Kiwanis Jazz Festival 07

Well, it's Tuesday evening, the festival's finished and I am bagged. It has been very busy for the last few days. My brain capsized late this afternoon and I've been running on autopilot ever since.

A bit of background: The Kiwanis Music Festival is the largest series of annual student music festivals across the country. Starting in Toronto in the 1920s, it takes place in more than a dozen cities across the country. In this city in 1964, The Kiwanis Club of Vancouver took over the operation of a student festival that had been run by The Knights of Pythias. I mention this because the building the Knights had constructed as their lodge is now The Western Front. Today the Vancouver Kiwanis Music Festival has over 10,000 annual entrants, with seperate sub-festivals for jazz, concert band, choral and finally individual classical music categories. It's a huge event funded by the Kiwanis club and it gets little or no recognition in the media. Good news doesn't sell newspapers. Maybe we need an adjudicator to club a baby seal or something.

I'm mainly involved with the jazz segment. I am the titular chair of the event, but really there is a small committee that does the bulk of the work. Brenda Sleightholme is the administrator and Ken Osterreicher and Michelle Workman are the teacher coordinators from Argyle and Sutherland respectively. John Sharp superbly handles the tech details. We work in conjunction with Cap College, where we get great support from their administration and faculty. We have feature performances by Nitecap, their vocal jazz group , and also from the A Band. Tom Lee Music is a corporate sponsor and each year they are very generous in supplying keyboards, guitar and bass amps, also Taye drum kits for our main stage, warmup rooms and clinic rooms. Coastal Jazz & Blues sponsors a noontime presentation by a prominent local musician, or someone they may have in town for one of their events.

One the main functions of my duties is to ensure that things run on time. If things start getting behind schedule, adjudicators can burn out, teachers get impatient and our costs may start to rise if room rentals and tech crew run into overtime.

In this regard, we did very well, moreso today when we actually squeezed an extra band into the morning schedule. By moving one band on stage the moment the previous group vacated it, we were able to utilize the collective gaps in our 25-minute rotation. We were back to our original schedule remarkably fast. In all we had 11 vocal jazz groups, 40 stage bands and 1 combo entered in the festival, comprised of one elementary school and the rest either junior or senior high schoolers.

When I first got involved with Kiwanis in 1995, the festival was a fairly dry affair. The MC was retired high school principal (acutally very charming and funny at other times) who kept the youth firmly planted in their auditorium seats and well-shooshed. The adjudicators were more academics with music education credentials rather than working musicians. I became the MC the following year and the first thing I did was lighten up the atmosphere. Jazz is cool. Jazz is fun. It's full of self deprecating humour and practical jokes. Over the years I developed a repertoire jazz jokes, aimed at maligning as many different instruments as possible. "What's the difference between a chainsaw and a baritone sax? The exhaust." That sort of thing.

It's hard for some categories, like jazz singers, to find jokes that can be told in public to high school kids. I'm sure many of them know worse ones, but the teachers would flip out if I told them. There's too many trombone jokes. And then there's a definite lack of piano jokes, just a few. A couple of the best of those are in the unmentionable category, like the one that finishes off "Do you know there's a hole in your pants and your balls are hanging out?" "Know it? I wrote it!" Cam Ryga is a great one for walking by me as I am onstage and telling me the absolutely foulest joke, basically daring me to repeat it on mic. Anyways, I keep it relatively clean. Kids love to hate my jokes, then pester me for more. It keeps things rolling between schools and while the adjudicators are doing their thing.

As well, I harangue them to get out and support live music, keep playing after high school, and basically to make music part of their lives.

On the whole, I'd have to say this year's edition was a success. The changes we have made in the past year worked out well. We always find aspects to tighten up and refine, and this year is no different.

It was the general concensus that the overall quality of all of the participants this year, even the beginner bands, has risen in comparison with previous years. We did not have any achingly bad groups. I've got to give the teachers all the credit. Despite mounting external pressures, they continue to improve the quality of music education. They bring kids who are willing to learn and the teachers themselves seemed to be soaking up the information presented by our facilitators. Frankly, it's hard not to spend time in a room with guys like Hugh Fraser and not feel their infectuous energy. And they in turn get a boost from working with young musicians.

