All That Jazz

There was a time when music was my life. It was all I wanted to do. It was all I wanted to be.

I wanted to be a music educator and teach instrumental music at the high school or community college level. But as life has a habit of doing, it threw me a curve ball, and my priorities and passions changed.

Today I brought out my trusty Selmer Mark VI tenor saxophone for the first time in years, opened up my Real Book, and played through some old jazz favorites. I was definitely rusty, but not as much as I thought I would be.

It felt great. Really great. Amazing, actually.

I had forgotten how much joy playing music - especially jazz - brought into my life. There's especially something about improvisation that just speaks to me like no other form of music can. It's such an amazing form of musical and artistic expression.

I only played for a few minutes today, but I'm going to play again. Soon.

And I found something that I think will help keep me motivated. An extremely talented professional musician and friend I met during my community college days - Monica Shriver - recently posted on Facebook that she discovered the Jamey Abersold Play-a-longs were on Spotify.

I checked Spotify for myself tonight and was thrilled to find literally hundreds of Abersold Play-a-long tracks! Free to listen to on-demand, any time! That should definitely help me get my jazz chops back and maybe even improve them.

I am eager to get back into the swing of things. Pun intended.