Matthew Wengerd's Weblog

I am maintaining what I hope will be an official USF Jazz Blog at Blogspot. I am planning on cajoling more USF jazzers into contributing. Keep your eyes peeled.

I achieved one goal for this year already: I am principal bass of the University of South Florida Symphony Orchestra. This is an absolutely excellent large ensemble under the direction of Dr. William Wiedrich.

The ensemble’s next concert is February 15 at the Palladium Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida at 7:30 pm. [...]

Early hit at Lakeland Steak and Ale with Bendelow Road las night. It was my first hit with BR since IAJE, as I was sick and missed a scheduled hit and two last-minute bookings.

I think this was easily the best hit we have done. We played just a couple Bagwell originals, mostly standards [...]

For those interested, I have finished my long (for me, at least) IAJE post.

I have strep throat.

Ah, NYC. 2007 marked a milestone for me: my first year attending the International Association for Jazz Education Annual Conference. The Conference is held at both the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers and the Hilton New York, which are one block apart and, as you can see, right in between Central Park [...]

This has been my life of late.  Yesterday, I broke down and went to Watson Clinic after two-and-a-half days of severe fever, headache, muscle ache, congestion, etc.  In triage, the nurse got readings of a 104+ degree Farenheit temp and a (get this!) 230+ bpm pulse!

I had asked the admitting staff to please expedite me [...]

No, I haven’t gone mad. Darcy James Argue is an NYC-based composer I met at the IAJE annual conference in NYC this week. I did not get the pleasure to hear his music, as I was busy tending to our booth, but I caught a bit of a panel discussion he was on [...]

Hello from the IAJE 2007 Annual Conference!

To all of my SEU students, I will send schedule sheets to you (use the one I sent last year if it’s not deleted) and we’ll get schedules figured out the first of the week. Please tell your friends they can take bass lessons for credit!

See [...]