Mile High Jazz Concert Review

For my concert report I attended the Mile High Jazz Festival presented by Flesher Hinton Co. on February 16, 2017. The event took place in Macky Auditorium at the University of Colorado Boulder at 7:30 pm. The concert consisted of a student ensemble and then after a short intermission a faculty ensemble. I decided for this report to select the most impactful song from each ensemble and write about their musical components. The student ensemble consisted of: a piano, a bass, drums, a guitar, 4 trombones, 4 trumpets, 2 alto saxophones, 2 tenor saxophones, and one baritone saxophone. This makes a total of 17 musicians plus one for Professor Paul McKee who was the conductor. The student ensemble was very large and was arrange/modeled after a …show more content…
This makes a total of 7 musicians and was not lead by a conductor. The musicians were ordered with the piano, guitar, saxophone, trumpet, and trombone upfront while the bass and drums were in the back. The song I chose from the faculty ensemble is “Back Home” which was composed by Paul McKee and written in the key of “Back Home Again in Indiana” which was composed by Ballard MacDonald and James F. Hanley. The song had a fast swing feel and a triple meter. The song starts out with the bass playing the rhythm with forte in a legato style. The first solo is played by the guitar which was playing softly to create an interesting timbre. This was followed by a trombone solo which was played with a homophonic texture. During this section the trombone played the melody and the saxophone played the harmony. The next solo was played by the Brad Goode on trumpet with a bubble mute. This mute was used to create a sharp squeaky timbre. After this solo there was an equipment malfunction where the speaker and microphone in front of the saxophonist stopped working. This was right before what appeared to be a solo meant for the saxophonist John Gunther. He used hand signals to communicated to the other