We always put on an evening showcase performance. In the past it's been the likes of VEJI, the Brad Turner Quartet and the Hugh Fraser Quintet. This year it was the NADEN band from CFB Esquimault. The fact that the Canadian Navy has several excellent bands across the country is largely unknown in Vancouver. It's more remarkable because these guys play over 200 gigs a year. They are full-time working musicians. We had them perform two years ago and three of our adjudicators, Cam Ryga, Brad Turner and Hugh Fraser sat in for a few numbers and shot the band into the stratosphere, truly a memorable show. The put on a solid performance for us this past Monday evening, very mainstream and most capably played.

But there was no question what was the highlight of the festival for many of us, and certainly for me. It was the A Band's one-hour set Tuesday noontime. They opened and closed with Thad Jones Mel Lewis Band charts, already more contemporary than anything we had heard the previous evening, and included pieces by Dave Holland and Maria Schneider. It was very exciting and the overflowing crowd was extremely enthusiastic.

And in that performance was one of those moments that keeps me involved in the festival year after year. They had a high school student sub in on one of the tenor sax chairs. Director Réjean Marois had the eminently good musical instincts to feature the two tenor players trading off solos over an extended time. For the third time in three years, we got to hear real excitement, what the real potential of a big band is, when it really gets going and then the soloists stand up and blow their asses off. This time it was Evan Arntzen and Eli Bennett matching each other phrase for phase, showing yet again that they both are the real deal. I don't know if they've ever played toe to toe before, but the two of them were clearly having a great time onstage together. It was thrilling to see and hear.

Evan and Eli light it up with the A Band

It was one of those performances that will leave an indelible mark on many who saw the show. I hope it really inspired the kids in the audience and judging from the raucous ovation at the end, it did. My one regret was that Stan Karp, mentor to both of these fine young musicians, wasn't there to see it.

Happy Birthday Stan!

Stan Karp has influenced an entire generation of saxophone players in this city, maybe two. There would be a very lengthy list of people, from the rawest young talent to established veterans on the scene, who have spent a little or a lot of time with him. Some of the latter would include Cory Weeds, Jon Bentley and Chad Makela. The young lions would have to include Evan Arntzen, Jamie Campbell, Tyler Summers and Eli Bennett. A full list would be a pretty big undertaking.

I've known guys who've moved to Vancouver just to study with Stan, also guys who insist on staying here when their careers may be better served to move somewhere else, again just to stay with Stan.

Stan is a bit of an enigma. Only a handful of people have ever seen him gig, despite the fact that he is a fantastic player. He's funny. He's cool. He's a gifted teacher, having learned from the very best - Bill Green, Buddy Collette, Joe Henderson. It was Joe that told him that he should teach and that's the path that he chose. I am convinced he could write the definitive book on how to play saxophone.

In over 10 years, I can't say that I've seen him give me a "bad" lesson, not when he had pneumonia, not when he had congestive heart failure. If the lessons were bad, it was not on his part, but mine. And on reflection, all of those ones were some of my most valuable. He never gives less than his very best if you walk through the door willing to learn and work at it. During some of my most important lessons, we never played a note.

Stan has a way of saying things that will stay with you forever. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the saxophone. He is very intuitive with his teaching method, often zeroing in on what needs to be worked on, almost before you walk in the door. He constantly explores new angles, new avenues, new philosophies towards playing. He loves his students deeply. And he can outplay any of them.

He's turning 60 in a couple of weeks, and it was a major undertaking to pull of a surprise party. He thought he was coming to a gig by Eli Bennett, fresh back from his performances at the Grammy awards. Instead, there was a roomful of his longtime friends and students. He prides himself in always being in the know, but ringleaders Jenna and Bob got him this time.

Jerry Cooke put together a fine little R&B band. Jerry was sounding mighty fine, and was a deliberate choice because he wasn't ever a student of Stan's. The evening was meant to be fun (it was), not a jam session. The only other player to bring a horn was Eli, and everyone wanted to hear him. He played with a maturity way beyond his years and has come light years under Stan's guidance. He's a sweet guy and a great player at age 17.

Without a doubt, the most talked-about gift was a new horn from Sandro and the boys at Massullo Music. A KEYLESS SAXOPHONE! This is one strange-looking beast. No doubt Stan will be playing Donna Lee on it in a month, and will have developed a whole new teaching methodology within two.

