John Clayton and Centrum
I also attended the Centrum camp this year (3rd time), and more on that in a bit.
I did attend the session where John Clayton gave his "fakebook" lecture. OK, I take his point, but remember he is a bassist, and he was mainly speaking to the rhythm section when he made this speech (for which he is well known). His point is that if you work through changes instead of reading them from a fake book, by the time you're done you will remember it. He did encourage horn players to do so also, but implicit in his comments was the acknowledgement that it's harder for horns to work out a complicated melody. However, a few days earlier in one of the master classes, Houston Person encouraged participants to "buy the book" so they learn the tune. So take your pick of philosophies.
The camp was as great as ever, even more so since I got to work with Houston Person! What more can I say. In general, the level of student has improved steadily since the first time I attended. I didn't have time to prepare a new audition CD, so I just resubmitted the same one I used last year. The result was that I got placed into a slightly lower level combo. That experience, the fact that several players were not accepted (but allowed to audit, i.e., they weren't placed into combos), plus my general observation of competence, lead me to the conclusion that competence level was higher. The saxophone faculty were Houston Person, Jeff Clayton, Bill Ramsey and Gary Smulyan. The sax master classes were operated differently. Instead of all the tenors getting together with a tenor faculty for 4 days, this year all of the saxes attended the same master classes, and the faculty rotated. Topics were technique (Clayton), melody (Person), show who knows their II-IV-Is the best (Smulyan), and one by Ramsey (but I can't remember exactly what he talked about, except that he is pretty funny). By far, Jeff Clayton lead the best master class, talking about embouchre, practice routine, aperture, etc. Very well prepared and very worthwhile.
As usual, the experience was great. Working with players of all ages, jamming into the night, taking various theory classes, and getting great performance advice from combo coaches. My coach was Gary Hobbs, a drummer from the Pacific NW. Great guy, and great coach. This year more emphasis was placed on giving vocalists an opportunity to perform, which was great for them. The vocal coaches included Roberta Gambarini.
I highly recommend this camp (I traveled from the east coast to attend, although most participants were from the west coast) for anyone who wants to learn a lot, work shoulder to shoulder with the finest professional musicians in the world (who all bend over backward to help, and make the experience memorable), and be challenged. I wasn't challenged this year (for the first time), but I did feel very comfortable in my combo, and the tunes we did. We even developed an original tune in our combo, which was interesting. Not sure if I will attend next year, it depends on whether I work hard enough to move from the advanced level, to semi-pro. That's gonna take a lot of work, and I'm not going to shoot for it unless I put in enough effort to justify trying for that level.
There was only one downer, not for me, but for the "best" semi-pro combo. These guys were great, and were scheduled to perform in front of the crowd assembling to attend the night's professional concert. Unfortunately, timing snafus (not of their causing) forced these guys to get a delayed start on their set. Then, abrubptly, word came out to start letting the crowd enter the main venue, so that combo had to stop playing. They were 1/3 into the first song of their set, when they had to finish up. I really felt bad for them, since all their hard work (not to mention their tuition) was unrequited. Believe me, I let Centrum and John Clayton know what a lousy deal this was for those guys, and so did a lot of the other participants. But this was a very unusual circumstance, and hopefully will never recur.
One of the interesting things we heard was an all bass faculty (6 basses) ensemble during the faculty concerts. Yes, every night there's a 90 minute faculty concert. Worth at least half of the tuition. We also heard a 30 piece percussion ensemble from Alma College. Unbelievable! And of course, Houston Person was the friday night concert headliner, with Jeff Hamilton and a Japanese B3 player (ala Jimmy Smith).
