Ben's Letters from Camp Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Greetings from the 2011 Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshop! I’m here with over 370 participants at the University of Louisville for an intense week of clinics, combos and concerts. The student musicians range in age from pre-teen to octogenarians (thankfully I’m somewhere in the middle) and come from 27 different countries.
Today, all of the attendees arrived on campus and auditioned for combos between noon and 4pm. We also took a theory placement test to determine the most appropriate set of sessions for the week. We’ll find out the results in the morning when we show up at 8:30am for the first session.
This evening we were treated to a concert in Comstock Hall from 7:30pm to 10pm by a number of the workshop clinicians. The teaching staff is really an all-star group including Rufus Reid, Lynn Seaton, Tyrone Wheeler, Ed Soph, Bobby Floyd, Steve Allee, Dan Haerle, Jim Carroll, Jim Snidero, Pat Harbison, Jim Ketch and of course, Jamey Aebersold.
All of the fun starts tomorrow morning with an 8:30am theory class (sounds like some early college classes I once took) followed by jazz musicianship sessions, combo rehearsals, master classes, piano voicings class and evening faculty concerts. The day wraps up with jam sessions from 10pm to 11:30pm.
AND, just in case you’re worried, I do plan to try out some of the local cuisine during the hour and a half we get for dinner.
The Jazz Guy
