 So welcome to KDRT 95.7 in Davis, California. Today for the next hour, we're going to have a group with us known as Space Funk and these are Davis High School students and I saw them performing at the East Street Plaza and I'm going to tell you guys a story because I sat down and listen to you for a while and this guy came up maybe in his mid to late 20s and he sat down next to me and he said, do you know these guys? I said, no. And he said, I was walking by and I didn't want to stay but they just hit me here. I mean, it was amazing. He was just so... But on top of that, he wanted to be a teacher and he was just so thrilled to see young people doing exceptional work. So you guys made an influence, at least on two people including me. So I'm going to introduce Isabelle and you're going to introduce the band for me. Cool. Hi, I'm Isabelle. I play saxophone. This is Nico on bass and also Nico on drums and Evan on trumpet and Ben on piano. All right, our first song is pretty much going to be our version of Caravan. Let me ask you, how did you guys meet? How did you form Space Funk, the keyboard guy? I made a Latin jazz club at the high school. The bassist was in our music theory class and joined us. Evan, when did you join us? Oh, okay, sorry. So yeah, I was just kind of in the vicinity. I was kind of like involved in the band program already and they just started talking about it and it sounded like fun and I didn't know how much more it would like turn into but it was a really good idea. You know, I read Rolling Stone Magazine and that's all about music. So they had some statistics there and that said 1% of all the music sold in the U.S. in CD form is jazz. That's very low. So I'm kind of curious why a group of young people have picked jazz as your go-to. Who do you listen to in jazz that prompted you to play this genre of music? I don't know. I started playing jazz because my friends convinced me to audition for the Jasmine in junior high but then I would say the person I listened to most that made me get more serious was probably Stan Getz and like Sony Rollins, so saxophone players obviously. Yeah, I don't know. I guess it's a challenging form of music to play so it's fun, it's more spontaneous than other kinds of music you can play. Okay. Anybody else? Do you want to say anything about that? I guess I play it because it's more fun. I like being able to improvise and have the form, you know, not set previously so if you want to try something different you can just do it on the spot, like look at your drummer and he like kind of knows what you want to do and basically write a song as you go along. It's very fun. So he says when you look at your drummer he kind of knows what you want to do. What kind of signals are you sending him? Well, so I can pick up like what he changes in his baseline and then change my drum part to fit his baseline or I can change my drum part and then he can change his baseline and so we have this kind of relationship. Well, that's quite something. Who follows who here then? Is it the drummer that sets the pace or the keyboardist or the bass player? Who sets the pace? The keyboard guy. No, not me. It's more everyone is communicating with each other. It's hard because we all have to be in the same page and that takes practice. So you have to practice and you have to be just completely ready for anything. Well, we're going to ask you to play a couple more but before I do, I'm going to send you mentioned Stan Getz. I'm going to send you a song that Stan Getz plays with a trumpet player and they kind of like talk to each other. It's a beautiful song and I'm going to send it to you and hopefully you guys might like it. So what's the next song? There will never be another you. I know it, okay. And the bass player is going to go from an upright to a regular bass that I would call a regular bass and we're switching. What kind of saxophones are we switching from? Okay, on the ground, there's an alto and now I'm going to play tenor. Okay, very good. And I wanted to ask the keyboardist, well, all of you, you're doing this without reading music and you just keep your eyes closed and your fingers seem to land on the right spots. How did that happen? Memorize the music. Simple as that. No, but you're improvising also, aren't you? A lot of it is just knowing knowledge of music theory and I mean, you can go without music theory but it's 100% useful. You can just go by your ear, but knowing music theory is definitely a tool. You shouldn't abide by it 100% but you should use it in your music and knowing it is really good, especially for improvising. So a lot of musicians have told me this about music theory. Do you learn that at Davis? Hi. You can, yeah. You can take a class on music theory but it's completely optional and if you just kind of hear things, sometimes you don't have to use it, but yeah. So what is music theory? How can that help you in music? Well, it's really just an understanding of like all the chords, all the structures, all the notes, kind of everything and you can use it when you're soloing, just like off the lead sheets just reading all the chords and soloing to it. But I think after a certain point when you get familiar enough with the chords or what they sound like, you can just kind of feel it from there. Okay. And how many different types of music bands or orchestra does Davis High School have? Jazz or? Any genre. Just, you know, there's classical, there's probably marching bands. Yeah, we have three bands. So concert bands, euphonic band, jazz band and then there are three orchestras and three choirs. So does that mean every student is playing something there? That's a lot of bands. A lot of people double. A lot of people, like, a lot of people double up. Like they've taken music theory and jazz band and then like some people are in choir and band. Alrighty, well, we've switched gears. You're listening to KDRT 95.7 and the next song is going to be? Chameleon. Here we go. Likely to catch us sometimes. On E Street. And the next song sounds like we might get a little trumpet on this one, right?