Old message # 17590
it was never my intent to become a "renaissance man". my first interests were quite narrow.
my only ambition was to be able to play piano like jelly roll. i was sure that if i could do just that one thing in my lifetime that i would be a happy man, and never ask for anything more.
i found out that to get to jelly you had to go through joplin, and i was fine with that. the ragtime/dixieland era was my thing and i found a teacher (hank troy in denver) to lead me down that path.
after a year or so of intense study, i found myself playing professionally. but now that i could play (sort of) like jelly, i found that my initial premise of "being forever satisfied" was wrong and that i still longed for something more.
and every time i crossed a similar hurdle, i had the feeling of a job well done - but the sense that there was greener grass just over the next hill.
so i became multi-instrumentalist more out of sheer curiousity and misguided whims than anything else. it was not a conscious decision to go out and learn all this stuff, it just kind of happened.
if i had actually limited to dixieland, i would still have made money had loads of fun and played some really great energetic music. there's always work for a pianist in a dixieland jazz band, and there's still plenty of it about. and i still love listening to dixieland (especially live!).
there's a lot to be said for the idea of narrowly focussing your efforts on one specific subject in order to be the almighty master of it. most people don't have the time in their lives to "do it all".
now for the crux of the biscuit (i have no idea what that means but i've been saying it a lot lately): you didn't get your jollies at the gig and maybe feel that you didn't play very well.
while it's certainly possible that you may have not played the job to your best advantage, but you give the impression that in these cases you were relatively new to the ensembles.
did anyone berate your performance after the gigs?
if not, then you probably did an adequate job.
are they going to call you back for their next gigs?
if so, you did a fine job and nobody but you could tell that you weren't at your best.
when they do call you back are you going to take the gigs?
you ought to. why? because the more you play with these ensembles, the more comfortable you'll become with the repertoire. and that comfort will very shortly translate into your doing an excellent job on the bandstand.
oh yeah, and getting your jollies at a well-paying gig happens about as often as a whore has an orgasm.
you're just feeling a little depressed. it'll pass.
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Jazz Piano Notebook Series
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