Episode 2.4 - Choosing literature for your jazz band

Join me for the third of four episodes dedicated to the task of choosing appropriate literature for your ensembles. In this episode Paul Lucckesi from Fresno City College, Doug Hunt from the Tulare City School District, and Eric Ramirez from Hanford West High School will discuss their programs and offer advice for directors struggling with repertoire selection for their jazz bands.

Contacts:
Paul Lucckesi
Doug Hunt
Eric Ramirez

Show Links:
California Alliance for Jazz
Jazz Fresno
101 Jazz Songs
Learn Jazz Standards YouTube Channel
IRealPro App
Jamey Abersold
Jazz Conceptions Jim Snidero
Real Easy Book
E Jazz Lines
UNC Jazz Press

Episode 5 (November 15th) will cover concert band literature.

I'd like to thank Kings County Trophy and Engraving in Hanford for sponsoring this episode.

The Central Valley Music Educators Podcast is hosted by Rob Bentley. The show is available at:

www.cvmepodcast.com
www.youtube.com/centralvalleymusiceducatorspodcast
www.facebook.com/cvmepodcast
www.instagram.com/cvmepodcast

The Central Valley Music Educators Podcast is hosted by Rob Bentley. The show is available at:

www.cvmepodcast.com
https://www.youtube.com/@centralvalleymusiceducator
www.facebook.com/cvmepodcast
www.instagram.com/cvmepodcast

