Jazzvox

My friend Nich is a proper vocal jazz fan. He teaches high school choir, sings in two community/semi-pro jazz groups, is a photographer 

and runs and designs websites for several singers. 

When this wasn’t enough he started the JazzVox concert series. He hosts house concerts in his condo! He brings a wide variety of great performers every season and for a $30 donation you get an intimate house concert, interval snacks and a chat with the artists afterwards. After these concerts took off at his Federal Way location a friend started up a northern version on Camano Island. Neither place is very convenient to me and I must confess that in the last few years I hadn’t made it out to any of his concerts. This is inexcusable. So when he posted that Dena Derose was going to be doing a Saturday singer/pianist workshop in addition to a night concert I knew that I should really take advantage of the opportunity.

Dena Derose is a fantastic singer pianists who I’ve only heard of recently but of whom Suzie approves, which says a lot. She’s from New York but is at the moment teaching jazz voice at the University of Graz in Austria a post formerly held by Sheila Jordan and Mark Murphy among others.

So Saturday morning I get in the car for another long drive south. I hadn’t been to Nich’s place before but I managed to find it, or at least thought I had until I knocked several times and no one answered. It turned out that I was in the right place and Dena came down and let me in herself. There were six other people who came. We started out with some basic vocal exercises that were new to me and some really good reminders about how I should put more effort into improving my default posture. Then we all took turns singing a tune and having her work with us. The workshop was scheduled for 11 to 2 but ended up more like 11:30 to 4.

I absolutely love this because not only do you get your own feedback or generalized feedback but you get to be a fly on the wall while she works with others. And as a teacher that is priceless. I loved hearing about what she does with her students in Graz and how it syncs with what they’re learning from their classical teachers. I was the youngest participant but we came from a wide variety of backgrounds. Everyone sounded really good.  Her feedback included piano voicings, vocal technique, stage presence, melodic and harmonic intricacies and diction. Nich was working out a medley of Honeysuckle Rose and A Sleeping Bee and Dena was able to show him some melodic/harmonic ways to link the two tunes.

Dena started out as a pianist and then when wrist ailments put that on hold for a few years she started singing. This worked out well for her as she is now proficient in both. Since she does both we were encouraged to sing and play for ourselves if we liked. Three of us chose to do this.  All three of us had some skills but were clearly singers who played.  I used my music and was a bit nervous but I think it came across well. Dena said she had chills. Woo hoo! Then she had me sing and she played for me which was also a treat.

I stayed after a bit to chat with Nich for a few minutes. Also he had introduced me to the tune Beautiful Love which I did for my last recital and I wanted to sing it for him, to show him what I had done with it. It was great because I sang and played the tune and vocalese for both of them. Dee-lightful.