Eddie,
I'm glad you enjoyed the wedding and it was a nice gesture from your daughter to organise the performance by the Trinity musicians. That would have made my day too.
I'm amazed at the standard of musicianship of these young musicians and have been for some years now. It's very difficult to give musical advice today. Even in Hollywood studios there are few conventional musicians actually making a living from music as many films have electronic music by the likes of Hans Zimmer (synthesisers & samples) and his reputation is now such that he's doing lots of concert performances that would have previously been carried out by groups of "conventional" musicians. Before someone shoots me down, I'm a great admirer of Hans Zimmer and I'm well aware that much of his recent American concert tour was taken up with him playing ordinary acoustic piano.
Symphony orchestras have now been drastically cut back and themselves rely on subsidies & sponsorship to keep going. For this reason we are finding high class musicians playing in small groups in bars for a pittance. I think that they they will have to accept that cannot make a living from performance alone these days, and an element of teaching will be making up a sizeable part of their income. How successful this combination is, will depend upon whereabouts they are living. They have a fighting chance in the bigger cities, but then accommodation is much more expensive
Cover bands are still a fairly big in the States (if you can stand the boring repetition), but not so much in the UK. And be prepared to travel. Which brings me back to Gary Burton. Constant travel takes it out on your health, and Gary even wrote his only book on this subject - I have a copy - entitled
A Musician's Guide to the Road. Many jazz musicians are now almost constant travellers and Gary certainly has been, as had Chick Corea, for over 50 years.
Bob,
Following on from Eddie's comment on sticks or brushes, rarely have I found it necessary to specify in arrangements. For small group parts, I've frequently not even bothered to write a drum part. If I've been the leader or the keyboard player and I've not liked the drummer's interpretation, I've gently told him so. When writing big band parts, I've not generally been the leader and thought it best for the leader to specificy if he didn't like the drummer's choice. Drummers that get to play in big bands, even rehearsal only bands, are almost always good experienced drummers who keep good time, and unlike certain rock bands, don't argue about such matters. One other point, it may depend upon the environment in which you are playing. And this equally applies to the use of mutes on brass instruments and choices of electronic organ stops - if you're playing background music for diners, you certainly don't want them to choke on their dinner!
Maurice
