Okay, a quick update… Last night we drove to Tian Jin to perform. The drive was an adventure in itself. During the daytime our bus driver essentially honks at every vehicle in his way, and since we’re usually going faster than everyone else, this means a near constant rhapsody of bus horn. Not too conducive to sleep! On the drive home he switched to flashing the brights – quite a hair-raising ride, on top of the hair-curling visit to the rest stop. When we arrived in Tian Jin the jazz band rehearsed while I worked on fixing Wills’s tenor. We all really appreciate the opportunity to play through and talk about the tunes we’ve been performing, because every chance we have to tighten something up makes us more excited to perform again. Wills and I skipped dinner to continue working on his horn, and with the help of Charlie Geyer we got the thing working – a small miracle for sure, and a relief to all of us because he’s been playing so beautifully. For the first time on the trip the big band took the second half of the concert, and I’m proud to say that we rocked! The audience was genuinely interested and enthusiastic and wanted another tune at the end of our set. I panicked because I thought we were out of tunes, but the kids quickly reminded me that we hadn’t played Sing Sing Sing. John Fatum took us through a rousing version of the tune (I played from memory because I foolishly left my music off stage) and the crowd loved it.
The highlight of the concert for me was seeing all the Chinese kids in the audience bobbing along to the music. Jazz is still quite new here, and this was likely the first time any of them had heard a live jazz band. I know they will remember those awesome American kids playing jazz when they hear it again later in life.Nic
