The fall semester has officially begun for me (and for Julia) as I've started teaching at The JazzSchool in Berkeley, running a vocal jazz ensemble (eventually two, this semester), and auditions for Sac State Vocal Jazz are Tuesday from 10am to 4pm in Capistrano Hall.  Julia and I are headed to Great Bend, KS, where I was born and raised, to visit my folks for the weekend, in celebration of their 40th wedding anniversary.  Then NEXT week, Julia and I will be spending some time in LA for her birthday, and on that weekend, I'm going to be working on a special project with Ben Folds that I'll talk about here when we're finished.  Suffice it to say that it'll be fun!

I've been writing and recording and getting things organized and cleaned up, and there's still much to do. I've written four fall commissions so far: "Not While I'm Around" for Georgiana Bruce Kirby Prep, "Assassin" for Sierra College," "Nature Boy" for Valley Christian High School and "Nature Song" for Folsom High School.  I've got several more to write, including "First Train Home" for Folsom, "Chaiyya Chaiyya" for Kirkwood Community College, "Diner" and "Photograph" for St. Xavier Prep, "Survivor" for Valencia High School, "I Could Have Danced All Night" for Solano College and also the closer to the Folsom Marching Band Show (I've already delivered the first two segments of the show) and a sight-reading piece for the high school big bands at the Folsom Jazz Festival.

Julia's been rehearsing with Sixth Wave and will be making weekly trips to LA this year, we'll both be teaching again for the Monterey Jazz Festival Educational Programs, and we'll be teaching a bit at Sac State, although less there than ever, unfortunately.  I've got several clinics and workshops happening this year already, some gigs with our new vocal jazz quartet consisting of Julia, Jennifer Barnes, Greg Jasperse and myself, and I hope to keep adding new charts to my catalog, including some SSAA and SSAB charts, and finishing all the Part Tracks for the charts archive.  A lot going on, and I'm grateful for it.  I hope to get to visit you and your jazz choir or see you at a festival this year!

 For your listening convenience, here are all of the full demo versions of the charts featured in this video, and new to this website for Fall 2010.  For full information about each chart, though, please browse or search the catalog for the entry you're interested in.

Singing in the Rain/Umbrella

It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday

Zemabia

I'm Hip

Radiance

Man in the Mirror

M.J.

King of Pop

Higher Ground

Lorem Ipsum

Lifespan of a Fly

Camel Back Blues

Spooky

I Like the Sunrise

I Thought About You

My Broken Heart

Silver Bells

Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing (2010 Rewrite)

Virtual Insanity (2010 Rewrite)

Fly Me to the Moon (new demo on 2007 Rewrite) 

New plan.  I've added a twitter widget to this website to present my most recent Twitter posts, and I'll be much more active on that than I've been in this site's main blog, so there will be something interesting and new to see each time you visit (presumably!).  I'll still use the blog for major updates or posts, though.  

Summer mode is fairly diverse for me, because of the variety of the things I wind up doing, in my freelance-itude.  I'll likely continue to live-tweet my arranging updates under the hashtag #arranginglog, for those interested in how my process works.  I have something like 12 vocal jazz commissions and a marching band show to write this summer, and I may squeeze in a big band chart as well (and, just imagine it...some non-commissioned writing!), and I'll be spending two weeks at the Monterey Jazz Fest Summer camp, two weeks in Japan, a weekend in LA with Julia, a weekend at Mount Shasta for some gigs, and who knows what else...so Twitter will be the way to go.  Of course, I hope you'll follow me, too, but I'm even happier if you want to come back to this page to check in!

I'm back on the path toward having all of my catalog ready with Part Tracks by the start of the next school year (for my purposes, that's August 10th, when I do my big new charts promotion).  I got three more sets done last night:  Home, So Nice and Singing in the Rain/Umbrella.  I've got some time today to knock out a few more, so we'll see how many I can get done.  The current list of Part-Tracks-having tunes is:

Over twenty new vocal jazz arrangements and a few jazz ensemble charts will be added to the Kerry Marsh Vocal Jazz Catalog on Thursday, August 5th, just in time for back-to-school for the fall semester (tough to imagine right now, I know!).  I've hinted at a May new charts promotion, and then, more recently, a June 1st promotion, but I've decided to prioritize getting every element in line for the new school year before revealing all the exciting new stuff for the first time.  I'm aiming to have Part Tracks made for every chart in the catalog, brand new demos and some long-needed rewrites done on selected older charts and a new vocal jazz resources and materials section, all to be unveiled at once.  I don't want my loyal customers to grow weary of the mass emails I send each year, so I want to keep them to a minimum, and this plan is a step in that direction.