Guest Column: Technology and Big Band Jazz

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is Joe Thornton who runs Media Relations for Lawson Software. Here he writes about his  beloved sax and his jazz band.

"Right now there are thousands – if not millions - of young music students out there who would look at a guy like me (PR guy for an ERP software company) and say to themselves, “man, I’m never gonna be like that old dude.” I know this for fact, because 25 years ago I would look at corporate guys and say that very thing.

As a young music student, you never envision that you’ll spend your career trying to explain things like “business process optimization” and “enhancing user productivity.” You imagine yourself entertaining the masses and living the music dream. Then one day, you come to the harsh realization that decent saxophone players are literally a dime a dozen. The great ones are rare. I even tried living close to Bob Dylan's birth home (yes, he is a Minnesota boy who made Highway 61 famous) to no avail. So, contrary to what you previously thought about yourself, you find yourself in the dime-a-dozen crowd. The dream dies. Or does it?

Even though I’ve become the corporate guy I once dreaded becoming, I have the rare opportunity to keep one foot in the music biz. I play the lead saxophone in an 18-piece traditional big band jazz group called the River City Jazz Orchestra. We play everything from weddings and private parties to community bandshells, the occasional VFW hall and an old folks’ home or two. I play a 1947 Selmer Balanced Action alto sax and a 1970 Selmer Mark VI soprano sax. It’s fun. And I get a taste of the music business that I used to long for as a career – without having to rely on it for my livelihood (though it does pay for an occasional set of tires).

So how does technology play into this? Simple. I’ve learned that as a “working musician”, there are two things that you fear the most – playing a job and no people show up, or showing up at the wrong wedding. Our group is now using cool technology to avoid those two nightmare situations.

On the first great fear – nobody showing up – social networking is proving to be a powerful tool for musicians. We’ll set up an event on Facebook, invite friends and friends of friends. The notice of your “gig” stays on their personal pages as a great reminder. Our vocalist, in particular, is great at letting people know where to catch us via Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo and multiple others. And it works like a charm! Sometimes we’ll even post last minute notices on Twitter – and people respond in real time, tweeting things like “what time?” and “where?” or the one we really want to see “we’re on our way to hear you.”

Beyond marketing our group, social networks are connecting musicians and fans like never before. Case in point – I just returned from a family Disney vacation. While waiting in line for Space Mountain with my two boys, I happened to meet two wonderful jazz musicians from Sydney, Australia - Jacki Cooper and John Morrison. When I returned home I posted links to their YouTube videos and websites on my Facebook page, which exposes Jacki and John’s music to hundreds of musicians and music fans here in the States. This would not have been possible just a few short years ago. This kind of marketing is changing the way musicians survive and thrive, especially as clubs and restaurants are scaling back on offering live music.

Regarding the second fear – showing up at the wrong wedding – technology can save us from the wrath of an angry bride or, worse yet, the bride's parents. Living in a town like St. Paul, MN, getting directions like “we’re playing at St. Mary’s” doesn’t help. We have dozens of churches with identical saintly names in this saintly named town. But, with the help of GPS or Google Earth on my Blackberry, we can just enter the church name and address along with the scheduled start time and the technology gets us all in place at the right place and time. If one member of our 18-piece group fails to show up, it can ruin night for all.

Interestingly, I find technology has done little to improve the quality of musical instruments in use today. I, like many other sax players, have tried horns old and new to find the perfect sound. One would think that technology would improve the precision and tonal quality of a musical instrument. Surprisingly, companies have not been able to replicate the magic of a vintage Selmer saxophone.  Selmer makes outstanding instruments, but even with the great technology available in production, the company has not been able to match or surpass the craftsmanship of the horns the company made by hand 50-60 years ago. Like the musician’s art, the art of creating the instrument is still something technology cannot replicate.

Keep in mind the next time you see a corporate PR guy for a tech company, there just may be a hidden musician, actor, playwright, painter, sculptor or glassblower inside. And, since we’re also tech geeks at heart, we’ll find ways to "mashup" our passion for our art with our passion for the latest technology.

Finally, please support the arts. You might be keeping a true professional musician in business – or you might be helping a corporate PR guy put a new set of tires on his car!"

Comments

[Joanna Mårtensson]

Really enjoyed your column, Joe!