I've been playing jazz as a bassist for nearly 50 years, including with several big-band groups. Today my main band is a big-band, though I also play with a number of smaller groups.

Finding repertoire is a perennial challenge. Adding new material takes more effort than just a quick agreement on the bandstand and flipping through the fake books. A lot of material is unpublished, out of print, surreptitiously Xeroxed, etc. But there's a lot of exciting material spanning an entire century.

And the west coast is well represented.

Of course big-band is unique in that it involves improv soloing but is much more about the arrangements, especially the newer stuff. It's like playing chamber music in that way, but of course people still love chamber music. It's never hard to fill an empty seat in our band.