When & Where was your 1st Gig or Presentation? Share your experience!
To break the Ice. My 1st presentation as a student was in a high school event. I had a saxophone solo. i was so nervous!!! I was probably 13 back then.
My 1st professional gig was at 17, but i had been playing in church events for a while so I was used to stages. On that gig I shared the stage with Marc Anthony. I started one of the songs on the wrong key. lol.. besides that everything else went well.
Your turn!! :)
Not that I have all that much experience to speak from, but my first presentation type deal was when my sister took me, as a freshman in high school to play in front of her college class on jazz as a component of her report on the Duke Ellington jazz orchestra. I was probably 13. My first gig came at the end of my sophomore year, when I was hired to sub for the bari player for our local professional jazz ensemble, the Mon River Big Band. It was something I'd dreamed of since I first heard them play in my early childhood, and I couldn't believe it was actually happening. Since then I've been called back every time they've needed a sub, which is my great honor and privelege. :)
First performance was in grammar school on clarinet. That was nearly 50 years ago, so who remembers.
As a late bloomer, my first sax solo was two years ago for a Christmas Holiday party at a Chinese Community Center. I played a solo on Tenderly after a small talk about the history and "anatomy" of the saxophone. The best part was my brain freeze at the end of the song when I just kept playing in Key until I remembered where I was. No one caught the gaff and I was pretty happy to have kept my cool!
My first performance as a musician was in grammar school. I was in the 5th grade playing some songs with the rest of the school band which was 6th graders. It was pretty lame. My first actual dance gig was in the 9th grade. We moved to San Diego where the school bands were ruled by the marching medium. Coming from the Bay Area where the jazz bands were the medium (and they all cooked), marching band just wasn't for me. At a football game one time, I showed up late, grabbed my horn from the band room and headed for the football field. At the junior high school next door, there was a dance of some sort and I could hear a rock band playing. As I looked up at the bleachers where I was supposed to be, I could hear the rock music calling my name. So I said, "Screw this" and went to where the live band was and asked to jam with them. They accepted. Everybody loved it and at the end, the football game was over and everybody was back in the band room putting their instruments away, myself included. Nobody had even noticed that I wasn't there. It was great. The next year, we moved back home to the Bay Area where once again, jazz band was alive and well.