Transcript

Episode 2.4

 U1 

 0:10 

 This episode of the central valley music educators podcast is sponsored by King's County trophy and engraving in Hanford. Brandon Ainsworth and his family have been serving the Valley. Since 1s you've seen their awards for CMEA, CBDA and countless other organizations, they are ready to help you too. Visit them online@kctrophy.com. 20s Welcome to the Central Valley Music Educators Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Bentley. Joining us today will be Paul Luckessi from Fresno City College, Doug Hunt from Tulare City School District, and Eric Ramirez from Hanford West High School. I'm happy to have them on the show to continue our series on choosing a repertoire for your ensembles, be sure to follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, or wherever you download your favorite shows. You can always stop by our website at CVME Podcast.com and listen as well. 3s I'd like to welcome to the show Paula Casey, who is the director of Jazz Studies at Fresno City College, eric Ruby, who is the director of Ants at Hanford West High School, and Doug Hunt, who is a long time educator in the Tulare City School District. Welcome to the show, guys. Hey, Rob. Thank you for having me. Hi, Rob. It's been a long time. Good seeing you. Thank you for I'm honored to be here, so thank you. Hey, it's great to be here, Rob. Thanks. It's great to see Doug and Eric and hang out with you guys. Looking forward to this. Yeah, well, we've had some really successful episodes on choosing repertoire for orchestra and choir, and now we're moving on to jazz bands, which I've just so much enjoyed teaching jazz bands in my career. And I can't wait for this episode because I know we've got lots of experience here and great bands by all three of you. So let's start by getting a little bit into your background in jazz education. Paul, how about you? So I started teaching at Clubs East High School in 2000, and I ran the program, and I ran a jazz ensemble and then ran and had two by the time I left. I left there in 2004. Paul Shaghoian passed away, dear friend of everybody in the music community. And I took over at Buchanan High School and ran the jazz the junior high jazz program at Alt Sierra and then Buchanan High School for what I believe is 14 years. And then during that time, I was asked to direct the Monterey Jazz Festival honor groups. They had a county honor groups, and they had a high school band and they had a middle school band. So I drove up to Monterey every week and I directed those two bands. What else? I directed the first California Allstate Middle School Jazz Band a couple of years ago. I don't remember what year that was, but it was a while ago. And then I recently did the first ever and hopefully last virtual junior high allstate band, which was pretty wild because I never heard the kids play together until the finished product came out. So aside from that, now I'm working at Fresno City College. I've been here for since 2018 and direct the jazz studies program here at City College and try to be as active as I can in the community. That's me. All right, Rob. Thank you. I have a unique, I guess, background. I grew up around big bands. My dad was a trombone player in big bands, and big band was part of just the culture. So 1s I've started high school playing. I started middle school and high school. I went to Manache High School, went to Portable Junior College, played in the Studio band there with Buck Schaefer, and then went on to Fresno State and played with Larry Sutherland and started teaching into Larry and in 1990 and so it's been about 33 years of teaching. I've taught jazz bands. All middle school jazz bands. Started at Mok Middle School for. 1s For 13 years and then was at Los Tulis Middle School when they opened up that school for seven years. And I've been teaching elementary band and jazz band kind of mixed in between year to year. But that just grew up in Tolari and still playing in bands. And that's where I'm at. Definitely not as an extension sense of resume as my colleagues here, but I grew up here in Hamford and I attended Hamford West and I was under the direction of Lisa Butts. I went to Cos in Fresno State where I played in the journey at Cos. I believe Bill Butts was the director for a semester. And then Jazz Band was really short lived there. And now I'm in year six here at Hanford West. I have taught Intermediate Jazz Band, which is my jobs band B, and then my Advanced Jazz Band, which is Jazz Band A. So, Eric, tell us about some of the things that you like to hit on at the beginning of the year. I know that you draw from several local school districts, so what are some things that you do to evaluate your talent at the beginning of the year? I have two different approaches for my beginning ensemble. I like to go over just the fundamentals how to articulate. We talk about vowels, we talk about different styles and grooves. And so I give them the foundation because these kids that come into my B band have never been in jazz. They're either a student that is on a secondary instrument or they've never played an adjustment but want to be in jazz band. And so this is their first exposure. And so, like I said, there's a lot of call and response. We say, the do and boss of the jazz world and we clap them and then we play them. And then we go through our scales, as many scales as we can possibly handle. We start off with our lovely contributing scale and we move on. And I kind of gauge how fast the students are picking on the scales and of course, the vows that we're trying to get them to say. And then my A band is a different story. We have a dancebook that we have set for the year and so we kind of just start sight reading music on day one. We'll start off with our easier charts and we'll start to move on to some of our heavy hitters in our dance book. And I'll take a gauge of who my strong improvisational students are, where we are as far as lead players and who being able to keep up with the repertoire. And then