COVID took that away from every musician in the world, on a few days’ notice, and by 2021 everyone was heartily sick of trying to compensate by editing together Zoom videos from their living rooms.
But the mood among the musicians wasn’t tentative. Playing with any frequency in a big band — line upon line of trumpets, trombones and saxophones, backed by piano, bass, drums and guitar — is almost a silly thing to do, given the vanishingly low likelihood of anyone paying so many musicians what their work is worth. Musicians do it anyway, for the companionship, the orchestral possibilities, the palpable link to the music’s Kansas City dance-hall roots and to almost every player’s apprenticeship in a high-school band room. COVID took that away from every musician in the world, on a few days’ notice, and by 2021 everyone was heartily sick of trying to compensate by editing together Zoom videos from their living rooms.