Jazz Notation

Recently, my school band director started a jazz band. Although our band doesn’t have a name yet, we are playing exceptionally well. The band is a select mix of instruments, with only one person per part. The majority of the band is Sr. High members who are experienced with a few aspiring Jr. High members. I think it is wonderful for the Jr. High students to be involved. Only letting g4 of them in pushes all of the others to practice so they can become better and earn a spot. It also pushes to accepted Jr. High students to play at a Sr. high level and be passionate about their instrument. The only thing I do not like about jazz band is the style the music is written in. Concert band and marching band music is written in “classical notation.” The page is crisp and easy to read. Jazz music, however, is written in “jazz notation.” Jazz notation is slanted and in an italicized font. This, in my opinion, makes the music very hard to read and the noted difficult to decipher. Our jazz band has a Baritone T.C. and a Baritone B.C. Typically, Baritone music is only written in B.C. (bass clef). However, one of our Baritone players doesn’t read bass clef. He is used to reading T.C (treble clef). Jazz band music isn’t written in Baritone T.C. Because of this, our band director is transcribing the Baritone B.C. part into T.C. on his laptop. This is wonderful except for one thing. Because the music is transcribed, it is printed in classical notation. While all of the other members of the jazz band struggle to read the sloppy jazz notation, the Baritone T.C. plays his music with ease. This made me angry. Why does one player get nice music and the rest of us need to suffer through jazz notation? I wrote a note on my band director’s board. It left him know how I feel. At the end of the note, I wrote a famous Patrick Henry quote from the American Revolution.