I'll just I could gauge what level were at and then I can start picking concert and set lists and festivals at least from that. How about you, Paul? I think for me, from which perspective? So, like, probably in middle school, I just did a lot of stuff by earlier, pretty much everything by ear and playing ideas by ear and then going in different keys by ear and then reverse engineering tunes that way. So like, I would teach the tunes by ear and then tell them and then pass out music. Maybe not. Maybe we did some tunes for a while where I didn't pass anything out, I just did it by ear. And then eventually, like, you pass music, I can go, this is what we've been working on. And then some of those kids make the connection because some have more experience with music notation than others. And so much of it for me is about feel. So I stopped making a jump into literature immediately kind of a number of years ago. High school? Yeah, same kind of thing. A lot of stuff by ear, maybe a tune or two to work on and kind of see what's going on. And then even now at City College, I mean, a lot of stuff we do because I'll do auditions in the second week, so I want to try to front load as much as I can because there are still students that have never played in a jazz ball. And the audition music that I'll post will be available to students and then I'll do those in the second week. But probably at the very beginning. It's mostly ear training stuff, just like, okay, this is the chord, this is what we're playing. And I teach improv very similar. It's a lot of ear stuff. 1s Alright, Rob. I love to add to what I do on this in tilleri when we start 7th graders in jazz band. It's their second year of playing an instrument, and for rhythm section players, it's like most of them, it's their first year. So I think it's really important to, like Paul said, play learn tunes by ear, but also to just constantly read. I kind of take pride in sight reading. Reading. Constantly reading. Reading. If it's only like two measures or if it's four measures or it's an eight measure thing. I bought this book that I had maybe the last five or six years. It's called 101 jazz songs. And I think it's how Leonard put it out. And it's just 101 standards. And they're all within the range of basically an 8th grader. 1s So the 7th graders may have to push stretch a little bit, but I start the beginning. We learn eight bars of a tune, of a jazz tune standard, and then I play recordings of that standard so they can hear it. We all know that. 1s Without understanding what it's supposed to sound like. Okay, well, I'll go back to this. When I came out of Fresno State, I had this mindset that it's so important when you sight read or read music that they don't hear what it's supposed to sound like first. They're supposed to interpret it themselves, but they have no background knowledge of what it's supposed to sound like. Like it's a losing battle. So at the beginning of the year, we're listening to everything that I can find. I'm trying to get the kids to like jazz at the beginning of the year. It's hard to get a kid to like anything, but just to expose it to them, that's the first step. And so I remember when I was a kid, the kind of music that I listened to and I enjoyed was Count Basi. So Count Bassie is like the very first thing I play. And we're trying to emulate that big band sound in the classroom setting. So lots of listening to Basi, playing standards, learning tunes in different styles and just reading every day. And maybe one tune will get us through the first couple of weeks because it's maybe a heavy tune. So maybe something as simple as CJ blues or something. Just start by ear and then start reading. So anyway, that's how I start there. The year is divided up into so many segments. The beginning of the year, to me, is so important to not push it, not to go fast, not try to cramp tunes down their throat. 2s And Paul said it perfectly just to get him to play the right style, the right group articulations. Eric said, very important. Kids don't understand articulations. They're not taught articulations, jazz articulations in the elementary school. So just getting them to hear it first and then see it and read it and that step. Yes, that was really good. I always tell the kids, whose your favorite? I asked the kids, who s your favorite skateboarder? What tricks do they do? How do you learn how to do that trick? And they're always real quick to name off, you know, the latest trick or you know, the latest thing. And I said, how did you find out about that? Oh, YouTube. 2s And here it comes. Okay. There's a lot of jazz examples on YouTube, and so I spend time showing them recordings in class. I take time, I do assign outside stuff, use Google Classroom and send stuff out that way. But I know that giving them the resources like YouTube and different spotify lists and stuff, there's so many resources out there that these kids have that I wish I would have had when I was getting into this. These kids are very fortunate. So on that topic of resources, Doug, you had mentioned the 100 jazz tunes. Paul, what are some other resources that students can use? I know we always talked about the Abrasale, but there's lots of stuff out there for high school and junior high level. What's a good resource for the directors to get? 1s I like the YouTube channels like learn jazz standards, and they have backing tracks for a lot of tunes that's in YouTube. I think that's pretty cool. 2s The Ireal Pro is an app for your phone that has a whole bunch of backing tracks to jazz standards. And I would way rather have played along with that than nothing. You know, like, if you don't have the Jamie, which a lot of people maybe they do, maybe they don't, I don't know. That's like something that you can instantly pull, you know, if you do CGM Blues or whatever, you do Blue Boss or some standard a backing track like on your phone of some of those recordings is super helpful. 