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October 07, 2005
Slide Hampton's Phat Chords
These days, my only release from the grind of accounting study is the mighty NAU Trombone Choir, which rehearses a couple of times a week. It's a lot of fun -- there are 12 trombones in the group, most but not all of them performance majors (one is a piano major), and it's under the direction of Pete Vivona, who has a varied background in classical music and jazz. Among other things, he had a few lessons with one of my grand-teachers, Carmine Caruso, in the '60s.
Yesterday, we started looking at a chart I had stashed away in a box of sheet music. It's a Slide Hampton arrangement of "Body & Soul" for six trombones. It's probably my all-time favorite arrangement of anything, and I had a feeling Pete and the kids would like it.
The thing about Slide is that he writes a lot of very dense chords, which sound great if you get your ear around them and commit to the dissonances you're playing. It helps if you're familiar with Slide's playing and writing, from his "World of Trombones" ensemble recordings -- I grew up with the 1979 album, to the point where my LP copy was pretty worn out from being played so many times; but I'm not sure how many of the kids have heard it. It's going to take some work to get the choir to the point where we sound good on this chart, but I think we can do it.
Posted by Urbie at October 7, 2005 08:53 AM