Even though Stan's retiring this year from teaching at Cap College, he intends to be around for a long time, continuing to inspire, educate and love his students. I'm sure there were plenty more guys who couldn't make it last night because they were out gigging. We all love Stan. Certainly anyone who has been reading my blog will know my admiration for this guy. Things would most definitely have unfolded very differently had I not started studying with him back in October 1996. I can't imagine that I would have had many of the experiences that I've been writing here for the last nine months. I owe much of it to him.

Song Room 6

The Song Room has rules.

<- Marguerite Witvoet

For the performers: The song must be an original composition, no more than 5 minutes in length. There can be no more than 3 performers, including the singer. The lyrics must be from a living Canadian writer. The theme of the evening is predetermined, and the song must have some relevance to that theme. There is a required dress rehearsal a couple of days prior and usually a sound check on the day of the show. Composers cannot participate in two consecutive Song Rooms.

For the audience: The cover charge is $10 plus a favourite food item, either savoury or sweet. There must be absolute silence during the performance. Engage the performers in conversation afterwards.

For the presenters: Open your home to up to a hundred people. Set up a meeting of the previous compsers and writers to determine a theme. Decide on six new composers. Organize rehearsals and performances to the minute. Make performers and audience feel welcome and a valued part of the process. Document the performances with a decent recording. Pay the performers 100% of the door proceeds. Make it a must-see happening. Repeat twice yearly.

Tom, David and Karen ->

Karen Matthews, Tom Cone and David Pay conceived of this series to promote the development of a library of new Canadian songs. To date they have premiered 65 new compositions involving over a hundred musicians. The musical disciplines range from contemporary classical to free improv, hip hop, folk and rock. Most of the performers are extremely accomplished, some are absolutely raw.

Since I composed The Deluge in collaboration with Stew Brinton, Alita Dupray and Dominique Brunchmann for Song Room 5, I couldn't participate again this time as a composer. I was happy to be an audience member for a change. And when I showed up with my trusty camera, I was pressed into being the official photographer for the evening.

This evening's theme was "indiscretion", a concept put forth by Stew at the Song Room 5 post-mortem.

The program opened up with a burlesque-style piece by Marguerite Witvoet in a sensual duet with her accordion named "Titano". Apparently this was quite a stretch from her more usual staid performances. It was a hoot.

Soressa Gardner and Karma Sohn ->

Next up was Soressa Gardner in your basic Gidget get-up, accompanied by accordion and cuica. Again it was fairly high in the camp factor. The text was based on letters to a fictional advice columnist, a cross between Dear Abbey and Dan Savage.

<- Kathryn Cernauskas and Heather Pawsey

The more "serious" content came from composer Leslie Uyeda and writer Brenda Brooks. They had stunning soprano Heather Pawsey sing about indescretion accompanied by cello and flute/bass flute. The piece was beautifully composed, with a degree of difficulty added by a last-minute substitution of cellists.

By this point in the program, it was getting pretty clear that the common conception of what constituted indescretion could be boiled down to "Men are pigs."

Tony Wilson, Billy Little and presenter Tom Cone ->

After a short break came a duet between the always-great Tony Wilson and distinguished poet Billy Little. He was in poor health and really could not sing, but nevertheless gave a very moving performance. He announced that his indiscretion would be attempting to sing. A born American, he had written a very blunt dissection of The Star Spangled Banner's lyrics entitled "We are Sick of War". I'm a little fuzzy on the details on this one as it was a last-minute addition and not in the written program.

<- Shanto, Carol and Rajinderpal

Carol Sawyer followed with a composition of hers with text by Rajinderpal Pal. The piece was based on director Krzyzstof Kieslowski's Dekalog, a ten-episode TV series, with each installment having been based upon one of the 10 Commandments. Carol called her piece Decalog 3, and it was certainly the most emotionally harrowing performance of the evening. Rajinderpal read his text while Carol and Shanto Bhattacharya on cello improvised on the emotional content of the words.

Kori Miyanishi, Leah Abramson and Shiho Mizumoto ->

The evening finished off with an Appalachian-style song played on two fiddles, he twist being that the the lyrical concept was a "murder-suicide hymn". Writer Leah Abramson and fiddler Kori Miyanishi sang in taut harmony. It was a very effective piece as the open tunings had a very primal effect.