4s I also really like Jim Snydero's jazz conception book like that series. The thing I like about it is it's got the written over tunes so they're contrafacts of tunes that exist out in the wild and then there's a rhythm track and then there's a track with Jim playing or someone playing that instrument. So if you get the tenor SAXX book there's like Walt Weiskoff playing it who is a phenomenal tenor player and so you can use it to sight read, you can put it on with the track and you can sight read, you can record yourself playing it 1s and then you can listen back and see what you did wrong and then you can play along with them. So I mean, I think those are supplemental things 1s I've used like how Leonard's series, I think it's got a red cover and it just has standards in it. I've used that, I've used the Real Easy book and there's like a three horn version of that in addition to just like lead sheets, there's like arrangements, so probably more since the pandemic. I've recommended those kinds of things to people when their instrumentation is not right for a big band, yet they still want to do big band literature that has all these voices with all the voices are missing. So it's like do some Threehorn stuff. I think those are some ones that I really like. So Eric, when you pass out new tunes to your band, of course you've probably heard the reference recording of it before, but how do you approach as Doug said, you want to expose them to the style, but do you play the demonstration recordings for them or do you play similar pieces? How do you approach that? So my teacher, Lisa Butts always and she's my mentor and she continues to tell me this every single day when I speak to her about jazz, she always encourages us or me to play music for the kids. So when the kids come in, just play some charts for them and 1s I like to have them listen to different styles depending on what we're going to do, especially if they're new, right? Like if the kids are in Jazz band B and they aren't really used to a swing where we're getting them to try and groove and like the music, right? And so we'll listen to stuff in the beginning, but if I'm passing out a chart and I don't necessarily pay the chart for them right off the bat, I do like to go through some site reading stuff with them first. So that allows me to assess their ability to. 1s Read the rhythms and interpret articulations and we'll get through the chart and then once they're done, then I'll play the actual MP3 recording for them so they can hear what it's supposed to sound like. If it's my a band, I'll record them fight reading and then I'll pay that back to them and then I'll go back to MP3 and show them what it's supposed to sound like off the bat. But yeah, I don't necessarily like to go to have them listen to the truck first and then play the tune. I think they should find a tune first, then the track, but definitely have them listen to similar styles, at least to get them previewed to what's about to happen. And that's what I was talking about without that background knowledge. When I first started teaching, I thought every kid was going to love music just as much as I love music. And so when it just hit me hard that I had, it was like I was a used car salesman. I was selling this product. I think when it comes down to if you love the music and you show the love for the music with the kids and you show enthusiasm, I can't wait to show you this song. And I'll be driving I have XM radio and I listen to jazz in the morning and I'm driving to school and I'll often hear a song, I'm like, oh, I got to show this to the kids. So I'll YouTube it. I think 1s it catches fire. The kids start to know that I'm loving it. They start loving it and then they share it with their friends and it's out of control. Some years, like I'm talking to a wall. But I think most of the time these kids can pick up that jazz is cool, jazz is fun, and you're allowed to like it and you're allowed to have fun at school. So all those things are really important. So I just wanted to throw that in there. Yeah, that's called passion. And the kids can read that. Definitely. So, Doug, as you said, you've been teaching Jazz man for a while, and I know that we could probably have a whole separate episode on Doug Hunt's selections over the years, but we have a lot of new directors listening to the show, and they might enjoy hearing some of your favorite tunes that you've taught over the years. Maybe pick one or two of them that you really, really is a go to year after year. Well, Rob, that's not going to happen. I can't do it one or two a little bit more now. But I was kind of thinking about this. Like I talked about, the year is 1s like little segments of the year beginning. We've been talking about the beginning of the year. I want to throw this name out there for beginning of the year stuff. I always start my year part of the beginning of the year. I buy tunes from Mike Porter. Mike Porter wrote a lot of tunes, mainly for that 7th grade, 8th grade year, where they don't have a lot of experience. And when I bought his tunes, they didn't have articulations written on anything. I'm like, I just can't figure this out. These tunes don't are not hip to me. And then I started thinking, wait a minute, he did that on purpose. 