Caz is cool

Caz is pretty much the hippest cat I know.

He was on the West Side doing a reading session for ACDA in the days leading up to my recording, so we decided to record here in the music building on his way back through town rather than going back to CBC. Friday night (July 25th) we got together to run through a few things.

Now Caz is acknowledged by Vijay (my jazz director here at CWU) as the most prolific composer/arranger in the vocal jazz scene. Caz composes original tunes that are being very happily adopted by groups in the tri-state area, is an amazing arranger, and an unparalleled poet/lyricist. FreeForm (the group he founded and continues to direct at CBC) has also received national recognition on multiple occasions. Add to that the fact that he records, masters and mixes all of FreeForm's recordings - two of which received awards from DOWNBEAT magazine (basically the jazz equivalent of ROLLING STONE) and the fact that he is also a really good jazz piano player, can scat your ears off, and yeah, he is a ridiculously talented individual. And lucky for me, a dear mentor and friend. The music I had was from 3 sources: a Disney book, the fake book he wrote as his masters' project, and an online company. Many of my tunes were from his book - nicknamed the Cazology - but he spent a lot of time going through the online stuff and even the Disney book, and "fixing" things. Of course 99% of people would have no idea that they needed fixing, but he is just that brilliant, and I got to reap the benefits. After that we went through some of the tunes that he was less familiar with, then we called it a night.