For the up-coming Second Story Rep production of Cole Porter’s ‘Anything Goes’ we need a sub for November 17 & 18. I pretty quickly exhausted the list of people who could do it even if we had to write the alto sax part to clarinet. It’s was surprising to me how hard it is to find an amateur musician who plays both sax and clarinet well enought to solo on both. In this case, the part to be covered is reed book one which is chock full of solo’s and lead sax parts.

 

So after giving everyone a chance to consider it, I called Ray Guyll, a professional musician who plays more instruments than you might expect including sax, clarinet, and flute. Ray is a close and personal friend of ours and Suzy is taking lessons on sax and clarinet from him right now. Low and behold, he is available and has agreed to do it. Suzy was flabbergasted. Ray had offered to sub for many of our fledgling groups in the past, but we just thought he was being nice. We are incredibly excited about getting a chance to play with him.

 

He and his lovely wife Barbara will be joining us at Jazz Alley this weekend. Suzy and I are taking my parents and my sister who is visiting from Minneapolis. I invited my brothers but they’d rather watch football than go to a jazz dinner concert. Their loss.