Jeff has been active in music since the 5th Grade when he joined the string ochestra program at Canton McKinney middle school taking up the double bass. The school dropped the orchestra program when Jeff was in the 8th grade and he went on to join the High School Jazz Band and Combo(the only string player)as well as playing in the stage band. Cantons' high schools jazz program is first rate for a small rural community and under the direction of Tim Savage the program has grown and the students take a keen intrest in learning. Jeff went on to study music at the Crane School of Music and will start his Junior year in Fall 05. Playing double bass has been a good experience for Jeff and partly because of a scarness of double bass players and partly because of Jeffs' talent has had the opportunity to play in many venues from pit bands for area plays, to rock bands to the Wally Sieble All Star Big Band.
Jeff takes every opportunity to play that he can. While still in high school he was invited to join a combo with fellow high school band member Donnie Santimore percussionist. Jeff and Donnie teamed up with two brothers from the neighboring town of Potsdam the Whitesell brothers Sam and Jake. Sam and Jake were at that time entering the Crane Music School as performance majors on sax and piano. Sam and Jake were friends with another Potsdam sax player Josh Lazo and a group was born called "Out Of The Blue". On occassion they were joined by keyboard player Mike Hartigan now studying at Juliard. Sam and Jake have graduated Crane and how long they will remain in the area is questionable. Donnie studies music education in a Vermont university entering his sophmore year and is away most of the year but returns home for the summer and school holidays. Jeff at times plays in other configurations with Sam and Jake and all the players look to gain as much experience as they can playing with others. "Out of the Blue" has endured over the past 4 years and hopefully will continue into the future as all the players are talanted with a passion for jazz.
Check out some of their arrangements --recorded on mini disc at Strawberry Fields coffee house in Potsdam. The room is small and not the best to play in. The recording quality is ok for mini disc and hopefully in the near future we can get a decent multi track recording in a good room to do their music a bit more justice. Typical song length is 10 minutes so it may take awhile to down load but check it out. I have to confess ignorance to the song titles most are from the Jazz Real Book and are standards:
1. OTB-Track-1 Higher resolution @328kbps-44 khz bit resoulation
2. OTB-Track-2 Summertime- @ 128kbps-44 khz bit resolution
3. OTB-Track-3 @ 128kbps-44 khz bit resolution
4. OTB-Track-4 @128khz-44 khz bit resolution
