BACK IN PHOENIX!

As you might have seen in my last blog post about playing with The Hourglass Cats, I am back in Phoenix, AZ! I will be in the Phoenix area until March 17th. I will be available for gigs, lessons and clinics/masterclasses. For booking please contact me at lisa.lizanec@gmail.com.

Phoenix, AZ is my hometown, so I am very excited to be back for an extended period of time. I would love to see as many people as possible while I’m back and of course, play some great music with old friends.

So far, I have performances and appearances lined up with The Hourglass Cats, TAD Management, and Brave Musician Podcast. More news and updates to come soon. I hope to hear from you!

2 Shows This Week With The Hourglass Cats

What’s jet lag?! haha. I just go to Arizona and will be playing 2 shows this week with The Hourglass Cats.

Thursday 1/30 9:00pm - 12:00 at the W Hotel in Scottsdale, AZ and Saturday night 2/1 at The Hotel Monte Vista in Flagstaff, AZ. If you haven’t heard of The Hourglass Cats you can check them out on social media. They are an awesome local rock back from Phoenix, AZ and have a sax and trombone!

https://www.instagram.com/thehourglasscats

https://twitter.com/iheartthc

https://www.facebook.com/thehourglasscats

The event flyer for the Monte Vista gig is below!

New Videos!

Hello Everyone! I haven’t had an update on here in a while, and that’s because I’ve been super busy behind the scenes. I have a lot of big changes and exciting things to announce for this upcoming year… just not quite yet!

In the meantime, please enjoy some of the latest videos from my YouTube channel, SlideShow. It is our goal to reach 1,000 subscribers this year! Big things are happening in 2020. More news and updates coming soon!

Videos from the Yokohama Oto Matsuri on 11/3/19

In a previous blog post, I wrote about performing with the Pacific Ambassadors 7th Fleet Band at the Yokohama Oto Matsuri (Sound Festival) in Yokohama, Japan on November 3rd. You can read the blog post below.

https://lisalizchappell.com/blog/2019/11/2/yokohama-oto-matsuri-sound-festival-1132019

Since then, the videos from the concert have been uploaded to YouTube! You all know how much I love Youtube.

Two notable videos - A Time For Love is a beautiful trombone feature, and on Chameleon everyone in the band is introduced and plays a solo. Enjoy the concert!

12/8/19 Beethoven 9 at the Yokosuka Arts Theatre

It’s that time of the year again, in Japan! Tomorrow, Sunday 12/8, I will be performing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Yokosuka Symphony Orchestra. The concert will be held at the beautiful Yokosuka Arts Theatre. Concert Flyer and information can be found below.

http://www.yokosuka-arts.or.jp/performance/detail/?id=490

A Little Minor Booze

Since I have been back from this years’ Blast The Music of Disney tour, I have been doing a lot of recording! This video is a multitrack recording, meaning I played all 5 of the trombones parts myself, and edited them together. The trombone soli I played is from the big band chart, A Little Minor Booze. It was made popular by the Stan Kenton Orchestra and was composed by Willie Maiden.

Making multitrack recordings is not only super fun, but it is a great learning experience. You can learn a lot about your playing and your tendencies by trying to play with yourself! I enjoy it every time I do it, and I look forward to making more multitrack recordings in the future.

I decided to record this specific trombone soli because I played this chart recently at a concert with the 7th Fleet Band and loved it. It was really fun to play, and a great trombone section feature.

Here is a previous post I made about that concert:

https://lisalizchappell.com/blog/2019/11/2/yokohama-oto-matsuri-sound-festival-1132019

Thailand World Music Championships

I am very excited to announce that I have been invited to be a judge at the 2019 Thailand World Music Championships. The Thailand World Music Championship is an annual international marching band competition featuring bands from all over Asia. The event will take place from December 19-21 in Sisaket, Thailand. The captions I will be judging in the competition are: Music - Individual Winds, Brassline Battle, Street Parade - Show Area, Winds - Ensemble Winds, and Color Guard - Overall General Effect. I am very excited to travel to Thailand to experience and be a part of this competition first hand. Also, to see some great marching bands!

