Congratulations to all our friends and colleagues that worked on the Parker Solar Probe, past and present. What a beautiful launch at 3:31am this morning. Our own Eric was supporting the ground system software during the launch.
To honor the event, we’ll play a few special “space songs” at our next gig. Can’t wait until this November when it makes its first pass by the Sun.
A little late reporting this, but with two gigs approaching, I thought it would be relevant. We’ve slimmed down to a quintet over the last several months. Eric, our tenor sax player, took an unspecified length sabbatical as he became too busy with the Parker Solar Probe. And Julius, our piano player, recently left APL for NRL. It was fun playing with you Julius, and we wish you good luck and happy trails in your future musical and career aspirations.
We had a blast playing the APL Winter Reception again this year. To get you in the holiday spirit, we uploaded some of the high points from the set, including “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”, “What Child Is This?”, and “Christmas Time Is Here.” Check them out at the end of the music playlist. Enjoy!
Uploaded some songs from the Family Visit Day gig earlier this month. Good gig! Check out the recordings on the Music page. Enjoy.
Experimenting with linking in video. Here is a short segment from the APL Holiday Festival on 12/5/2015, featuring Julius and Adam’s solos on Frosty the Snowman.
After a year, the website was starting to look a little dated. We spruced up the front page a little and put a list of favorite recordings on the MP3 player. Enjoy!
We had a blast playing the Holiday Festival this year. To get you in the holiday spirit, we uploaded the music from our set and some photos. The arrangements of Here Comes Santa Claus (very “Tenor Madness”-ish), God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (sounds a bit like Monk’s “In Walked Bud”), Frosty the Snowman (“Frosty Bossa” as we called it in rehearsal), and Christmas Time Is Here (free piano solo by Julius, love that mute on the trumpet Vivek) were first rate. We hope to be back again next year.
We just updated the Photos page with pictures of our November 4th gig at New Deal Cafe. Check it out!
Congratulations to all our friends and colleagues that worked on the New Horizons project, past and present. Pluto Flyby was an amazing success. Our own Eric was supporting the ground system software during the flyby.
To honor the event, at a recent rehearsal, we only played songs with the word “moon” or “star” in their title: “Fly Me To The Moon,” “How High The Moon,” “Stardust,” “Stella By Starlight,” and “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars.” Unfortunately, there are no jazz standards about Pluto (maybe we should write one!). Alas, we did not have enough of a quorum to play at Plutopalooza – it would have been great!
We are really excited about getting the new website up and running. There are still a few rough edges, but we’re generally open for business. Try to step over the boxes on the floor. And sorry that some of the shelves are empty. But we’re here, and we’re going to be here for awhile. So stop by often to check on our gigs calendar, or listen to some new music we’ve posted.
I find it fitting that we’ve opened the website for business on Pi Day, given we’re all a bunch of scientists and engineers that are also jazz musicians. So happy 3.1415927. Don’t forget to hug a scientist, engineer, physicist, or mathematician today :-).