Whew!!! Finished up at the Blue Note last night with Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band....6 nights in a row, 2 sets a night......a BEAUTIFUL experience. It was an honor to get to share the stage with these luminaries of Jazz. James Moody, Jimmy Heath, Slide Hampton.....even Clark Terry came down last night and performed with the band. These are truly some of the last, living innovators of Bebop Jazz music, and playing night after night with these cats was an amazing experience. Seeing these guys in their 80's getting up night after night and playin' their asses off was about as inspirational as it gets! Plus working with some of my contemporaries such as: Roy Hargrove, Antonio Hart, Steve Davis, etc. made me proud of my generation of musicians. These guys have put in so much time on their instruments that now it's effortless. They blow their horns straight from the heart, and THAT'S the real shit right there! ALL these great musicians, young and old, DEFINITELY inspired me to work even harder at my craft.
Hard work!! Man, I'm wiped out!! The level of concentration necessary to read these lonnnggggggg-ass big band charts caught me by surprise! Some of these charts (music charts) are 11 pages long!! Brotha was comin' home e'ry night beat DOWN!! Lol!! Looking forward to the tour! Watch out world, these cats are NOT playin' around!!!!