…when I forsake my classical roots as a pianist and join David and some of his friends in our annual event helping to raise a (hopefully) considerable amount of money for homeless and orphan children in Vietnam. David has upped the ante this year by deciding to do some ‘smoooooooth’ jazz, and I must admit that such things are not my forte and it has taken me a while to get to the stage where I can give a reasonably good imitation of being cool in the jazz sense.
This of course will not be on the Stuart, but on my Kurzweil keyboard which I have now had for two years and has been very useful in a myriad of ways during that time. Whilst I have mentioned before that it does not, of course, match the Stuart (it was never bought for that purpose) that is not intended to be a negative comment in any way. I can adjust to the different feel of the keyboard which is quite good for the music I will be playing (although it is certainly not suitable for things classical) and the sound in the context of a band and a function such as this is absolutely fine. And I can turn up the volume when I need to…
We will be playing at the beginning for about an hour or so and that will stretch David’s stamina on the saxophone, but by and large he is sounding good and has learnt to pace himself well so that he doesn’t run out of the proverbial puff at critical times. I know this can be a problem because I run into it with the cor anglais, probably attributable to my lack of fitness and advancing age, plus any other excuse I can think of at the time.
So I will need to pack the car with assorted instruments, amplifiers, microphones, leads, music stands and much other paraphernalia so beloved of a practising (and portable) musician. We’re expecting about 700 people to attend, and hope to raise more than the $20,000 raised last year.
Quite a commendable achievement by a group of very dedicated Vietnamese ladies.