If you are interested in learning more about this event, information can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/twmc.or.th/
http://www.twmc.or.th/

It's Gonna Be Me by 'NSYNC, Trombone Multitrack Cover

The latest video I posted on the SlideShow YouTube channel is, IT'S GONNA BE ME by 'NSYNC. If you don’t know what SlideShow is, it is a YouTube channel that I upload trombone videos to regularly. I collaborate on this channel with my husband, Patrick, and many other trombonists. We tend to collaborate with trombonists and instrumentalists that we work with. There are many videos on the channel that feature musicians from Blast! and The 7th Fleet Band (US Navy Band). You can check out the channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/slideshowtrombone

I arranged It’s Gonna Be Me by ‘NSYNC for trombone quintet. Each trombone part plays a vocal part sang by a member of ‘NSYNC. Since ‘NSYNC is a five member, male singing group, the parts work out really well for the register of the trombone. Original song writing credits for It's Gonna Be Me go to Andreas Carlsson, Max Martin and Rami Yacoub.

This is the first SlideShow video where I played all of the parts myself and created a multitrack video. I also included the original background music, so you get the familiar, nostalgic sense of the original song. Making this video was very fun, but I also missed my friends! I enjoy working on recording projects with other people.

The reason I decided to make this video is super obvious if you know me. I was a HUGE ‘NSYNC fan growing up. I am not exaggerating. I had posters all over my room, I wore the T-shirts, and i saw them live in concert several times. One might say I was obsessed, haha. I definitely fell victim to the boy band craze the swept through America in the late 1990’s early 2000’s. Although it was super hard to choose, It’s Gonna Be Me is probably one of my favorite ‘NSYNC songs, it’s just so catchy!

Please enjoy my trombone version of It’s Gonna Be Me!

The Lord Of The Rings Medley Arrangement

As some of you know, I have started a YouTube channel along with my husband Patrick and several other trombone colleagues. On this YouTube channel I feature a lot of my own arrangements for trombone ensemble. By far, the most complex arrangement I have written to date has been my Lord Of The Rings Medley. It is also my favorite! The Lord Of The Rings is one of my favorite movie soundtracks, there is just so much amazing music to choose from. Before I worked on the arrangement, I spent hours listening to all three movie soundtracks to pick out the best themes.

When I originally started writing this arrangement it was over 8 minutes long! The funny thing was, I could have kept going, haha! But I knew for YouTube, that was just going to be too long. So I wittled it down to about 6 minutes. Even still, I was thinking that was a little long for our YouTube audience. So we came up with the idea of splitting the videos up into 3 parts, just like the Lord Of The Rings movies! After that decision had been made, i made sure the themes went in chronological order, so each video matched the LOTR movie they came from; The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. We made 3 separate videos, but the arrangement can still be played as a whole (I actually prefer it that way)!

Please enjoy my Lord of The Rings Arrangement for trombone ensemble!

Yokohama Oto Matsuri (Sound Festival) - 11/3/2019

I am very excited to perform today at the Yokohama Oto Matsuri (Sound Festival)! The Yokohama Oto Matsuri is one of Yokohama’s largest music festivals, and is held every 3 years. The festival lasts for 2 months, and includes all types of musical acts from around the world. I will be playing with the 7th Fleet Band, one of the US Navy bands. This is my first time playing with the 7th Fleet band and we will be playing a big band set with classic American tunes, big band and jazz favorites, and of course some famous Japanese songs! We perform at 16:00 at Queen’s Square Yokohama at the 1st floor Queen’s Circle Stage. I hope to see you there!

You can check out the event website here: https://yokooto.jp/

Update: We did it!

