“I’m assuming you’re already tuned,” Celia said, “but you’re probably going to want to warm up a bit, right?”
“Correct,” Laura said.
“Why don’t you have a seat right there,” Celia told her, pointing to the chair that had been set up for her. “We have a microphone for you and Sharon is going to want to do a sound check. If you just go through some scales a few times, you can warm up and she can get the levels right.”
Laura looked at the chair and then at Sharon, who was sitting at the mixing board. “You’re going to mic me for the audition?”
“It’s kind of killing two birds with one stone,” Jake said. He waved his hand to the chair. “If you will?”
Laura shrugged, as if to say how quaint, and then took a seat. She adjusted herself and then the microphone stand and then the microphone itself until everything was where she wanted it. Finally, she looked up. “Are we ready?”
“We’re ready,” Sharon said. “Go ahead and start warming up.”
Jake’s first impression of Laura Best was, so far, not a good one. Other than the fact that she was quite attractive, she seemed a cold fish, humorless, and condescending in a situation where she had no right or call to be so. She was a teacher who was judging the musical abilities of professionals? She had the gall to look down upon them for making music that was popular?
That impression began to shift a little, however, when she started to warm up. She was only playing scales, a simple warm-up exercise to go through the notes of each musical scale the instrument was capable of producing, but he could tell just by the way she did it, by the way those notes came out of the business end of that alto sax, that she really had cause to be arrogant. She started with C major, playing the notes of C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C from bottom to top and then back down again. She then switched to G major, and then D major, playing up to down, down to up. And it was music they were hearing. Not a hacker pushing buttons like a trained monkey who had memorized a diagram, but like a musician.
Jake and Celia glanced at each other again, sharing a look and then a slight nod. They were both starting to develop a little respect.
In all, Laura went through twelve separate major scales several times while Sharon played with the switches and dials on her board and the rest of them listened. The notes sounded sweeter with each repetition. Finally, Laura declared that she and her instrument were both warm and Sharon declared that the sound of the sax was at the optimum for what they were trying to accomplish.
“All right,” Celia said, her voice a little warmer now. “Let’s hear what you got.”
“What do you want me to play?” Laura asked her.
“Whatever you want,” Celia told her. “We’ll listen to you play a little and then maybe we’ll try having you mix in with us.”
Laura nodded, her face remaining expressionless. She shifted her instrument a little and then said: “I’m going to play Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone. It’s one of the first pieces I learned back when I started playing and it’s always been one of my favorites.”
Jake had never heard of it before. Neither had Celia. Mary and Cynthia, however, both lit up with pleasant recognition. “A beautiful piece,” Mary said.
“Absolutely,” said Cynthia.
“You know it?” Laura asked the mothers. She seemed surprised.
“Of course, we know it,” Mary said, somewhat taken aback. “We were symphony musicians, remember? We’ve done the accompaniment for Rhapsody for Alto many times.”
Laura looked at them as if she thought they might be lying for a moment—as if the Heritage Symphony could not possibly be sophisticated enough to have played something like that—then shrugged. “Okay then,” she said. “Tell me how I do.”
She played a melodic, sweet sounding piece that started slow and then gradually built in intensity. Any doubts that Jake had about her ability to actually play her instrument disappeared by the time she was halfway done. She was not Charlie Parker by any means, but the notes coming out of her horn were perfectly rendered, wonderfully phrased, and they had soul. He could hear her appreciation for the music issuing into the air around them, could sense her emotion by the way she put out the sound.
“That was wonderful,” Celia said happily when she was done.
“Agreed,” said Jake. “You seem to know your stuff, Laura.”
“I do,” she said. “Shall I do another?”
“By all means,” Celia invited.
She played something a little more familiar to both Jake and Celia. It was Someone To Watch Over Me. Again, she rendered it beautifully, with phrasing that drew out the emotion of the piece in a way that actually moved Jake a bit. After finishing this, she launched directly into a little more up-tempo jazz by belting out When the Saints Come Marching In. This one got everyone’s feet tapping on the floor and even prompted Ted to start playing out the rhythm with her on his snare drum, which, in turn, caused Ben to start setting the rhythm with his bass as well—acts that she tolerated but did not seem to be happy with.
“Excellent!” Celia said when she finished with that.
“Hell to the yeah,” said Ted. “I like her. Can we keep her?”
Everyone had a chuckle at that except Laura. She actually seemed a little alarmed at his words.
“You are definitely talented, Miss Laura,” Jake told her.
“Thank you,” she said softly, with no actual gratitude in her voice. It was like she was saying naturally, instead of thank you.
“Now then,” Jake said, “how about we see how you do with our stuff?” He turned to Celia. “The Struggle?”
She nodded. “The Struggle,” she confirmed.
Laura’s first impression of the motley collection of so-called musicians was not a great one either. They were the King of Raunch and the deposed Queen of Pop daring to judge her musical abilities. It was all she could do to keep from simply walking out. Was twelve hundred dollars a week really work debasing herself? Especially since they were apparently not going to pay her under the table, as she’d assumed would be the case, and taxes were going to be taken out. Unfortunately, she was a simple teacher with a simple teacher’s salary trying to pay rent and pay for gasoline in the Los Angeles region and, as such, she was stuck firmly in the rut of living paycheck to paycheck and being chronically behind on her credit card payments. She really could use that money.
She knew she played beautifully on her audition pieces and when they showed her the so-called song they wanted her to play melody for, she almost yawned. It was a simple, repetitive three chord melody that was about as challenging and technical as the scales she had done for warm-up.
“We’ll run through it once the way we’ve been rehearsing it,” Celia told her as everyone picked up their respective instruments and took their places. “That’s with Mary playing melody on the violin. We know it doesn’t sound right, that the timbre is not what we’re going for, but it’ll let you hear the gist of what we’re shooting for.”
“Okay,” she said with a shrug, slightly insulted that they thought she couldn’t just read the sheet music they had given her and play from that. In truth, she was actually surprised that they even had sheet music and that their songs were notated out at all. She had been picturing a session like a punk rock band would have, with everyone simply playing in their own keys at a random tempo and improvising as they went.
The group began to play, with Mary laying down the melody. Laura had to admit that Kingsley’s mother was actually pretty good with her instrument. And then Celia began to sing. She really did have a nice voice, a well-honed contralto that conveyed the dark emotion of the lyrics quite well. Though Laura could not relate to the theme of the song—she had never had a romantic relationship go sour and die as she was currently in the first such relationship of her life (and it was going very well, thank you very much)—she could picture the angst that Celia was projecting. All in all, for a cheesy pop song, it wasn’t that bad. She had been anticipating some kind of heavy metal atrocity—and she still assumed that such a piece would eventually rear its head.