1s And so I would go through a tune and I'd write the articulations in on the kids parts, and we'd use that as a teaching tool. This is a dot, whatever, and then swing. I went and watched Paul teaches kids at one of his schools years ago. Just the singing back, the do Vadoo Vadoo Vadoo, the swing style. He's so good at teaching those kids through vocalizing it, and so I learned that from Paul. But anyway, the Mic Quarter tunes I want to throw, that the beginning of the year, I do that. I bought this set of music called First Place for Jazz. Dean Sorenson wrote those, that set, and those are really great method book where it breaks down like the bass player is going to play this grew and the drum set is going to play this grew, and it gets the rhythm section going, and it teaches the head of the tune, and the teacher has a solo section, and it just breaks down everything in logical order. It's really good for teachers that maybe don't have a jazz background, so it's laid out really well. So I'm doing that at the beginning of the year. Then I get into my festival time, right? So I want to buy some festival tunes. And I swear, every year it's like somebody else that I'm liking. I play in different bands. I hear from people what's working. I go and I hear, Paul's band. Sorry, Paul, I cheat. When you were doing Middle School Band, I would go on YouTube and find out, what did Paul Lucasy play? And he'd be out in some park somewhere playing a tune, and I'd listen to it and I'd go on JW. Pepper. Everybody knows JW Pepper. That's where it's so easy to buy everything there. So I'd go on and say, yeah, that's cool. And I'd buy tunes through listening to people I respect, and music choices that they like, I know are quality. So Kurt Clegg, he came and did an honor band on a jazz band for Takinia here in Tari Kings County. And he turned me on to this composer, Patty Darling. Patty Darling is like right now. I bought a lot of her tunes. I love, love her. The voicings and the textures, and it's just really hip. And she can write for junior high, too. High school. 2s I wish he was still alive. But Fred Stern wrote, like, amazing tunes. Mostly high school and upper level college. But he did write some middle school tunes, and so I bought his music. So anyway, those are just a few mike CAMF. Obviously everybody is playing mike came off tunes. But those are really good tunes. Anyway, those are just a few. Paul 2s again, one of the things that I always find on JW. Pepper, and I've read a lot of articles about this, and it's what they're pushing as far as publishers, composers, Rangers. But other than JW. Pepper. What are some great places that we can find composers that are writing quality material? Yes, 2s I like JW. Pepper. And I make it a point even now, I mean, I make it a point to go through everything that is released. A lot of times. The Editor's Choice a lot of the time. That's a great place to start if you don't have enough time to go through everything. But I find myself in the summer, in July, going through everything that's out and anything that I like, anything that sounds good to me, I'll put it on a list. I want to buy this. I want to think about buying this. And I kind of run that way. And it depends. And sometimes my thoughts align with the Editor's Choice, and I'm like, yeah, man, I like this. And a lot of times it doesn't. A lot of times. It's like, man, I'm not really I'm not really feeling that. I really like a jazz lines. Those the people that run that organization do an incredible job. And they have PDFs and stuff, and they have the Gamut. I mean, they have, like, all kinds of things and even, like. 1s Like Sinatratra stuff with orchestra. I mean, you can get whatever whatever you want to do. And then I like Sierra Music as well. I think that's a really good publisher. And then 1s what else? Yes, like UNC. That's probably not as much, I think. Who has Patty's music? 1s It's one of those two. I mean, I think you can get it through JW Pepper, but her music may be on Sierra. It's Sierra music. There are two on JW Pepper too, but yes. Sierra music. Yeah, so, I mean, those are the usual places, but I'll go through everything. JW Pepper does a nice job of, like, being a clearing house for everything that comes out. So I usually start there, and then if I can't, after I'm done with Pepper stuff, I'll go listen to all the other what's the Sierra offering? 1s So that's me. Yeah. You have to be willing to dig deep. That's the thing. Once you get past the first few pages and actually looking in deep in the editor's choice and those types of things, I want to throw something out for the old guys out there. If there's any old guys listening to a podcast in the olden days days. 2s Rob, you might remember this shot fires. We'd have to go to Byron Hoitz. Yegan. Through the sheet music there, not having any clue what it was supposed to sound like, just trying to use our inner ear, trying to figure out what it was, if it was hip or not, and if anybody out that remembers Byron Hoy. Good times. Those are some good trips. 4s Hey, Eric, you're up next. You ready? So you've been a director, would you say seven years now? Seven years. Six years. Okay. So 1s you get to go first on this one. So you're starting out teaching high school jazz band, and you had a piece in your mind that, yes, I'm a high school jazz director. I want to teach this tune to my kids. And then it was like an epic fail. Or maybe after a few rehearsals you figured that out, but maybe you made it to festival. What was that tune? Yeah, so you graduate college and then you get your first gig, and then you want to play all your favorite teams that you played when you were in high school or when you were in a jazz ensemble. Because for me, that's all I knew, right? I didn't know how to prepare or look for literature. I was just like, what's in my library that I inherited? And let's find some tunes. And so I found something that I remembered. And so my first year, we played Spell. It's a George stone. It was by George Stone. And so it's a tough tune, it's a Latin tune. And 2s I handed out to the kids and we played it, and it was scary, but I said, you know what, there's plenty of time to do it. We listen, we listen to it. And we were definitely under pressure. And I took it to festival and 2s we crashed and burned a couple of times. And I had some judges tell me that this is probably a little bit too hard for you. My trumpet players just were eager to play because it has all the great high notes, right? Especially my lead trumpet players. I was like, alright, buddy, for you, it's your senior year. But I had great mentors that I called in to help me out. And so we eventually put it together. It took us much, much longer. I think we play the tune the entire year, and by the end of the year for our CMA festival, we did well. 2s And well meaning. We didn't crash and burn and I didn't get too but too bad I didn't get roasted by the judges as bad as I thought I was going to get right. I've got a story. I don't know if this is interesting to anybody else, but it really cracks me and it cracks me up every time I think about it. But I came out of Fresno State thinking, oh, my gosh, I can do all this. I can do pathine's, first circle. I could do it with middle school kids. I could do anything. 