As varied as the styles were, the songs all held together in a coherent set. It was a very satisfying night. The post-performance hang and nosh were equally as satisfying and by the end it was far too late to consider heading over to Ironworks or 1067. There was still talk about how effective our performance of The Deluge had been at the previous Song Room, and suggestions that I consider another collaboration with Alita for the next one.

Stew and I discussed it this morning and we were both of the opinion that we first need to know the theme for the June Song Room. That will lead to some concept for the text. We can then decide which singer would be the best to interpret it. With all of the great singers that we know in town, that's like letting a kid loose in a candy shop.

Time Flies


<- Eyvind Kang - got my camera back!

I made it down to Ironworks for the last 2 sets of Friday night's performance. Time Flies is an annual series of concerts produced by Coastal Jazz and Blues wherein a number of notable improvisors from various locations around the world are brought together with some of Vancouver's finest. Over the course of three nights they are randomly selected to play in a number of small groupings. If there are any more rules than that, I'm not aware of them. For more, check out the CJBS website.

This format can have some unexpectedly surprising results but also runs the risk of becoming mundane if the musicians don't click. Risk is the key word. If the musicians play it safe, the results end up sounding safe. Going too far in the other direction risks wankery, so it's a delicate balance that is presented to an ever more discerning audience.


The major development for this year's event was the change of venue from the Western Front to Ironworks, certainly a great move in terms of atmosphere and intimacy. More than one person noted this was the coolest place in town, regrettably gaining that distinction due to the City's myopic closure of l'Espace. The performers and audience certainly seemed to react well to the new location.

<- Cor, Phil, Torsten

Afterwards, it was the general concensus that this has been the best Time Flies in recent years. The musicianship was uniformly outstanding. Local participants Peggy Lee and Torsten Muller certainly did not have to prove that they belonged with this group of highly-esteemed imports.

Cor, Peggy ->

Peggy in particular, seemed to own the stage as she has done in every outing of hers that I've ever seen. (I recall watching the London Composers Orchestra watch her open-mouthed while she soloed a couple years back.) Torsten was endlessly creative. Everyone else was similarly firing on all cylinders. Best of all, they connected together very deeply. They seemed to feed off the vibe in the room and the appreciation coming from the audience.

Having met most of the performers at Wednesday's workshops, and there were a good number of workshop participants present last night, I felt like we were rooting for our friends up there onstage. Everyone delivered. I had been at the workshops run by Eyvind Kang, John Butcher and Cor Fuhler and each of them were excellent.

I hadn't met Phil Minton as he spent Wednesday running a Feral Choir workshop at the Carnegie Centre. He was totally amazing. There were times when there were sounds emanating from the stage and we couldn't figure out who it was, only to determine it was Phil by watching small movements of his mouth. Again, it was a great example of how the human voice is versatile beyond belief, and how it can draw the audience into an improvisation.

Eyvind, Phil, John, Hasse Poulsen, Peggy ->

I know I'm lapsing into superlatives and not really describing what they did, but that is certainly part of the ephemeral nature of an improvised performance. Individually they were great, collectively they were greater. I can say no more.

Tonight the Song Room! Probably afterwards, I'll scoot down to Ironworks again for the final Time Flies set.

And since I have recovered from my cold, I'm also feeling much better about the Wednesday night performances. Again VCMI has proven to be a valuable experience for me.

According to the experts

Apparently the singular of the word timpani is "kettle drum". Neither my Groves Dictionary or the Harvard Dictionary makes any distinction between one or a number of drums, but they did both point out that there was no "y" in the spelling, other than in incorrect common usage. Google didn't help, though I didn't persist with it for too long.

I guess I should have asked Giorgio yesterday.

Interestingly in the Harvard, I looked up "improvisation". There were about 8 inches of text, all devoted to historical references from the 17th century and leading up to the evolution of the cadenza. Only the very last sentence stated "An interesting revival of improvisation is in the jam session of contemporary jazz." So much for my chosen musical path.

This was only the second edition of this book, now over 30 years old. Hopefully it's been updated. To be fair, it did devote several pages to "jazz", coming up about a decade short of Ken Burns' summary.

I used to have an old music dictionary with a very disdainful, condescending and downright racist dismissal of jazz in it. I must have thrown it out.

The singular for timpani must be timpano, which as any film and food lover would remember was the object of Stanley Tucci's desire in the great film Big Night. It was an elaborate pasta dish in the shape of a drum, the ultimate achievement of Italian cuisine. That movie and Moonstruck made me want to be Italian, at least for a night. Goodfellas, not so much.

