Our first performance outside of school concerts will be during intermissions at Montessori night at a local high school. Our combo is an alto sax, tenor sax, trumpet, piano, bass (me ), and drummer. We practice at the school once a week but have been going on and off because grade 10 is killer in an all Asian, super competitive, marks oriented school.

The songs we have played in the past are:

C-Jam Blues - Duke Ellington
Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me - Duke Ellington (My favourite so far)
A Night in Tunisia - Dizzy Gillespie
Chameleon - Herbie Hancock (We have a guest guitar player playing for this song)
Pent Up House - Sonny Rollins
Tenor Madness - Sonny Rollins
St. Thomas - Sonny Rollins (I missed him when he came to Vancouver )
So What - Miles Davis
Blue in Green - Miles Davis
Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be?) - Billie Holiday

We haven't written our own songs yet, we just started listening and playing jazz in grade 8/9 so we are rather nub in our jazz knowledge.

If anyone out there has any suggestions on future songs that would be great and I will try and get pics and video up of our performance.

Sounds like you've been playing some great songs.

Duke composed (or Billy Strayhorn who was practically his right hand) a lot of standards - Lush Life, Caravan, Perdido, Take the A Train, It Don't Mean A Thing.

A lot of jazz standards are taken from the Great American Songbook so I'd recommend looking through a bunch of the top composers - Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Rodgers & Hart, Hoagy Carmichael, W.C. Handy and so on - and selecting the songs which stand out to you. Often those standards were the basis for original compositions by jazz artists so somebody like Charlie Parker used How High the Moon as the basis for Orthnithology.

What kind of jazz you play will influence the songs you play as well. If you're into bossa nova then you'd probably explore Jobim and Bonfa's songs. If the band tends to play hard bop then I'd guess you'd want to check out compositions by Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Coltrane, etc. Although obviously you can adapt a song to your own style which can be a lot of fun.

The process of discovering new artists and songs is a lot of fun; kind of envious at all the new stuff you're going to hear for the first time. ^_^

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Faint as a will o' the wisp
Crazy as a loon
Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon

Chameleon and So What, good choices. I'd personally suggest Blue Monk by Thelonious Monk, awesome tune and works well for small combos.

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"Green Man is savin' your life right now, bro!"
Gamertag: Megapudding

Oh jazz combos, man I just love playing jazz.
Well, there's plenty of songs that you can do if you're into jazz:

- Take Five by Dave Brubek (an excellent piece if you can arrange it for your choice of instruments, it's not so much jazz but the 5/4 feel gives it a nice edge)
- Jump Jive An' Wail by Louis Prima (you have a decent amount of wind power to give it the big band feel)
- Zoot Suit Riot by The Cherry Poppin Daddies (it's a drum feature, but would again work nicely with your choice of instruments)
- Watermelon Man by Herbie Hancock (it isn't so much typical 'jazz' but since you've got a chart by Hancock on there, it's worth a shot)
- Georgia On My Mind by Ray Charles(works great as a tenor sax feature.. just need to make sure your tenor player has got his lower range because it's one of 'those' songs)
- Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder (it's more of a pop chart, but works because of the heavy brass feature it has in it.. definitely a crowd pleaser if you can pull it off)

Anyway, if you need any more advice on jazz charts and what not feel free to ask me, I know what I gave you was more of a popular selection but sometimes I've found slipping a few of them into a set works for jazz groups - most people can relate to these songs somehow.
I've got some fake books if you're ever thinking of transcribing some sheets or anything like that.
Drop me a line!

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Small correction - Hoagy composed Georgia on My Mind. ^_^

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Faint as a will o' the wisp
Crazy as a loon
Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon

Yeah, my bad... Gorrell did lyrics too.
Guess I just got caught up listening to it.

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You must have played in Bombay or something (drums please)

Play Thelonius Monk at your next concert :D