Beer City Saxes and St. Sinner Orchestra joined forces for a Night of Sax & Violins on November 8, 2024 at The Stray. One of the songs we played together was a brand-new tune celebrating the magic of the holidays in the Mitten State: “Christmas in Michigan.”
Category: Live
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Broken (Sax & Violins Edition)
On November 8, 2024, the St. Sinner Orchestra teamed up with Beer City Saxes for an Evening of Sax & Violins at The Stray. It was an amazing evening of traditional jazz, rock and roll, and a bunch of stuff in between. I want to call it a “historic” or “ground-breaking” collaboration, but I’ll settle for “unprecedented” or “highly unusual.” The 22 musicians involved played beautifully and went home content.
Here is one of the five songs we played together: “Broken,” from our 2024 release, Synonyms for Goodbye.
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Cannon
I was commissioned to compose a new piece for The Northwest Iowa Christian Schools String Orchestra Festival. The result is Cannon, which premiered on October 31, 2024.
It was a lovely performance featuring over 100 student string players. Here are the notes about the piece that appeared in the program:
I’ve always joked that I continue composing because I want to have my Pachelbel’s “Canon.” Though Pachelbel wrote hundreds of pieces, most of us only know his ubiquitous “Canon in D.” Not bad for a “one hit wonder”! As an homage to Pachelbel, I named my piece “Cannon in D Minor” and began composing. However, I soon ran into a problem: the orchestra would sound a lot better in a key like G or D. I transposed my draft to G and shortened the title to “Cannon” (this music is explosive in any key!) and got back to work.
What emerged is a composition that is full of rhythmic energy and surprises. The piece begins with a bang, a fanfare that sets the tone for what is to come. Suddenly, the bombast stops and a stately canon begins. (You’ll remember that a canon is another word for round, where a musical theme is repeated in each section. Think “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”) After a brief reappearance of the fanfare, we enter an extended rhythmic section that has hints of Irish Jigs, African rhythms, and Rock and Roll. Once again, we hit the brakes for a canon, but this time it is a quote of Pachelbel’s “Canon”—with a twist. The orchestra has barely finished the first eight measures of Pachelbel’s theme when a solo violin interjects a theme of its own—a double-canon mash up of Pachelbel and Scheer that takes us to the final fanfare.
Astute music connoisseurs will notice a unique feature of the “Cannon” orchestra: the addition of Acoustic Guitar, Piano, Percussion, and Drum Set. The idea of adding a rhythm section was suggested after the conductors heard some songs I had written for the St. Sinner Orchestra, a symphonic rock group I lead. I quickly agreed, being a composer who loves combining styles and timbres in fresh ways.
Who knows? Maybe “Cannon” will be my Pachelbel’s “Canon”!
In honor of Judah Guerra’s inaugural Jazz Jam at the Rez, I wrote a little tune called “Judah’s Jam.” As you can hear from this video, he assembled a stellar group of musicians who slayed it all night long!
I obsessed about the tune all weekend long, thinking I should do a major re-write, but it went so well that I think I’ll just leave it as is.
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Hark the Herald, strings
This December, I wrote four string arrangements of Christmas carols for Wendell Kimbrough and Church of the Incarnation in Dallas. I was simultaneously planning a service of carols for Rosewood Church in Jenison, so I decided to get double duty out of one of the arrangements. This version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” has a funky backbeat that gives a fresh new twist on the classic.
You can hear it at 13:27 in the video below.
If you’re interested in the music for these four Wendellified arrangements, you can find them here:
A few years ago, I helped write a song called “Refugee King (Away from the Manger).” This year, I used it in a service accompanied by The All Saints Orchestra (St. Sinner’s holier half), so I decided to write a string arrangement for the ensemble. It’s very difficult to avoid gilding the lily on a song like this, but I think this arrangement strikes a good balance of background “string halo” and foreground string writing. I was especially pleased with the “running” figure in the instrumental verse.
Enjoy the dulcet tones of Lindsey Burkey singing with the All Saints Orchestra at Rosewood Church, Jension, MI.
Edit: I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make the video play from a particular spot, so if you’re interested in hearing “Refugee King,” go to 30:30 in the video below.
As the year ends, I’m going to try to catch up on blogging 2023 compositions. Posting them in 2024 will seem…stale.
This arrangement of the classic Christmas carol, “Once in Royal David’s City” is a collaboration between me and my old friend Carlos Colón. (That is not to say he’s elderly–we’ve just been friends for a long time.)
The arrangement began its life as a violin and piano duet written for Sarah York. Carlos used it in one of his Christmas services at Baylor University. Since he also had a cellist available, he had the cello double the bass line of the piano part. It worked splendidly. This Christmas he turned it into a full-fledged arrangement for strings and flute. Bravo!
We started this “Music Unites Us” series with an overview video introducing the project. We’ll end with this documentary that goes behind the scenes, interviewing the performers and me about the creative process. I usually hate watching videos of myself, but this video is interesting enough that I watched it all the way through!
Lương Chí Cường moved to America a few years ago after a successful singing career in his home country of Vietnam, even winning Vietnamese Idol. The song we chose for his collaboration with the Holland Symphony Orchestra was a rousing song of national pride, Dòng máu Lạc Hồng (The Children of Lac Hong).
This song has the feel of a score from a Hollywood blockbuster, with strings soaring into their upper register and brass punching through with regal fanfares. Still, the full orchestra is no match for Cuong’s powerhouse voice, spectacular wardrobe, and performance style. When he left the stage and sauntered into the crowd (3:26) I thought the crowd would lose its collective mind!
Besides the overall pedal-to-the-metal orchestration throughout, here are a few moments I particularly like:
2:31 I discovered a while back that using a clothespin as a violin mute imitated the nasal tone of the Chinese Erhu or Vietnamese Dàn Gáo. The first time the orchestra rehearsed this section, everyone looked around to see what exotic new instrument this might be.
4:01 The percussion-heavy arrangement culminates in an extended percussion section in which two sets of tom-toms spar over a foundational beat from the drum set.
4:46 At the final return of the chorus, I wanted to ramp up the energy even more, so I used an unprepared modulation to increase the intensity, switched the flutes to piccolos, and gave all the woodwinds Philip Glass-style arpeggios that really cut through the wall of sound coming from the rest of the orchestra.
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Music Unites Us: Babirye
Samuel Nalangira is a Ugandan songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has lived in West Michigan for several years. He is a consummate performer, an Adungu virtuoso, and a lovely human being.
He wrote a song when his twins were born called “Babirye” (the firstborn among twins). While many of his songs are energetic opportunities for Samuel to teach audiences African dance moves, “Babirye” is a mesmerizing, tender song based on a repeated Adungu* arpeggio.
The challenge with this song is that a four-chord pattern repeats over and over with vocals floating freely on top of that foundation. I decided that the best approach would be almost minimalist–some doubling of the Adungu arpeggio, a cloud of strings, and soloists and sections of the orchestra filling in the spaces between Samuel’s vocals like a conversation. This was one of my favorite arrangements; it felt like the orchestra added depth and texture, heightening Samuel’s already beautiful song.
Pay special attention to a few moments in the performance:
4:18 The song builds slowly with muted, sustained strings and light percussion doubling. More musicians are added little by little until a final build-up to the chorus at 7:30.
8:17 The oscillating marimba pattern worked beautifully in this section.
8:42 The “Babirye” theme moves through the orchestra, building lush chords.
10:30 I like how the arrangement winds down: the full orchestra finishes, and the strings take over, followed by short a woodwind coda.
*The Adungu is a harp-like Ugandan instrument.