Cristian Gonzalez
MUS 110 (003)
Concert Essay
17 November 2014
-Chicago Grandstand Big Band- On November ninth, I went to go see the Chicago Grandstand Big Band at Fitzgerald nightclub in Berwyn Illinois. Upon arriving to the venue I noticed that it had three different entrances, leading to three different parts of the club. The entrances on the left and the right of the venue had a strict twenty-one and over policy so I wasn’t able to get into those two parts of the nightclub. Then there was only one entrance left for me to enter through (and was pretty obvious), which was the entrance right in the middle of the venue. When I walked into the place, I noticed that the atmosphere of the club was very dim and intimate. The only lighting in the place was the main light on the stage, which was used to illuminate the band as they played so that everyone else in the club could see them, and they to their sheet music. The rest of the light were the candles placed on each of the tables. When it was time for the band to come out and play, they managed to come out one at a time to get situated, being that they only had so much space to work with. In total there were eighteen musicians in the band. The instrumentation of the band consisted of: clarinets, trumpets, trombones, a drummer, a guitar player, saxophone players, a conga player, and a xylophone player. The night started off with the band playing slow and danceable music, calming down the mood as they kept playing. The first few songs they played had a consistent but rather slow tempo. As the night went on, the tempo and vibe of the whole performance started to change, not only in tempo, but the timbre of the performance changed as well. It started to go from slow and calm rhythms, to fast and up-beat melodies. As the mood began to get lively, the improvisations that each of the musicians were doing started to increase as well. Each musician had his/her fair share of solo time during each of the songs. The tempo and melody of each song stayed consistent, giving each musician a chance to jump in and solo for a little bit without throwing off the others musicians. More and more up-beat jazz tunes were played as the performance continued, leaving the vibe and mood of the room at plateau as far as energy went. It took its tole on me, making me feel a little bored and sleepy. Each song started to sound more and more the same. Even the sound technician of the venue fell asleep and was nudge by an audience member to wake up. Then when it has seemed like all hope was lost in this performance, they decided to bring out a vocalist to