Grab Your Coat and Get Your Hat...It's the Barristers Big Band

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By day, John Vishneski III is an insurance coverage litigator in the Chicago office of Reed Smith. By night, he's a part-time big band leader. Vishneski plays clarinet and handles logistics for the Barristers Big Band, a jazz/swing ensemble comprised of members of the Chicago legal community.

The band is an offshoot of the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, an 80-player group representing at least 18 Am Law 200 firms. Vishneski and the group will play a free noon concert this Friday in Federal Square, across from the Dirksen Federal Building in downtown Chicago. On the bill: Dizzy Gillespie’s "Night in Tunisia," Woody Herman's "The Good Earth," and compositions by Bob Ojeda, the longtime trumpet player for the Count Basie Orchestra.

The group's annual repertoire includes holiday concerts and seasonal performances in the fall and spring. It features classic big band works like Jimmy McHugh's and Dorothy Fields's 1930 hit, "On the Sunny Side of the Street," a version of which the Barristers recorded in the fall of 2007 and made available for download here: "On the Sunny Side of the Street."

Vishneski recently took some time out from his roaring schedule to help us get hep to the jive.

What does being the bandleader entail?
It entails coming up with the program for each concert that we do. I book gigs for the band, and for our small group, the Scales of Justice. That's why when people think of music in Chicago, they tend to think of me, because if they’re at an event where they need music, somebody calls me.

How many folks are in the band?
About 35 members. At any given point, probably about 25 or 26 are on stage. So there are people who back other people up--we’re lawyers, we have busy schedules. For example, we have two bass players, and I never know which one’s going to show up for a concert. But they're both good, so I don’t care.

Where do you rehearse?
A talented tenor sax player, Judge Blanche Manning of the Northern District federal court, lets us use her courtroom for practicing

Does a courtroom provide good acoustics?
No. Typically the courtrooms have very high roofs with some sound-dampening tiles in them. The good news is you can pretty much hear everything. The bad news is you can pretty much hear everything. You don’t get that sort of nice cover-up that a little echo gives you. So for a rehearsal space, it's very good, because if you sound good in there, then you’re going to sound really good when you get into a nice space.

When do you practice?
Mondays, 5:30 to 7. These rehearsals have a way of ending right when they're supposed to, because people have trains to catch. So if you try to take them over the time, forget it. They're gone. It’s like, "Let's do this song one more time!" Crickets.

Do you record your concerts?
For the big band we record 24 tracks, so everyone gets a mike. Because of the type of music it is, it actually lends itself better to recording that way, because then you can mix in the studio. I spend...Sundays that are available between the fall concert and usually the middle of the summer [mixing].

That’s a heck of a process.
Well, you go back, you've got the excitement and feel of a live audience and the band reacting to it in the initial recording. But then if somebody missed a note or something, you can kind of just throw that out there in the studio.

So if there are any, say, clarinet squeaks, you can remove them?
There are never any clarinet squeaks. You can listen to any CD and you will never hear one, guaranteed.

When do you find time to practice law?
That I do doing during the day....I have a 10-2 night shift [for the music]. I go home after work, hang out with the family. They go to bed, and I go to the computer. I try not to do this every night, but occasionally I have to.

Is there any crossover of the music into your practice?
When I was at Mayer Brown, the Chicago Symphony was a client, and I have done some insurance work for them. There is actually a connection just in that clients and folks I know through insurance coverage practice, who obviously get my advertisements for concerts. And it's just another way of connecting with people. Aside from, "Hi, here’s the latest and greatest case,” [I get to say,] "Come and hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony!" It's kind of more fun.

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