“Oh my god It’s my turn,” were the thoughts running through my head before I started playing.
On Friday, April 4, the Notre Dame Jazz Ensemble came to Mount Carmel to play for the school, and while they were here they allowed some guys like me the opportunity to play along with them.
The instrument classes were made aware several months in advance that Notre Dame would be coming to MC and that we would get to play with them.
The song that we practiced was “That’s Life” by Frank Sinatra, and it was also one of two tunes played during the opening night of the Barry Hughes Performing Arts Center (BHPAC).
I only touched a saxophone for the first time in late August, and being asked by Mr. Perlberg to solo in front of the school was very scary for me. However, I had also done a solo on the same song during the opening of the BHPAC, so I had some experience.
The MC Jazz Ensemble had also spent several months practicing “That’s Life” so we all knew the song by heart when it came time. The collegiate musicians, however, learned it in the half-hour span before the show.
“The Notre Dame guys looked at the stuff on the page and went, ‘Oh, got it’,” said Mr. KC Perlberg, music and fine arts teacher at MC. “Because it’s a language. If you drove by the stadium and saw Barda-Dowling Stadium, you wouldn’t have to look at it thirty times to figure it out right. Music can get to that level too and that’s what you saw on Friday.”
Getting to play with players of that level is an invaluable educational experience. The way they acted and how they worked together was very impressive.
“I was definitely impressed with how they could learn that song so fast,” said freshman James Weber. “It was easy though to play with them.”
I learned a lot about how important sight reading and timing is to a musician from them, and how it just makes working things out of the fly easier.
Another student who soloed was Aaron Hyler, on drums, and he only made up his solo just before the performance itself.
“It was pretty fun,” said Hyler. “We made that up that day. Mr. Perlberg asked me to do a solo, and then I made that solo up and was like, ‘Oh, I guess that will work.’ So, yeah, that was pretty fun. I got some compliments from the older kids, too, which was pretty nice. I didn’t know how they were going to act. They were pretty cool guys.”
Getting to meet and talk with collegiate music students was very fun, too. All of us met up and talked afterwards in the BHPAC.
“It was a great experience really,” said Hyler. “It was fun hanging out with some older kids and seeing how they did things. I definitely had fun playing and meeting new people.”
It was also a good insight into what studying an instrument in college could be like. I learned that the Notre Dame Jazz Ensemble only meets once a week for an hour to rehearse.
“I definitely want to do something like that,” said Hyler. “Especially with a schedule like that. They told me the Jazz Band meets once a week and then the drum guys told me the Drum Line meets once a week also. So I would definitely do something like that because it’s fun.”
I might try and join something similar when I go to college now that I know how much fun it could be.
Interestingly enough, almost all of the Notre Dame Jazz ensemble is made up of students who are not majoring in music.“It was interesting to me because none of them had music majors,” said Hyler. “This is actually like an extracurricular thing for them. I didn’t know if you had to be a music major. They said when they came to college they didn’t know what they know now and that they grew tremendously at the college.”
This will not be the last time the Notre Dame Jazz Ensemble comes to MC, and next year we might even be going to them.
“I just felt like there was this inspiration,” said freshman Eduardo Munoz. “It was pretty special.”