I Put A Spell On You - Happy Halloween 2019

As many of you know, Halloween is my favorite holiday! So of course, I had to make a Halloween video! I arranged I Put A Spell On You for trombone quartet. This song is originally by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, but my arrangement is based off the version in the 1994 Disney Movie, Hocus Pocus. Hocus Pocus is easily one of my favorite Halloween movies (Along with The Nightmare Before Christmas)! I remember going to see the movie in the theatre when I was a kid, and I loved the witches. To this day, I am a HUGE Sarah Jessica Parker fan (hello, Sex and the City).

In Hocus Pocus, Bette Midler absolutely slays the performance of I Put a Spell on You, and it is one of the most memorable scenes. I felt the up-beat, latin-horn vibes would sound great on trombone. If you haven’t seen this rendition you should check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaC-WDrvmUQ

In the SlideShow music video I played the three tenor trombone parts, and my husband, Patrick, played the bass trombone part. We were looking for a spooky place to film our video.. and we settled on the storage unit on the first floor of our apartment building, haha. Hopefully that didn’t ruin the spooky vibes for you! Before I send you over to YouTube, If you like the video and you have a YouTube acount, please subscribe to our channel. It will take 2 seconds and your support will help our channel grow, and allow us to continue to make fun trombone videos for you to enjoy. Have a very Happy Halloween and without further adieu, here is I Put a Spell on You!

Online Video Lessons Studio

I just opened up my online lessons studio! You can get all of the information by clicking the link below.

https://lisalizchappell.com/online-video-lessons

2019-2020 TMEA All-State Etudes

It’s that time of the year again! Preparation for the TMEA (Texas Music Educators Association) All-State Band Auditions. I started up this project last year with my husband Patrick (who is from Texas). The videos were received well and we would like to continue this project! For 2019-2020 our friend Seville Jenkins also participated in making a video.

Here is a quote from my post from last year on this topic. I still feel the same way, so I am re-sharing it!

“The purpose of us sharing these etude videos is to provide high school students who are auditioning a reference they can use in their preparation. Too often in music education children only get a sound and musical reference from their peers. I believe that is one of the reasons people take so long to master an instrument. (I am still working on it everyday)! Victor Wooten talks a lot about this concept in his book, The Music Lesson. In elementary music classes, kids only hear other elementary students playing instruments, therefore they never excel beyond that level. In junior high, they are exposed to a slightly higher level of musically performing peers, and so on. In a small effort to break this cycle, I hope these videos can be of use to young aspiring trombonists.”

This year, we added another element to the video series. This was my first time to include talking points and practice tips in one of my YouTube videos. After the etude is played, it serves as a mini music lesson or masterclass. I hope students will find my tips helpful!

We have posted these videos on our YouTube channel, SlideShow. In addition to our fun trombone ensemble videos that we love making, we also want to make it a goal to support music education. Here is my interpretation of 2019-2020 TMEA Etude #2 Blazhevich No. 86:

To watch videos for Etude #1 and Etude #3 please go to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/slideshowtrombone

After you watch, please subscribe to our channel. We would love you to contribute to making our channel grow, so our videos can reach a larger audience and we can continue making trombone videos for you!

Tour Videos

One of my favorite parts about going on tour with Blast (aside from performing for our fans nightly!) is making music with my best friends! The trombone section in Blast, nicknamed BONE ZONE, are the best people on the planet. Not only do I love playing trombone and performing with these people, we always have so much fun. Whenever we all hang out it is non-stop laughter. The past two tours, 2017 and 2019, we also made some YouTube videos together while on the road. Making these videos was pretty much just an excuse to hang out any play trombone together more, haha. Here are a few videos we made this year while on the road. Enjoy!

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We filmed Friend Like Me at one of the workshops we did at Nanyo High School in Nanyo-shi , Yamagata-ken. These workshops are aways a lot of fun and the kids are great. I was honored to have the opportunity to give back to this amazing community. Nanyo has become my home-away-from-home in Japan.

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This next video is very special to me. Some of you may know, some of you may not, our long time stage manager, Jay McManigal passed away this summer while we were on tour. Jay was more than just our boss, he was our mentor and our friend. We were extremely saddened by his passing, but knew we still had to perform. The show had to go on, and Jay would have wanted it that way! We made this video, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, as a tribute to Jay and sent the video to his family. If you knew Jay, we hope you remember him as you watch this video.

