Greetings from Essen, Germany. We (the Yellowjackets) arrived here yesterday from Los Angeles. The band has 16 dates in a row starting tomorrow. We are driving much of this tour, which makes life much easier. It’s always great to play every night for a while, and get the music flowing and groovilating.

After the Yellowjackets tour I go on to Iceland to play the program of Icelandic folk tunes I arranged for the Reykjavik Big Band a few years ago. I’m really looking forward to working with these fine musicians again and revisiting the music. Iceland is a fascinating place with a long and interesting history. The folk music there reflects a rich and sometimes tumultuous past. We recorded a version of the Icelandic national anthem, which is one of the most beautiful anthems I have ever heard. It turns out the government there forbids anyone from changing the national anthem in any way. My arrangement basically stayed very close to the melody, but I did add a soloing section and elongated the final statement of the theme slightly. I’m told I can be arrested and thrown in jail for doing such a thing. So this may be my last column for a while!

From Iceland I’ll go on the Milan to do a concert with my good friend Gabrielle Comeglio and his fine big band. Then on to Liechtenstein for a workshop-concert with the Big Band Liechtenstein. Home from there in time to start packing and prepare for our move.

The big news is we bought a house in Los Angeles that was formerly lived in by Arnold Schoenberg. Based on the research I have done, I’ve discovered that he lived there roughly from1934-36 before moving to Brentwood on the west side of Los Angeles. Several of his scores have this address written on the cover page. I look forward to learning more about his time in Los Angeles, and what all he actually wrote while in this house. There are some serious notes flying around in there! I wonder if my writing will become more abstract as a result. I will at the very least have to write a 12-tone big band piece to commemorate the occasion.

We rehearsed, performed and recorded the piece I wrote for wind ensemble and tenor saxophone called ”Go” a few weeks ago at the University of Kentucky Lexington. The students did a great job playing this challenging piece. Cody Birdwell and Miles Osland were absolutely great in helping to get the music off the ground. I played the piece on tenor sax, but I generated a part for alto sax as well. It looks like the piece will lay very well on alto as well as tenor. The most challenging aspect of getting this piece together was assembling some of the complex rhythms in the accompaniment. Some of these rhythms, which draw upon afro-Caribbean music, jazz music, and even rhythm and blues, are outside the normal vocabulary of the wind ensemble repertoire. But when all was said and done, the piece worked quite well, and a good time was had by all!

I’ve assembled Mintzer Big Band West, and we have already done two performances in California with a third scheduled for June 16th at Vibrato, Herb Alpert’s club up in the hills of Bel Air. The first date was also at Vibrato, and Stewart Copeland (from the Police) came by to check out the band. Peter Erskine played drums, and it was great to get back with Pete in a big band setting (Peter played on all my early big band recordings). We played up at the Bakersfield Jazz Fest last Friday with Will Kennedy on drums. Amazing! Will is such a great musician in virtually any setting. Many great musicians are out in Los Angeles, similar to the scene in New York. These two cities have to be the best places in the world to have a big band. There are always amazing players available to play when someone can’t make it.

Carla and attended the final concert of the L.A. Philharmonic with Essa Pekka Salonin conducting before leaving the position of principal conductor. Hey did an all Stravinsky program consisting of the Symphony of Psalms and Oedipus Rex. What an inspiring concert it was! The orchestra and chorus played so beautifully. Peter Sellars staged the two pieces in a very contemporary and far out fashion, with an interesting way of tying the two pieces together with some added text and unusual hand motions by the chorus. It was an innovative and interesting performance. It was great to see this orchestra step outside of the norm and do something very innovative with some of the greatest orchestral music in the world. It made me think that Los Angeles is quite a hip place, with lots of cool things going on. At the end of the concert the audience went wild in expressing their appreciation of Essa Pekka and the 17 years he spent with the orchestra. Every orchestra member embraced and had words with Mr. Salonin. Very inspiring and touching! It was great to see this level of connection and love between an orchestra and it’s conductor.

Looking forward to learning some new tunes this summer, practicing, writing some new big band and quartet music, and seeing what each day will bring. Some interesting things coming up in July, but that is for a subsequent column. Hope all is well with all of you. Thanks for reading the column, and for all the comments and input on the site.