Sam Blakeslee

It was a little bittersweet to attend what will most likely be my last reading with the @bmi Jazz Composers Workshop in NYC yesterday. I was a participant of the workshop from 2019-2023 which provided some crucial compositional infrastructure and fellowship during the pandemic and helped shape all the music for the big two albums I documented in 2023. I rejoined the workshop this past year to create some deadlines for myself and have a little bit of my own professional development while I’m adjusting to having teaching be a much larger part of my work and creative life. I wasn’t as prolific as I was in past seasons, but I ended up with two original compositions and an arrangement I was really happy with thanks to those deadlines (which are my best friend and worst enemy!). I just want to extend a huge thanks to @alanferber and @andyfarber for their guidance and mentorship throughout my time in the workshop. I can’t think of a better duo to learn from with their extensive, respective skill sets. Here’s a bit of my latest piece Change where I tried to distill my emotions of leaving NYC and moving to Hartford, changing my embouchure, and becoming a father-to-be all in a few months. Change is good, but also difficult, and also necessary. Those juxtaposing sentiments made me draw similarities to the blues, where the duality of sadness and joy are always coexisting together. In this piece I really tried to make the blues personified instead of it following the usual form. I’ll try to make another post about that process later, but we’ll see 😂 I submitted this to the annual recital, and regardless if it gets picked I’m grateful for the opportunity to have had my music read so many times by this great band of NYC’s finest! Thanks again to the band, Andy & Alan, and all the composers who I was able to share ideas with over the several years!! ❤️🥹🙏

@alxblakeslee and I have a little announcement! Baby Boy Blakeslee will be joining us this October! 🎉❤️ We are so grateful for this blessing and we can’t wait to meet Baby Blakeslee this fall! We thought Mother’s Day would be a good time to share this news with you all! Both mama and baby are happy and healthy and it was so meaningful to spend the day celebrating my favorite mom-to-be! Much love to you all and thanks in advance for any well wishes! 👶

It’s been (as always) a little bit of a chaotic end to the school year with lots of happenings in Hartford, NYC, and beyond! It’s been a good mix of some time in nature, a memorable performance with @jenniferwharton & @bonegasm at my Alma mater @uakronsopa , some home renovation projects, hearing the great @stevedavis1967 at @blackeyedsallys (Steve graciously invited me up to play a tune together and was also an extremely memorable experience for me!!), the @jackiemcleaninstitute Big Band concert at @theharttschool , tulips in Elizabeth Park, taking the ferry to gigs in the Hamptons, readings of some new big band music with the @bmi Jazz Composers Workshop, and was able to catch the @terrazabigband in Queens this past Monday while I was in NYC for a few days in between gigs! Final grades are submitted and some time for Prof to get to work on his own projects and some decompression are now commencing! 😂 I can’t believe this is the end of year 3.5 at @universityofhartford and while I’m looking forward to this summer, it will be great to work with some extremely talented young trombonists that will be joining our program next year! Thanks to all involved for another great year, signing off!!

I hope you can attend the @jackiemcleaninstitute Big Band Spring concert tonight in Lincoln Theater at the @theharttschool @universityofhartford ! This has been a busy semester of performances for the JMI Big Band. The students performed at the annual Hartt Collage concert, performed the exceptionally challenging Leonard Bernstein’s Preludes, Fugues, and Riffs for a special collaboration with Foot In The Door, and will be wrapping up the semester with an exploration of the American musical diaspora of Afro-Cuban, Afro-Peruvian, Brazilian, Great American Song Book, traditional spirituals, folk, and some swingin’ of course! The students put together this ambitious program in just over a month and it has been rewarding to see the progress they’ve made! Hope to see you tonight! Featuring: Voice: @_peyy.tonn @livit_beatles13 @peterforan__ Woodwinds: @maeczuba @axpomares @king_willywill23 @joshuacrespo24 @jameslewis5211 Trumpets: @maggeymangold_ @victoria_scavone @_bailis_ @matthew_chietro @dylan_ludo Trombones: @dominicantrombonist @hannah_horn06 @wolfe__tyler @jonl.04 Piano: @shai.the.jazz.guy @ralph_adrasse Percussion/vibraphone: @michael_spanedda @ninociampa Bass: @patgordon54 Drums: @danjantson

