[Dixielandjazz] Happy New Year, reply to Ginny

Bert Brandsma dixieorkest at hotmail.com
Sat Jan 2 11:52:26 PST 2010


Hello Ginny,
 
The music world in general often is pretty conservative. (Probably that's why you study music at Conservatory!) That is not only in trad. Jazz but the world of classical music has that even stronger.
Every now and then I encounter young people who have an ear to play trad. Jazz, but it is very difficult for them to find a band and to gain experience.
But the same thing counts for Female musicians. Our trombone player is the only woman in the Netherlands with a masters degree in Jazz trombone, but nobody invites her to help out when a bone player is needed. 2 years ago there was a trombone festival where a jazz piece with 60 trombonists was presented, she was not invited. Instead they preferred classical players who could not improvise at all and several of them had no swing timing at all. The sad thing about it was that it was in Rotterdam, where she only graduated 2 years before. Selena really is very talented....
 
A few years age, the leader of the Dutch Swing College band stated before a TV camera that there were no young musicians available who could play trad jazz on a pro level, so that's why he preferred people of 70 - 80 years of age.
 
The most popular TV piano player in our country was asked a few months ago why he had only men in his band, he answered, there are no women that can play professionally.....
 
I'm afraid that as long as people on such important positions simply can get away with this, nothing will change.
 
There have of course always been people who had other ideas. Woody Herman always attracted new young talents for his band.
But even when he invited a lady trumpetter in his band (early 1940's, Billie Rogers) one of the other trumpetters wouldn't play with her and left the band.
 
Till the 1960s there were no woman playing in symphony orchestras in this country. The Wiener Philhamoniker even had this situation till only a few years ago.
No women, no people from other countries allowed! The only reason this was changed is that Austria wanted to be a member of the European Union, the orchestra didn't want to change there insane policy, but had to.
 
As long as we musicians keep being so conservative, nothing will change. We will have to do it ourselves. Invite young players to sit in! Of course they will need some time to learn all the pieces, but give them a chance! A couple of chances is even better. The advantage is that in time they attract a new audience as well. Our drummer Lady, Lielian is the youngest member. She knows so many people, so on every concert there are some friends of her. That really is great. Helps other people realise that this music might be fun.
 
Kind regards,
 
Bert Brandsma

 

 


From: Gluetje1 at aol.com
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 13:43:24 -0500
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Happy New Year
To: dixieorkest at hotmail.com
CC: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com


Thanks, Bert!  What I see in the great clip you sent is primarily young musicians entertaining a young audience.  I will assume there were some mentors somewhere.  What a dream I have; i.e., old timers such as follow this list along with me will make it their personal responsibility to figure out how they can personally turn one young person onto OKUM.  Because I think we're mostly clueless as to how to create that phenomenon. 
 
Yes, yes, I know some of you are succeeding at just that.  So if you're in the choir, I'm not preaching to you.  But if you're doing nothing, I hope I pricked not your conscience, but your motivation.  It is an only slightly used year at this point, plenty of time to get underway.
 
Ginny
 

In a message dated 1/2/2010 11:20:19 A.M. Central Standard Time, dixieorkest at hotmail.com writes:
To start the year good I'll give a link from a video from the Breda Jazz festival where the bass saxophone gets a lot of attention.........



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtm3i5XixV8



Kind regards,



Bert Brandsma
 		 	   		  
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