This semester was pretty exciting. It started out with the loss of our soprano section and most of our rhythm section, but we quickly regrouped, and had two successful concerts.
At the first one, which took place at the Clark Terry/UNH Jazz Festival in Durham, New Hampshire on March 9th, we performed ``Farmer's Market,'' ``Emily,'' and ``Airegin,'' from our Fall repertoire, and also ``Things Ain't What They Used To Be,'' the Duke Ellington composition arranged by UNH's vocal jazz maestro, Chris Humphrey. We almost didn't make it to the concert; in particular, the cars containing our basses and our bassist arrived just in the nick of time. We'd already begun the intro of the first tune, but hadn't started singing, when the last carload arrived, so nothing was lost: we cycled the 12 measures until everyone was ready, and then began.
Our Spring concert, on May 12th in Kresge Little Theatre, was a great success. We performed five tunes from our Fall programme (``Airegin,'' ``Take The `A' Train,'' ``All Right, O.K., You Win,'' ``Emily,'' and ``Farmer's Market'') in addition to five new things: ``Things Ain't What They Used To Be''; ``Don't Dream Of Anybody But Me'' (Mel Tormé's vocal arrangement of the Neil Hefti classic ``Li'l Darlin','' as sung by the Mel-Tones); ``Almost Like Being In Love'' arranged by David Barduhn; ``Straight, No Chaser,'' arranged by Solomon Douglas and with new vocalese lyrics (to a Thelonious Monk solo) written by Rosemary McNaughton and Solomon Douglas; and, Miles Davis' ``Mademoiselle Mabry'' (from the album Filles De Killimanjaro) in an a cappella arrangement by Adam Lindsay, with lyrics that he adapted from a poem by Raymond Queneau.
At our May 12 concert, we were joined by the MIT Jazz Collective and by an impressive vocal jazz group from UNH, ``ii-V-I,'' led by Chris Humphrey.
Last updated - May 27, 1996