Thad Jones

At our rehearsal this evening the band here at school read through a bunch of Thad Jones charts, and they were great! I've played lots of his stuff before, but I especially enjoyed it tonight. Anyone interested in jazz writing should definitely check him out!

I can't wait to rehearse some more of his tunes!

Thad is certainly one of the great writers for jazz orchestra...

He, with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band Pioneered a whole style of big band playing ('Thad Jones quarter notes'): HARD, balls-to-the-wall, groovy arrangements...

kick-ass charts:

• A Child Is Born
• The entire New Life Suite (especially Greetings & Salutations and Cherry Juice)
• Groove Merchant
• TipToe (holy frig, the trombone soli kills!)

...It's nice to have more jazz awareness on here! Which charts did you play?

See also: Early Bob Brookmeyer (wrote a lot for the Thad band, awesomeness like Nasty Dance and Make Me Smile); Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band (dubbed the European Thad Jones, Francy wrote some killer stuff, and had a great band); Rob McConnell (The Boss Brass - a Canadian band, similarly hard-hitting charts, though slightly more polished)

I can't remember all the charts we read through, though Groove Merchant was one of them. Tip Toe was one of our performance pieces last year, and the trombones sounded great! Now that you mention it, I think Greetings and Salutations was another that we read. I hope we work on them again next rehearsal!

Yay! Upon arriving here at school I took a look over our new songs again, and the two that we kept in the folder were indeed Groove Merchant and Greetings and Salutations. That brings our total of Thad Jones tunes up to four: we also have Walkin' About and Evol Deklaw Ni, which are both a lot of fun as well. I've been a huge fan of Groove Merchant since I played it in another band a few years back, so I'm super excited about getting to play it again.

I'm glad you mentioned the Boss Brass too! Being a Canadian myself, I listen to them all the time. Rob McConnell even came to our school a few years ago to play with our band and direct a bunch of his charts. He's quite a character!