On the night of March 11, 2013, three bands and two vocal groups performed at "The Vocal Jazz and Combos Concert" at Diablo Valley College (DVC). When I went to the concert, I sat in the middle of the concert hall so I had a good view of the performers and hear the music clearly. The venue was the perfect place for the concert, small and intimate with a seating capacity for eighty-five ticket holders and a stage that was only large enough to accommodate the instrumentalists, their instruments and their equipment. Moreover, the concert hall is designed to provide equally-distributed sound from the front row to the back of the theater. .
When attending a jazz concert, it's important to have the right mindset before it begins. I was ready to appreciate the jazz music, having an appropriate etiquette and manner toward both bands and other audience along with some proper musical knowledge. .
The instruments in the first group included bass, drums, conga, trumpet, alto saxophone, shaker and vibraslap. They performed two fast tempo songs for drums and percussion, and each instrumentalist was given the opportunity to hold a solo as well as improvise. Throughout the performance of the first group, the bass player was lack of creativity and technical skills that needed to be polished; his improvisation was a series of certain scales that were repetitive and simple. However, he was very rhythmical and had nice attitude toward the audience, matching well with drums and knew how to interact with the audience. Especially, the alto saxophone player was different from other instrumentalists, since his tones were more colorfully expressed than any other payers. His improvisation was complicated and creative as well. His pitch and rhythms were accurate. In addition to that, he performed as unison with trumpet player in a second performing song, where he showed a good sense of dynamics. As a whole, even though each member possessed some musical skills, he or she was lack of collaborating with other members and had a hard time matching together.