6s Paul shaggyanne was always the judge at every festival I went to. Thank God he loved me because 1s he helped me feel better about myself. But I remember I arranged I was really in when I was in high school. I was really into Maynard Ferguson. Maynard Ferguson was the god for me and Birdland. I love Birdland and I was going my middle school band was going to play Birdland so I couldn't find any arrangements of it. So I say, I'm going to transcribe my own arrangement of Birdland. So I wrote it up, spent nights staying up. This is going to be so hip hop. Chaguan is going to love it. 1s And then it was just epic. 2s I can't even describe it on a podcast. You can't understand how bad it was, but it was bad. But again, he made me feel better. I learned I'm that guy. I'm on this podcast because I'm that guy that has made every mistake. And I just listening to Paul Lucasie talked about, hey, when I'm judging jazz festivals, I don't care if it's too easy. I want them to play the style right? And I want them to play the tune. And he said, I'll never criticize a director for bringing in a tune that's too easy but too hard. I do that all the time. I'm still doing that. I have this high lofty goals that I'm going to get to this point. 4s I think probably we've all been in there. But I'll never do the birdland. I'll never list in the birdland again. It's like deleted off my podcast list or my napster list or whatever. So anyway, that's my story. 1s Hey, Paul. So you can come at this from two angles. Obviously, Doug just referenced being an Adjudicator, and I'm sure you had lots of good times there with your fellow adjudicators. Listening to some of these tell us a little bit about maybe that side of things. For me, I find myself saying this a lot, and it's something that I came to on my own 1s when I started teaching. I wasn't adjudicating, but pretty quickly on, I was asked, like, hey, can you come out and say some stuff? And so for me, I don't know anybody that says that. I don't know anybody that says this piece is too easy for you. I don't know anybody that I work with or anybody that writes or any adjudicators or jazz musicians or anybody that I know that would ever say that. Like, the simplest thing only allows you to make more music out of it. It only allows you to have more people solo over it. It only allows you more freedom. The opposite of that is when your blood pressure is high, you don't have enough rehearsal time. You haven't picked soloists, you're going to get pinched, and you look at your calendar, and then all of a sudden, October is already gone, and there's a rally, and you don't rehearse, and then there's another rally, so you never have enough breathing room when you're super lofty. But if you do pick a piece like that, I always found myself always picking something that I knew was really conceptually going to be incredibly difficult, but 1s we would take forever on it and see what would happen. And I mean and I'm talking, like, you know, like, Bob Brookmeyer's music and, like, John Hollandbeck's music and some really, really difficult music that would fit my band. Not you know, I feel like I went after there's a two called Horn of Puente that Gordon Goodwin arranged, and I had a crazy lead trauma, a player that had, like, ACC in high school, and we started it. And then I go, you know, one day I just go, you know what? 1s Yeah, I think we're going to put this one aside. I don't think this is for the band, because it's not about just that one kid. It was like, the rest of the band is like dying too, so I just made a decision on that. Nothing to get that tune. There's probably plenty of bands out there that can play that, or maybe not, who knows? But for me, it was like, is this worth the time invested? And if it's just it takes up all that time, 1s sometimes it's worth it and sometimes it's not. So I would say, like Kenny Rogers teaches us, you got to know when to hold them and you got to know when to fold them. And I've done both. I'm like, we're going to rock this thing all the way out. And then sometimes I'll cut my losses and go, 2s one funny story I had was, I remember listening to a tune, a demo for just the intro of the tune, and I go, Gosh, this tune is fantastic. I bought it, we played it, we passed it out, we played the intro, I go, man, this is so great. And then we got to the actual tune and it was terrible, and I go, oh, my gosh, I got to return this tune. I've never done that before. But I was like, we're not going to play this, so listen all the way through if you can, if they have a recording of it anyway. 3s That's my thought about from an adjudicator standpoint. You'll give yourself a lot more breathing room if you do one tune that's difficult. 2s It's going to be that one. Then plan appropriately if you're going to do a grade three or whatever with your middle school band. Or grade four or whatever other stuff should be. Should not weigh as much. So that it's easier to get through a set of music if everything is an opener or everything's a closer. And then what's that like for the listener? Like, it's a little bit of a drink from a fire hose kind of stuff, too. 1s Yeah, this is all super awesome stuff, man. I wish we could go on for the rest of the afternoon, but I know you guys are busy and I know our listeners certainly appreciate your input. I'd like to thank you guys for coming on the show. Doug, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Rob. I have just one thing I would like to say to before we go, because I know there's a lot of young I would hope there's a lot of young music teachers, jazz teachers out there listening to this. Get involved with our organization jazz organizations. CAJ Jazz Fresno Jazz Education Network. Jen, go to conferences whenever you can. I've learned so much from local 1s musicians, professional musicians going to these conferences. Jazz Fresno every year, once or twice they'll do something for our local educators. 