We’re really, really excited to get to play Jazz at the Station next week. This venue is made legitimate by a long list of accomplished and talented musicians engaged there each month. You should go even when we’re not playing, second Wednesday of each month. The music is good, it’s free (thanks to support of Weber County RAMP funding and the hard work of Caril Jennings and Benjamin Jennings), and it’s in a grand hall of an old train station. This makes it a great place to spend an hour, even if there weren’t music playing.

On Wednesday, there will be music playing and it will be ours. We hope to see you there:

Besides rehearsing, we’re tasked with figuring out what to play. We’ve reached the point where we have material to choose from (in addition to new things we’d love to try out soon), and to squeeze it all coherently into an hour is a challenge. We’ve flashed back to making mixtapes for loved ones, an extinct hobby but one that is responsible for the existence of many of our students. How else would your parents have fallen in love with one another if it weren’t for the artful sequence from Peter Gabriel to Abba to Fleetwood Mac? Um … hypothetically speaking, of course.

Our setlist has some of the same considerations. How do you open enthusiastically but not too over-the-top? How do you sequence from one piece to the next, from fast to slow or from a standard to a re-invention? How do we make sure that Caryn has a chance to breathe in between songs? Where can we work in a subtle reference to trains? And, maybe most important, how do we build up and close the set? You’ll find out on Wednesday with an hour of music that spans most of the last century, but with our own recent spin and whimsy.