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Third Prize: Hannah Clevenson
Western Albemarle High School
Charlottesville, VA
That Familiar Tune: Satin Doll
It was early on a summer morning, and as I stumbled down the stairs, I began to hear the usual blaring, brassy notes coming from my Dad's trumpet. He had been trying to teach himself to play for several years, but never really got past the first few notes. Today was different. Those bumbling notes had begun to pick themselves up and assemble themselves into a song, a recognizable, swinging song. I didn't know the song at the time, but it seemed familiar. Humming along, I stirred my oatmeal in time with the music.
That song, which turned out to be Duke Ellington's Satin Doll, was the first real piece my Dad played. Of course, he'd plodded through Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and Mary Had a Little Lamb like any beginning student, dutifully working through his dog-eared garage sale edition of a first year band primer. After that morning, he got a book of jazz tunes and he began to practice more often and longer. At the time, I'd been playing flute for about four years, and I began to get out my flute and play along. I didn't know anything about transposing the notes, or even jazz style. Flute had never struck me as a jazz instrument, and I had never really considered playing non-concert band, non-classical, fun music. I dug up some old jazz records from the basement and listened to them. A door had opened to me, an entire new genre of music.
That fall, I got up the nerve to try out for the jazz band. During summer marching band practice, the director mentioned that anyone interested in jazz band should show up on the first day of school during the early-bird block. We were told to practice our jazz scales, along with a selected piece and to also practice improvising. I was terrified. Most people who showed up that morning had been in jazz band for years. I trembled at the thought of improvising in front of all those people, but as soon as we started playing, I began to relax. I made the band, and since then, I have started every school day with music. Several weeks later, I heard from the usual band gossip that we were going to play a piece by "The Duke." My heart skipped a beat as I flew down the risers to my music stand. Sure enough, haphazardly dropped onto each music stand was an arrangement of the song that first peaked my interest in Jazz: Duke Ellington's Satin Doll.
Return to the Essentially Ellington Essay Contest
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