Jazz Interlude

Description

Premiered by Michele Byrd Gerlach and the Naples Philharmonic Brass Quintet (2006)

Text by Stoddard King

I could stand a jazz band,
If the players would sit still;
The tunes that it croons are all right.

But when the players wiggle,
Bounce around and jiggle,
In my ire I desire to fight.

Some day I shall lay
for a jazz band musicker,
Who snorts and contorts and jerks,
With a big, shiny, clean gun
Maybe a machine gun…
You bet he will get the works.

And I’ll cry: “Now die,
You St. Vitus dancer!
Though I hate to create a row:

You jerked and you jiggled,
Bounced around and wiggled;
But you WILL keep still starting now!”