough. I will never be error free. That’s part of what makes performing music so exciting.