I really enjoyed having Jaedon as the guest speaker because I am really familiar with the finer details of what he does, whether its the music production side of things or the music theory of things. I found it super cool when he talked about the writing methods that he has used and I really enjoyed hearing his journey to get where he is. I thought it was really cool when he mentioned Chad Lefkowitz-Brown because I actually met him when he did a workshop with my high school’s band. He played with the Arturo O’Farrill big band (and he still might be apart of the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance) and Arturo and some of the artists from ALJA worked closely with my jazz band in high school. I was really excited when Jaedon mentioned that he grew up on Mingus because he is one of my favorite big band composers. I actually saw the current Mingus Big Band in the city two years ago (sadly after Frank Lacy left) and played a lot of Mingus music in my high school jazz band. I also think that his choice of Ellington as his favorite big band was a solid one because he was really impressed with the way that Ellington can simulate real life sounds, which I can attest to the intricacies of this because there is an Ellington piece that we almost played which simulates proximity and a band getting closer and closer. Overall, I found listening to Jaedon super interesting because I can relate and understand what he spoke about on a really specific level.