Jasper Clarke Project
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Long time readers of this blog will perhaps remember my 2010 "Jasper Clarke" recording project. For newbies I'll do a brief recap.
Jasper Clarke was a bassist/composer from Vancouver, Canada who died of a brain tumor in 2010, at the age of 49. Jasper and I met as students in 1991 in the Jazz and Commercial Music program at Vancouver Community College and very quickly developed a close personal and professional relationship.
Overhaul
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Those of you who play woodwind instruments (and despite its metal construction, a saxophone is technically a woodwind) know what a hassle maintaining its numerous moving parts is. There are literally hundreds of springs, levers, felts, pads, corks and rods on a saxophone, any one of which can break or fall off at any time. Long term wear usually consists of felts and corks compressing and thus no longer functioning within their extremely fine tolerances, and leather pads (which seal the tone holes) becoming cracked after repeated soaking by condensation during the act of playing the instrument. The result is increasingly inefficient seals on the tone holes, making it harder to get notes to speak.
Season's Greetings
| Beast of the Season to you and yours!
Our Man in New Orleans
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Hard at Work/State of the Tenor Address.
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2012-11-05
I'm now up to four days a week steady at the Maison Bourbon with Dwayne Burns and his New Orleans Band, specifically tuesday and wednesday nights from 7:30p.m. to 12:15a.m., and friday and saturday afternoons from 3:30p.m. to 8:15p.m. That shakes out to five forty-five minute sets per gig; long hours and short pay, but the up side is that it's steady and covers my basic bills, and the early hits on weekends leaves me the option for subsequent gigs later in the evening. Case in point, this past saturday's "second line" brass band gig at a wedding. |