Here's a representative example:
Thursday: I played the lead tenor chair with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra at Venkman's. Love this band! Great music and a great group of people.
Check out these excellent photos by Emily Butler Photography.
The big challenge for this particular show was a clarinet feature called Lorenzo's Wings that scared me to death--I'm not the most electrifying clarinetist, to begin with, and adding an improvised solo? Yikes! Rob asked me about it at the beginning of the year, so I spent a lot of time working on it (22 of the 24 days I had available), and...I played really well!
Friday: Back to Yacht Rock--got up and flew to Utah for a gig for AMC at the Sundance Film Festival. It's our third year playing the event, and fortunately, they moved the gig to a ballroom with an actual stage and better acoustics.
The major downside to this gig is the fact that it's a long flight, and then an even longer time of sitting around. The show began at 10 PM local time (midnight for our Atlanta body clocks), which made for a loooooooooong day.
The party was well attended by good looking people who danced all night, which helped. All things considered, we played really well!
However, this gig did have a video screen on the wall behind Mark Cobb (and one directly across the room from us) that played 70s music videos and commercials and stuff. I'm pretty sure I saw the same clip of Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers six times.
Also, CeeLo Green was there! I think he only showed up for the last twenty or thirty minutes. I guess he dug it, though.
And then we drove an hour back to Salt Lake City and slept for four or five hours.
Saturday: Got up and flew back to Atlanta. I had just enough time to go home, drop my luggage, pick up some different gear, eat, and head out to a rehearsal for a show I'm playing this week--a concert performance of the musical The Color Purple. My brain, surprisingly, did not turn to mush. I do love the challenge of playing the book, too. Flute, clarinet, and alto sax on this one.
Sunday: Yacht Rock played the Giving Kitchen's Team Hidi 8 event--it's a benefit to raise money to help injured/uninsured restaurant workers. We've played every one of them. While I fully support the cause, this room is a pretty awful place to put a band. The load in/out is almost as frustrating as the acoustics.
Anyway...once we got into it, everything was fine. I was home by 10:30 PM, and it paid a lot more than my church gig would have.