VCMI meets Time Flies

Wednesday was a full day indeed. I've been fighting the onset of a cold, and by the end of the day, I was dead tired. It was quite satisfying and the parts that weren't satisfying were informative. There's always something positive to be learned when situations don't work out as expected.

The day was structured in typical Vancouver Creative Music Institute fashion. There were a series of simultaneous workshops that went on throughout the day. You had to make choices, sometimes quite arbitrary, as which one to attend and which to miss. The workshops were led by the performers in this weekend's Time Flies series at Ironworks, and participants were VCMI alumni and VCC music students.

The first one of the day was a no-brainer, at least as far as the actual choice. Once we got into the room with Eyvind Kang, our brains were fully engaged. This was an easy decision for me because Eyvind played on Bill Frisell's Quartet album, one of my all-time desert island picks. He immediately launched us into a very philosophical and compelling discussion about improvised music, punctuated with short group improvisations. He continually encouraged us to go deeper into the music. Later in the day, the two of us talked about the challenges in strengthening the connections between the creative music communities in Seattle and Vancouver.

Next up for me was a larger ensemble situation co-led by John Butcher and Giorgio Magnanensi. I must admit that I am not really familiar with John's saxophone playing, but have read glowing reviews of some his previous performances here. I found him to be a very personable, down-to-earth sort of guy. Part of the workshop was given over to a conduction by Giorgio, something I've done many times and often enjoyed.

This time I was annoyed by some of the VCC students who were attending the workshop. The essence to conduction is keeping your eyes on the conductor at all times and following his every gesture. Another essential skill in improv is to pick your times to lay out and when to play, and then only do so with deliberate intention. So it started to get to me that some of these students just didn't get it. They kept their heads down, never followed a gesture and basically played nonstop for 20 minutes. I've seen this before with young players, and it's only with musical maturity and experience that they develop sharp improv skills. I guess I'm getting old and cranky because it was getting under my skin.

The third workshop was led by by Cor Fuhler from Holland. Though his English was excellent, I don't think we got his main point, and as a group we were unable to distinguish between making a gesture and making a more deliberate musical statement, save for doing it more loudly. For me, the best part about this exercise was that I played bass clarinet along with a couple of other much better players, Karen Davidson and Mike Dowler. I haven't had my bass clarinet out of the case since the ion Zoo gig in December, so it was gratifying to connect with them.

My feelings about outcome of the evening's performance were mixed.

The program was divided into two sets, the first being various groupings of VCMI alumni, each with a 6-minute slot. These groupings had been left up to the participants to arrange well in advance of this date. I had asked Jeff Younger and Russel Sholberg to do a trio thing. We've never really played together before in a small ensemble, but I have seen them both play quite often and I knew we'd be a good fit.

We were scheduled to go on first. So it was guitar, bass and me on soprano sax, aided by tympani. This was an idea I got from trumpeter Gord Allen during our time at VCMI in 2005. He played his trumpet into a floor tom to great effect. There was a large tympani onstage yesterday, so I commandeered it and played into it. It was a terrific effect, especially when playing the bottom notes of my horn and using the tympani head to totally or partially block the airflow, which created fantastic overtones, combining with the resonance of the drum. I thought it was an effective trio performance, and it was short and sweet.

("Tympani" is obviously plural - what's the singular? Tympano? Tympanum? Gotta check my Grove's.)

None of the groups that followed kept to the 6-minute guideline. A couple of them ran closer to 15 minutes, often with people choosing to ignore obvious timely endings. Rather, they just kept blowing. Every performance had something going for it, but my enjoyment was tempered by a growing annoyance at their inability to self-regulate. As a result the first set ran quite a bit over time and not surprisingly, we lost a fair bit of audience over the intermission.

The second set was a series of 15-minute performances comprising of the people involved in each of the workshops during the day. Again, every performance had something going for it and I was interested in seeing the results of the workshops that I didn't attend. Our performance for the Cor Fuhler workshop clearly reflected that we hadn't really got the message. It got bloody loud and ear-piercing at one point. I doubt that was the gist of the workshop.