1s I know so many people that want to learn to teach jazz, some young teachers, but maybe don't want to spend that Saturday to go to the conference. If you go and put yourself out there and learn as much as you can, you'll love it. 1s Exponentially comes back at you. The joy of it. So also. 2s Have mentors. Like Eric said with Lisa, I've had a mentor my whole career. Susan Burley. Susan Burley, she's been there for me. I've learned from her. So grab on to people that you respect and get involved. So that's my closing comments. And again, thank you, Rob, for asking me to be on us. How about you, Eric? I agree with everything Doug just said. First of all, I'm honored to be here with you guys, and I don't consider myself 4s just a jazz educator. 2s My schedule is packed with other stuff, but I want to be good at what I do, and I want to be able to give my kids 1s a good education and especially jazz education. So 1s for those new teachers out there who might be listening, you're coming out of college, and there's a pride thing that I feel a lot of new teachers have when they first get out and they don't want to ask for help because they think that they can do it, and you definitely can. But if judge isn't your forte and I don't feel like it is for me, use your resources around you. Use the people that adjudicate. Use the people who are who. You go to a festival and you're listening to a bunch of groups and you see a director that has a fantastic program and trying to network with those directors and link up, because if there's anything I've learned is that at least in the jazz community, if you reach out to some folks, folk are going to be willing to help you out. If you reach out, people will help you and they'll give you their ideas. And if it works out for you, great. And if it doesn't, then find the next person over. But don't be afraid to ask for help. Do your networking. Go take advantage of the resources. Go to conferences. Listen to as much as you can. I'm still growing. I'm growing every single day. There are things that I do with my jazz band that Paul would say on my tapes, and I'm like, oh, that's awesome. I'm going to write it down. I got to do this every single time now. And so you collect these nuggets of information from these great people and it'll make you a stronger educator. I love it. Yeah. We are the sum total of all we take in, man. So the more you steal from people, I mean, that's jazz in a nutshell, right, man, where'd you get that lick, man? I don't know. I stole it from this recording I listened to. In addition, all the things that I've heard, which I think are fantastic, the fresh ears, I think, is really important. 1s You get wrapped up. Your own ego gets rid wrapped up in your music. So the more you can get away from that good record it. Listen to it like it's not you. That's a great tip, getting fresh ears on it. It's good. I would throw. 1s One other thing would be when Honor Bands are meeting, 1s And it may be a professional development thing if you have to swing it that way to get away from your job. When the allstate bands start rehearsing, like when the middle school allstate banner, the high school allstate band starts rehearsing, go to that rehearsal. Go to, like, hi, everybody, I'm your conductor here. I'm going to run this band because you can learn so much from that icebreaker. For me, seeing Fred Stern rehearse doug seeing Fred Stern rehearse that band when he did the allstate band a couple of years ago kind of changed everything about everything for me. And I'm going to judge at his festival tomorrow in Wisconsin. And I want to start crying because it's such a life changing thing that we have people like this in town, too, and, you know, like Mike Dana and Richard Gibbs that you reach out to and Kirk Clegg Now and Les Newns and Lisa Butts, these are all people that at the drop of a hat will come and work with your band. So the resources are definitely there, but I would say check out those, the local ones, too. Like whoever's doing Tequila Honor jazz bands and whoever's doing Fresno Madeira jazz bands, those are all things that I'm always interested in, like what they pick when you do that, too, rob you'll publish all the music that everyone played over the course of the festival. That's really important. I do that when I'm judging. Like, I make a note of, oh, man, I'm going to go revisit this, and then I have a list of things that I liked and then just kind of work from that list. But that's one that some people get into with the allstate thing, but not I don't feel like I think people want to go to the concert, but I want to know what's behind the curtain. So, like, that's a way to get in there. And most of the time they're not going to care. And I feel like those are kind of life changing opportunities to check people out who are really good. 1s Yeah, that's what's that for me. That's what excites me so 2s those guys are such great friends. I appreciate them coming on the show more than you know. I'll be sure to leave their contact information and the show notes. I'd like to thank Kings County Trophy and Engraving at Hanford for sponsoring this episode of the Central Valley Music Educators Podcast. I hope you've been enjoying the show. If you have an idea, comment or question, be sure to shoot me a message and I'd be happy to hear from you. Follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube or wherever you download your favorite shows. You can always stop by the website@cvmepodcast.com and listen as well. Join us next week on the show when we finish our four part series on choosing Reference Tour for your ensembles with a special band edition. Have a great week.