One of my favorite concerts I played/sang this summer was in August. I had the pleasure to play and sing with a jazz saxophonist from Germany named Uwe Steinmetz. We met in Austria back in May during the arts conference I was at. Since we knew we'd be playing at the same place in Basel in August, we decided to do couple songs together. It was one of those moments where the excitement gets to you and you can't stop smiling like you got the biggest piece of chocolate cake out of everyone else.I've only written one jazz song in my life and couldn't wait to hear how it would sound with a saxophone. Does it sound stupid that I got goosebumps from my own song? One thing that's so great about collaborating with other musicians is that you get to see them take a song and go some place with it that you could never go. He hit it out of the ballpark. It was a grand slam...a homerun...a plethora of goosebumps...whatever you want to call it. I REALLY wish I had a recording of it, but I don't. My camera ran out of battery power right around that time.
Uwe's choice of song that we collaborated on was "Summertime" by Sam Cooke. Up until that point, I had never heard of it and I really don't know why I hadn't heard it before. What a great song! I downloaded a couple different versions from iTunes. It's more in the vein of a jazz lullaby. My favorite line from it is:
One of these mornings, you're gonna rise up singing
You're gonna spread your wings and take the sky
Just before my camera shut down, Bryan was able to capture a bit of it on video. The sound quality is horrible, but you get the idea and you can hear how obviously talented Uwe is.
