In the almost seven years that I have been running a couple of Big Bands, I have been trying to design a stand front that is all things to all people. My wife does the actual fabrication, but I do the design. Using the tried and true purchased stand fronts proved to be an exercise at futility. They were too short when you stood for solos. And you couldn’t adjust them for the different heights that each musician was comfortable with.

First we tried stand felts. But they never looked sharp enough and our bari sax player wouldn’t use them as the interfered with his jazz music book.

We finally decided to go with the poster frames with a custom insert like those seen with the Microsoft Jazz band. The poster board frame is velcro’d to a wood box that doubles as shelves for the saxes to hold mouthpieces, coffee, glasses cases and the like. We use are music stands behind that and everyone can adjust them to their preferred height.

Key here is that the audience doesn’t see us tapping our feet which can be very annoying, especially to other musicians watching the show. Since we started using these, I get at least one person a show asking where they can purchase these. Makes me wonder, are our shows mostly watched by other musicians? I know I see a lot of shows.