[Dixielandjazz] Do subs de-legitimize a band?

[Bert Brandsma]

Using a sub now and then couldn't be bad.Ben Webster even subbed at a Duke Ellington recording session in 1935. Well we know what happened 5 years later.
You cannot ask a professional organisation like Ellington's to not play when someone is ill.It is simply a business that needs to go on. Every pro symphony orchestra uses subs. So why not in Jazz???I subbed with the Chris Barber band in March and will do it again tomorrow.Still it definitly will be the Chris Barber band!http://youtu.be/VaYW8B4zXugKind regards,Bert Brandsma

> From: barbonestreet at earthlink.net
> Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 09:38:06 -0400
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Do subs de-legitimize a band?
> CC: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
> To: mister_bertje at hotmail.com
> 
> A while back, we had a thread about the use of subs in a band. Some  
> musicians felt that by doing so, you could no longer use the band's  
> name to accurately describe the band. That the use of subs some how  
> made it a pick-up band. Some bands refuse gigs if one regular can't  
> make it. They deride Barbone Street and other bands that occasionally   
> books two gigs in the same time slot  and uses 3 regulars and 3 subs  
> in each band, for somehow cheating the customer.
> 
> Other musicians and bands felt that if the subs are competent  
> musicians, then the customers get good music which is what they  
> bargained for. That individual musicians and bands think far too much  
> of their ability compared to that of subs
> 
> Fans are also split on the issue.  Some say  it doesn't matter and  
> others say the use of even one sub was disappointing to them.
> 
> What can happen when a sextet uses 4 subs? Below is an interesting  
> example.
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
> www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband
> 
> 
> For a Sextet’s Substitutes, a Chemistry Test
> 
> NY TIMES - By STEVE SMITH - May 10, 2011
> 
> The effect that substitute players can have on an ensemble’s character  
> probably varies according to the size of the group in question.  
> Orchestras use subs on a regular basis, sometimes for extended  
> periods, with no great impact on corporate identity. But for full-time  
> chamber groups, consistent chemistry is a key attribute. It would be  
> hard to imagine a prominent string quartet, for instance, soldiering  
> on for more than a few outings with a pinch-hitter.
> 
> With that in mind, you could quibble over whether a concert by the  
> string sextet Concertante at Merkin Concert Hall on Monday evening was  
> billed accurately. One member left the group last season and has yet  
> to be replaced. Two others had scheduling conflicts. A fourth, the  
> violist Rachel Shapiro, withdrew from the concert following the death  
> on April 6 of her mother, Linda Shapiro Chemtob, Concertante’s  
> founding executive director.
> 
> Instead, performing alongside two ensemble members, the violinist Xiao- 
> Dong Wang and the cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, were four ringers: the  
> violinist Lisa Shihoten, the violists Danielle Farina and Mark  
> Holloway and the cellist Wendy Sutter.
> 
> As substitutes go, this was strong casting, a testament to the depth  
> and breadth of New York’s teeming freelance pool. And any concerns  
> about cohesion were dispelled by a rendition of Prokofiev’s Sonata for  
> Two Violins that was not just polished and proficient but brimming  
> with complementary nuance and brio. Prokofiev’s paradoxical balancing  
> act — melancholy whimsy, distrustful jollity — is not mastered easily;  
> Mr. Wang and Ms. Shihoten nailed it.
> 
> “Arcana,” by Kevin Puts, emerged during Concertante’s One Plus Five  
> project in which, over three seasons, the sextet unveiled six  
> commissioned works, each featuring one of its members. Inspired by a  
> dreamy Hawaiian vista crowned by the volcano Haleakala, the concise,  
> handsomely wrought piece was more evocative than picturesque; Ms.  
> Gerlach, the star player, waxed effusive and contemplative, buoyed or  
> buffeted by colleagues who sometimes snatched and mimicked her gestures.
> 
> The concert ended with a vibrant account of Tchaikovsky’s Sextet in D  
> minor (“Souvenir de Florence”), a deceptively breezy work that  
> improbably juggles all that we treasure about Tchaikovsky. The  
> frolicsome initial Allegro merges bulk and bounce. The Allegretto  
> smuggles presentiments of “Pathétique” gloom among vivacious dance  
> moves: “Death in Florence,” let’s say. The finale’s lively fugue is  
> leavened with slashing rhythms, then unseated by distant echoes of  
> “1812”-style bombast.
> 
> But best of all was the scintillating Adagio, an operatic scene  
> without words. Mr. Wang, playing the winsome soprano ingénue, crooned  
> to and with Ms. Sutter, a suave baritone hero; snatching glimpses  
> through a ballroom window, Mr. Holloway’s heartbroken mezzo-soprano  
> maiden lamented privately. However much the cast may have deviated  
> from what Concertante devotees expect, the players, as individuals and  
> as a team, lived up to the marquee billing.
> 
> 
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