Near the end of the night came the group from Eyvind's workshop, which I was really looking forward to. I thought things were going fairly well and I liked my playing. We came to an ending. But it didn't end. A VCC student who had sat in on the workshop had invited himself onstage for the piece. I was under the impression this was supposed to be a performance by VCMI alumni only, not the students. He decided it was time to feature himself on piano and so we lurched through a couple of more false endings while he continued to play. There was a bit of eyeball-rolling by some the rest of the people onstage.

Yes, I am getting old and grumpy. It probably wasn't all that bad. And maybe my low energy due to my cold didn't help. But I certainly have less tolerance for that sort of thing nowadays.

As I type this, I can't help but have more respect for teachers who work with these young musicians every year, full of unbridled enthusiasm. I just don't have the patience for it .

Green light effect

I miss my camera. I started having problems with it just after ion Zoo played The Cellar in December. A friend of Carol's who is a professional photographer was there and he offerred to take a few shots of us. He also changed all of the basic settings on the camera and afterwards, I couldn't get it back to the way I was used to having it. Then it took longer and longer for the camera to switch into ready mode when I turned it on.

There is an LED indicator that blinks as the camera starts up and reads the memory card, usually just a few seconds. In a short time, this was the only thing the camera would do, just blink. So I took it to the Nikon repair depot, quite near to my home. I was told it was the dreaded "green light effect", a design flaw with this model of camera, and that the whole metering system would have to be replaced. As I was listening to the prognosis, I couldn't help but notice the posted repair rates, which appeared to start with a $300 minimum. I was very relieved to hear that this was a factory recall and it would be done at no charge.

That was almost a month ago, and I am anxious to get it back. I've missed shooting a few of the Monday night series at The Cellar. There have been some really great sets lately and a couple of times I've seen some situations that would have made for great photos.

Last night I really enjoyed Sketches, comprising of Gord Grdina, Dan Gaucher and Neal Dhillon. I was digging Neal's control of his horn, his time and soft tone, very unusual in freer improv situations. Normally this is where sax players really let their tone open upn - certainly I'm one of those who pushes it to extremes and continually working on getting an even wider range of sounds out of the horn. Neal chooses to work in a very limited tonal palette, more in the Lee Konitz range, and really digs into the possibilities. And since he is also a highly accomplished tabla player, his sense of time and rhythm is impeccable. He and Gord and Dan navigated effortlessly through some deadly wicked time signatures. Neal dressed quite sharply and I wish I could have gotten a good photo of him.

I really like it when music is in a so-called odd (to whom?) time signature and it all sounds very organic, as opposed to a bunch of guys as much as shouting "Hey we're cool, we're playing in 13!" That sort of stuff quickly bores me.

During my first year at Banff, Maria Schnieder presented a few pieces in uncommon time signatures, an arrangement of Giant Step in 5/4. It was fast and really hard, an earlier arrangement of hers. I was happy that we decided not to perform that one. Rather, we did Hang Gliding, which is one of the most sublime pieces I've ever played, which just happened to be in 11. One of my first entries of this blog details my experience with that piece. It was one of the major turning points of my life.

By coincidence, yesterday I finished doing a lift of a Jeannette Lindstrom song called Leaf, with her blessing. On Sunday, I was surprised to find out that it was in 5/4 with the odd bar of 6 thrown in for effect. I've listened to the tune dozens of times, but I hadn't picked up on the time, as it all sounded very natural. I've liked the lyrics to this song, the fact that she wrote in here in BC and its mention of Robson St.

I've really enjoyed listening to Jeanette's In the Middle of this Riddle cd since I saw her a couple of times at last year's Jazz Festival. I just liked the sometimes startling clear tone of her voice, been interested in her deliberate choices of diction, English being a second language for her, and particularly liked Staffan Svensson's always understated and interesting trumpet playing.

So it's with a bit of regret that I had to change gears and start listening critically to this song, figuring out all of the bits that made it sound so good. It's like figuring out a magic trick, and having that experience of wonder surgically removed.

We're going to rehearse it tonight with the Wanda Nowicki Group. If we can make the song flow, we'll keep it, maybe record it. If we make it sound like we're thumping our chests about playing in 5, then I'll yank it. And god help anyone who pounds out that Take Five lick tonight. Years back we did a wedding where the groom requested that tune. I wrote an arrangement in 6, just to see if anyone was actually listening.

Tomorrow, a full plate of VCMI!