This blog has now reached it's end. The American Adventure has finished. Will there be a sequel in the near future? One will never know, but for now let's let the credits roll...

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Tales from MI - Chapter 14

Welcome to the final chapter of Tales from MI. It's taken a while to sit down a get this all down in my blog, but I felt it needed to be here as a representation of my fantastic time at MI and all the people I've met.

We finish up today with the much anticipated Schroeder Ensemble.

The Schroeder Ensemble is a group class led by the amazing legend that is Carlton Schroeder. The man is a genius. His musical knowledge is so immense it would take years just to pick at it. He's quite the eccentric person as well, as you would expect from musical geniuses.

In this class we form a band just like the Jazz LPW, but it isn't only for one quarter, it lasts for as long as the band wants to play together. We get a good ol' fashioned jazz standard when we get in there and basically the class is about improvisation around the jazz standard. And we get to trade eights just like good ol' fashioned jazz standards.

This class is probably the most amount of fun I've ever had and the biggest exposure to actual jazz playing that I've ever got.

The drum teacher in this class is world famous Chuck Flores, who's played with many of my jazz heroes in his lifetime. He's like 75 years old now and is a wealth of musical knowledge. And he's incredibly funny.

The man himself, Mr Carlton Schroeder.
















And the other champion, Mr Chuck Flores.















And here's some pics of some of the people I played with in this awesome class.

















Here's to awesome memories of my stint at an awesome music college.

*Salute*

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