Transcript of Aaron Diehl
Aaron Diehl: I had an offer to go to the Jazz Aspen Snowman’s Camp in Aspen, Colorado. And somebody had called me, this is in spring, and said, “Oh well, we’d like to have you in this camp in Aspen.” I said, “Okay.” So maybe a month later or so Wynton called me and asked if I would play with his septet for a few months over in Europe and quite honestly I had an obligation. I said, “I’m sorry, I have a commitment in Aspen.” But it’s funny because Wes Anderson, his alto saxophone player, his wife called me and said, “Are you crazy? You just turned down the gig with Wynton Marsalis.” So anyhow somehow I got out of the Aspen gig. And so I went on the road with him.
I really shouldn’t have been out there, but I think Wynton saw a certain enthusiasm and he wanted to challenge me or maybe even better, see what I could aspire to if I wanted to work hard at it. But it was tough. These are number one guys who have played together for, at that time, 15 years or so, and so they all knew each others’ playing and I wasn’t even near the level where they were, on top of the fact that they had been playing so long together. And it’s funny because I listen to recordings of Wynton and his band, the septet, and I tried to kind of get the flavor of how they played. The thing is those recordings were from ten years prior, 15 years prior, so those pieces had developed 15-fold since then. So it was very different, playing with them live was very different than playing along with the recording.
