Big Band Jazz Weekend
"We have Jefferson's ideology, but Hamilton's government." -- unattributed
# MIT News Office - Jazzy birthday planned for Pomeroy - I'm blogging from south of Boston this morning (and yesterday). Came here to participate in a reunion of the MIT jazz bands. We were celebrating the seventy-fifth birthday of Herb Pomeroy, the director of the Festival Jazz Ensemble (FJE) when I was there. All the directors of this band and the Concert Jazz Ensemble (CJE), a feeder/training group for Herb's band, were there, including Everett Longstreth, who directed the CJE when I was there, and, Jamshied Sharifi, who wrote a beutiful chart, "The Quiet Words of the Wise," for Herb that the FJE played, with a solo by Herb on his trumpet. Most of the evening was the FJE led by each of the conductors, but there were enough alums to make two bands. Everett led a number from one of them and Herb led the one I played in. Then everybody, all seventy-some of us, played an arrangement of C-Jam Blues for the finale. Rich Orr (scroll down) sat next to me and played some incredible, high and quick, trombone solos. I discovered that one of my trombone-playing buddies in school now lives a couple of miles from where I work. Small world.
# GeekWithA.45 - And A Hearty Fuck You Goes To... - why the Geek will never again darken the doors of a Best Buy store. [geekwitha.45]