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On a much lighter note, March was very fun video to shoot! I love this original tune from Hiromu Yoneso. I also played this song with his band, Stkorn, at a live show earlier this year. Hiro arranged a special trombone ensemble version of this tune just for us. We were also really happy that Kaylie Brooke joined us on cajòn. I’m warning you - this song is super catchy!

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UPDATE: One more I’m going to add on here. This video was uploaded to YouTube on Oct. 17th, so a little later than the rest. This an an excerpt from Dvořák's New World Symphony. Tao arranged this little excerpt and we played it together as a warm up throughout the entire tour. We filmed this video at our very last stop of the tour, Fukuoka!

FNS 2019 Performance

I am so happy that I got to perform 2 years in a row in Fuji TV’s FNS Summer Music Festival (uta no natsu matsuri). Last year, with One Piece Oto Utage and this year with Blast The Music of Disney.

Here is the FNS website where you can check out the details of this annual event: https://www.fujitv.co.jp/FNS/s/

And here is a video of our performance this summer:

Blast The Music of Disney Tour Schedule

Come see a show! Show and ticket information can be found here:

https://blast-tour.jp/schedule.html

Blast: The Music of Disney Promo Tour

I am currently on a promotional tour for the show Blast: The Music of Disney. It’s been a wild ride so far. At the promo tours’ completion, we will have visited 17 prefectures in 18 days! Each day is filled with TV appearances, radio shows, newspaper, web, and magazine article interviews, special live performances, and workshops at local schools. I am also getting a true Japanese education. I have traveled and toured Japan many times before, but never like this! I am the only foreigner on this tour, so I am speaking as much Japanese as possible and eating all the special local dishes from each prefecture. I am enjoying sharing music, trombone, and Blast! with everyone I meet. Up next: 7 weeks of rehearsal in my home away from home - Nanyo-shi, Yamagata-ken!

You can follow the promo tour’s progress on my social media accounts. Here is an interview article from Engekisengen.com! https://engekisengen.com/genre/dance-performance/14350/

Blast: The Music of Disney 2019

I am excited to announce that I will once again be joining the cast of Blast: The Music of Disney for this years’ tour of Japan. On Wednesday 4/10 there was a press conference held at Fuji TV in Odaiba that I was happy to be a part of. Naoki, Hiro and I performed a three person version of Blast! and got to meet and talk about the show with our new supporters, Shinji Takeda and Ruriko Kojima. Below is a video from the press conference and a commercial for the upcoming tour!

The Game Brass Collaboration

For April Fool’s Day, I collaborated with The Game Brass on their latest video. This was a very fun project to be involved in. I always love playing Nintendo music, and this was my first time recording in an all-female brass quintet! Here are some notes from Daniel Romberger, the arranger:

Our April Fools gag last year involved keeping the "performers" the same and changing the instruments! This year, however, we took the opposite approach; what if we kept the same instruments but changed the performers? The result is "Bowsette," a version of the ubiquitious castle theme that plays throughout the New Super Mario Bros. series and Super Mario Maker that lets us feature a few of our female brass-playing friends! Happy April Fools everyone; we hope you enjoy!

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Medley

Here is my latest collaboration video with Aki-C!

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is my absolute favorite video game. I spent hours playing it as a child. One of the reasons I loved this game so much was the music. The soundtrack is amazing and very expansive. I loved how you got to “play” the ocarina in the game and learn so many unforgettable melodies. When we were talking about doing a Zelda project, I knew it would be impossible to choose one song - it just had to be a medley! Aki-C made this awesome arrangement that combines four great themes from Ocarina of Time - Zelda’s Theme, Kokiri Forest, Lost Woods, and Hyrule Field Main Theme.

A special thing about this project is this is the first time we have done a double YouTube release. Aki-C and I each made our own versions of the video and posted them on our YouTube channels. Please check out both versions below and make sure to subscribe!