Pat Harrison's Jazz Concert

On November 2nd, which was a Monday night, I went to the Musical Art Center for Pat Harrison’s jazz ensemble’s performance, which started at 8pm. Since this is a big bang group, there are many different instrumentation. For the horn section, there are two alto saxophones, two tenor saxophones, and one baritone saxophone; trumpets and flugelhorns; trombones and bass trombone. For the rhythm section, there are piano, guitar, double bass, drums and vibraphone. Personally, among all those different genres of music, I like big bang jazz a lot because of the colorful timbres and the feeling of the jazz orchestra. Also, since I have attended to other big bang jazz performances before at MAC, I had the experience of the high-quality shows, and I
He also created call-and-response with the muted trumpet. There was another solo for this piece, and it was the break for the drummer, Hannah Johnson. Then it was the break for an instrument called cajón. The shape of it looks like a box, and it is also a percussion instrument. By adding this instrument, the whole piece had more different timbres and even though it is also percussion, it is more like a traditional instrument comparing to some other percussion instrument in the rhythm section and is not very often used in a big bang jazz ensemble. So it was great to see some more different instruments in the performance since they all make the music much fuller and richer. There were some call-and-response between the cajón and the horn section and the soloist for the cajón’s break is Yael Litwin. The next song is called Just Friends, and was composed by John Klenner and was arranged by Rob McConnell. The song started with rhythm section, and the first break was the pianist, Lianna Gekker’s solo and used lots of sequences. Then it was the soli section for saxophones. Trombone section and the trumpet section played in unison, and then followed by the trombonist, Sean Weber’s solo. He used some riffs and tailgating in this break. Then it came to the alto saxophonist, Jonah Tarver’s break. His solo was clean and the timbre was kind of smooth which sounded really great. After his solo,
Unlike this song, the previous piece definitely brought me back to the 21st century immediately. Also, instrumentally, they were very different since there were more soloists in the last piece, and they added vibraphone into it as well. Matt Holman’s compositions are more contemporary and are harder for the audience to dance along with, but Benny Goodman’s big bang swing

created the feeling of dancing for us. Overall, as usual, the jazz ensemble at MAC on Monday night was great, and as I mentioned before, I never heard this band before, so I was very excited to listen to their performance. I love that they use Benny Goodman’s composition to end the whole concert because it really brought the 1920’s big bang jazz’s feeling back to the audience. I think the repertoire for this performance was good because there were a mix of many different styles, such as contemporary pieces, swing, blues, free jazz, and etc. In my opinion, this repertoire covered a long timeline of different period’s popular jazz forms, and it let the audience have the opportunity to experience all of them at the same performance. There are many talented soloists and thanks to them and the band leader working together to create this marvelous concert to