Adam Cole: Arfing Startist

Hi, AC Watchers, One of the great privileges remaining to us in this modern world is to watch unrepeatable events as they are happening. You can watch replays of amazing events all day long on YouTube, but to say you were there...

Last night I attended a unique event: A live CD recording by Joe Gransden's Big Band, a 16-piece jazz orchestra. It'll be called "It's a Beautiful Thing at Cafe 290." It'll be available at www.joegransden.com. You're going to want to buy this one.

For the last year Joe's been holding sway at Cafe 290 on the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month. He's been getting his group tight enough to pull this stunt off. Hard, you say? To record an album in a month is hard. To record an album in a night is suicide! You'd need the best recording engineer, the best sound guy, the best audience...oh, and you might need the best musicians in town. Well, let's see:

Among the saxophone players was Grammy Award Winning Mace Hibbard and Atlanta Legend Sam Skelton. Trombonists included the patriarch of the entire Trombone community, Dr. Tom Gibson, and young Wes Funderburk, whose brilliant big-band arrangements made up most of the music played. In the trumpet section was Gordon Vernick, director of Georgia State University's jazz program. The rhythm section included three of the finest session players in the country, Justin Varnes on drums, Neal Starkey on bass, and Dr. Geoffrey Hayden (my teacher) on piano. Hey, that's just half of them.

What blows one's mind about this situation is that you have a room full of LEADERS all playing together. Where were the egos? Nowhere to be found. Here we have a situation where all these top-notch musicians are cutting gems out of pure diamond LIVE. They'd be forgiven for just sounding clean. But no, they were sweating bullets! They wanted to sound good for Joe. No, wait! They wanted to make Joe SOUND GOOD.

That says a lot about their fearless leader. When you're doing something crazy like recording devilishly difficult music in front of a live crowd, the temptation is to play it safe because any mistakes are going to be there forever, or are going mean hours of correction work in the studio later. Most leaders would lose their lunch in that situation, or at least their sense of humor. Not this guy, Joe. He never forgot it was supposed to be fun, swinging, a show. And it was! When the band didn't do it perfect, he just let us know they were going to do a piece of it again, and he asked us to help him out. It was exciting being part of that process, like being in on the game. As an audience member, I wanted to help Joe sound good too!

This session was hot, fun, and LIVE, and all that will come out in a couple of months. Pick it up! You're going to feel like you're there.