The community band has been on vacation since the Christmas concert in early December. During that off period I have been diligently working on my fundamentals like tone, articulation, sight reading, scales and lots of lip slurs. I could already hear a difference in my recordings but I was anxious to see how that hard work would pay off when I played with the band again.

The answer was extremely positive. We did a lot of sight reading and straight playing on our first day back and hung in like a trooper and in may cases was able to focus on sound production instead of stumbling over passages. Don’t get me wrong – there are some pieces that are going to require some intense shedding but there is definitely an improvement.

I went buckwild buying CDs in the past few days. I purchased Irvin Mayfield’s “Half Past Autumn Suite”, Joe Henderson’s “In ‘n Out” (with K.D. on trumpet) and a few CDs by Booker Little. I’m also trying to find Jeremy Pelt’s new CD “Insight” which is sure to be tight. I’m very anxious to digest them all. I will share the reviews of course so stay tuned for that.

It has been really cold this week and I managed to split my lip pretty good. I?m going to have to take it easy for a few days but there is no way I can stay away from the horn while I wait for it to heal. I just need to be more careful about protecting my mouth.