First rehearsal of the trio went well. The bassist hosts and has everything set up in his basement, so it's really cushy that way - even the drummer didn't have to haul anything. We worked on Where Or When, Ain't Misbehavin', But Beautiful, Comes Love, Desafinado, I Could Write A Book, and Under My Skin. There's so much I don't know! A few impressions, both from last night, and from listening to the recordings today:
Desafinado sounds really good with just drums, bass, and voice. I brought in the piano after the A section was done and it sounded really good that way.
I feel weirdly more creative in my solos on the latin tunes. (We're doing But Beautiful as a bossa.)
Comes Love has been really hard for me to do solo - just voice and piano - but it's really fun as a trio.
It's tough to find a good tempo for Under My Skin. I wanted it to be more peppy, but it just really wants to lay back the way we're doing it.
I gotta breathe more. When I don't know a tune, I don't breathe as deeply, and then my singing tone is thin and I go sharp.
Overall, really fun - I'm looking forward to the next rehearsal. I think this will inspire me to work on jazz a lot more than my last band did - the smaller combo is better for me, partly because the three of us felt comfortable talking a lot about what it meant to play jazz. Lots of learning opportunity here.
