| Professionalism
We spend a lot of time on these sites talking about players and how to play higher, louder, faster (or just better) and these things are all important. However, every now and then reality bites. To put a background to this story I'm an enthusiastic amature but play the odd gig.
I had a gig last week where we only had 5 charts to play. 5 man brass section, rhythm section and 4 piece strings. It paid well and involved 1 rehearsal and those 5 tunes spread over speeches and about 1 1/2 hours. Anyway turned up and got the charts....one was in Bb, 2 in concert and one was supposed to be in Bb but all came to light when the piano part was in C and the trumpet and tenor sax were written in B..wow!! Even one of the concert parts just had intros and outros written and the rest was just chord charts.
I played 2nd and the first player was a very good horn player (He plays lead in a big band I play with as well). I bumbled through with Mark's help but we pulled it off on the night. To make matters worse they decided to have 1 1/2 hours jazz over dinner and so out comes the fake books behind stage and 7 guys that have never played together held the floor for that time. These guys new the "Girl from Ipanema" in just about every key.
Once you're past a certain technical level work on musicianship, you'll probably never know it all. It'll get you more calls than a 'triple' C.
Anybody with similar experiences?
Regards
Trevor |