David Freeman Music

January 15-22: Marietta, GA. It's show time! I spent this week playing the reed one book for the musical Assassins by Stephen Sondheim. All four reed books (twenty-one instruments between the four of us!) were played by wind players--a rarity for smaller theaters where at least two of these books end up being "faked" by a second keyboardist. It sounded soooo cool!  The strangest thing in my book was a harmonica part (who plays piccolo, flute, clarinet, soprano sax, and...harmonica?). After a few discussions with the music director, I got the go ahead to play the part on melodica. Yay! Here are some highlights from the dress rehearsal, beginning with one of my harmonica/melodica solos.  Here's a nifty thing I did for this show: I made a peg extension for my piccolo to bring its height up even with the other instruments. It makes it much easier to pick up and put down without having to look down in the dark.  It's just a fifteen inch piece of PVC with some bolts i...

Here we go! December 1, 2022: Atlanta, GA. I played a little quartet gig for an awards ceremony for home renovations. It was nuts, because the winners would be "The winner for 2022's best mudroom renovation is So and So Designs, who spent $112,000 on cabinets and a bench and expensive tile floor in this gorgeous Morningside Mansion!" Over and over. Big, insane budgets. $80,000 man cave kind of stuff. A renovation to your three car garage at your cabin at Lake Hartwell.  Anyway, the gig was pretty cool. I thought it was going to be a jazz standards kind of thing, but it ended up being more eclectic, like instrumental versions of Stevie Wonder songs. I played an hour of solo saxophone for the cocktail hour, and that was my big chance to wear myself out playing over standards. Friday, December 2, 2022: New York. The next day, it was off to the airport, headed to LaGuardia.  Night one at The Paramount on Long Island was packed, and as usual, a really good vibe.  Saturday, D...