Here’s a bit from last Sunday at @hplct with @tyshermmusic and Friends! Tyler wrote a great arrangement of On A Clear Day that was fun to stretch out on. This was a really great band and Tyler wrote his tail off! I selfishly hope Tyler is planning some more performances! Thanks to @neefjazz and the Kahan Foundation for all their work to bring this weekly series to life in downtown Hartford! • • #trombone #jazztrombone

Part 2 from my previous reel - Here’s a little bit of my playing with a little more bravado than my personality usually has. Your personality has got to shine through in the music IF it’s helping support the other musicians. I’ve been in situations recently where I’m simply need to play harder for myself and everyone else to sound good. If every gig was an introspective, dreamy, self-effacing journey, then my personality would be a great fit. But that’s not every gig and that’s not every project! I think there’s a huge distinction between pandering and simply trying to be a supportive bandmate in the moment. Trying on different musical costumes for me (and enjoying it!), is something that I’m trying to work on over the summer. I’ve been finding it is actually hooking up a lot of areas of my playing that if I were to play my personality all the time, would otherwise be a little flat. Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted talk! 😂

Some thoughts on how your personality positively and negatively affects your playing. You have to let your personality shine though, IF it is helping the music. I’ve been in some playing situations where I simply need to play harder to sound good and support the musicians, which is antithetical to my own personality sometimes. My next reel is with me playing with much more confidence and bravado than I usually play with. I’m finding that playing from that way is really helping tighten up my playing in regard to time, articulation, and overall direction of my lines. Putting on a mask while you play is not always a bad thing! Check the next post for what I mean!

Before and after with a little balcony porch renovation project the past few days! Hard to believe my rent is $1400 cheaper than in Brooklyn AND I get to have a little sunny parapet amidst the trees! I know I’m suburb-maxxing, but sorry not sorry 😂 Got some planters and a lil area rug on the way to complete the vibe. Looking forward to many an espresso and listening sessions out here this summer! Any recommendations for low-ish maintenance, full sun plants? 🌱 🪴

I’m looking forward to playing today at @hplct Baby Grand Jazz Series with @tyshermmusic ! Tyler put together an incredible sextet featuring @therandallhaywood @nathan__edwards @queenofthekeys & @jonathanb_live , and with this band it’s sure to be a great afternoon of music. Hope to see you there!

@uhartceta / @jackiemcleaninstitute student @patgordon54 and I (well mainly Pat 😂) have been up to some extremely scientific acoustic shenanigans the last few weeks! I wanted to consult Pat about some sound treatment in my new home office and it sprawled independent lab credit he needed to graduate and into a scientific venture far beyond what I could have possibly dreamed of! For all the faults of my Brooklyn apartment, the acoustics from the 14 foot ceilings and basically one big room were actually really good, and I’ve had some trouble adjusting sonically to the new space. Can’t wait to see what the process below yields for home practice, sessions, and home recording! It started with getting some recordings of my trombone in the @universityofhartford anechoic chamber to get a completely unaltered audio signal to run into a 3D space auralization program. Then Pat tested reverberation time in the space with ballon popping and pumping pink noise into every corner of the room, then measuring sound bleed of the pink noise from outside the room to help better sound proof the room both from inside and limiting bleed from outside the space. He just sent me the trombone audio files with how it sounded in the anechoic chamber, the room with the existing conditions, with sound diffusion, and sound absorption. The results were so wildly different and it was pretty amazing. I’m looking forward checking out his report with his recommendations and different 3D models of the space with different absorption and diffusion panels. Pat is an incredible bassist, and also a brilliant engineer. Working with students like this is one of many reason @universityofhartford is such an inspiring place to teach!

Thanks to @cozycoles._23 for capturing this lil clip of the show at @blujazzakron with @jenniferwharton ! So much fun to play alongside @johnfedchockofficial and @alanferber ! It’s a wild challenge to be in a section when you spent time transcribing all the other trombonists, cause you gotta make sure you don’t play their stuff! 😂

I had a great time giving a masterclass a few weeks ago at @uakronsopa where I talked about The Three Centers, an amazing concept for musical and personal development I was made aware of by @schantz.jack during my time as a student at UA. The Three Centers, or The Three Brains is a way of knowing oneself developed by G.I. Gurdjieff through physical, intellectual, and emotional centers. It was an amazing way to help distill my goals and start to see some tangible results in my own practice. I decided to turn the masterclass into a short article about my experience of working with Jack on these concepts, my journey through his teaching, and how it’s shaped me in different ways since 2013. Follow the link both in my story and bio to check it out. If you’d like to stay in touch for future articles, feel free to follow and/or subscribe to my @substack !