This is, literally, my musical diary–notes fresh from my pen and recorded in a few hours. You can find my finished works elsewhere; here, it's all about capturing the moment!
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.
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.
Grupo Super Nova is Cumbia band from Holland, MI, comprised of the Garcia brothers, who immigrated from Mexico when they were children. We decided on their original song, “Sufro Por Tu Amor” (“How Long Must I Suffer for Your Love?”) written by Christian Paul Garcia when he was 16.
Here’s where my job as an orchestrator became interesting. Cumbia is a Latin style that features a strong backbeat to create upbeat, danceable music. Upbeat and danceable are not typically an orchestra’s forte… Further complicating the task is that Super Grupo Nova already includes an electric bass and drum set, so I had to find ways to have them complement each other rather than fight.
A few notable moments:
1:45 Grupo Super Nova’s original recording began with a quiet synth pad and a digital harp arpeggio. It translated beautifully into solo violin and string pizzicato.
3:26 I love this string ostinato against the song’s melody. Together, they really soar.
4:00 This orchestral interlude felt just right–a brief moment for the orchestra to take the lead, with the melody volleying between sections. It was also at this point in the performance that the rhythm gelled between the band and the orchestral percussion. (In retrospect, we should have put the band on the percussion side of the orchestra so they could hear each other.)
The first collaboration was with Nina Tritenichenko. She sings and plays Bayan Accordion, an all-button accordion that is common throughout the world, including her home country of Ukraine. The tune she chose was “Ikhav Kozak za Dunaj” (“The Cossack Rode beyond the Danube”). This folk song became popular throughout the world by its German name, “Schöne Minke” (“Beautiful Minke”).
Nina had a specific set of variations on the Minka tune that she wanted to perform. Because her accordion part was set in stone, my task was to build around it with the orchestra. I began by composing a grand overture-style introduction–a fanfare that established the tone of what was to come. Next, she sang a verse of the song to introduce the theme. Each variation became increasingly complex and exciting, with orchestration to match.
Some favorite moments in this arrangement include:
4:00 I turned this variation into a duet with the concertmaster! It added texture to the solo accordion and let an orchestra member momentarily come to the foreground.
4:42 I’m a huge fan of arpeggios that sweep through the orchestra like a harp. This one worked magnificently.
5:00 This interlude gave Nina a breather and created anticipation for the final, flashy variation.
A while back, I was playing with the minor blues form. Songs like “Sugar” or “Stolen Moments” are so simple, yet seem to provide endless possibility. I actually sat down at the piano and sketched out a half dozen directions a minor blues tune might go. As I played with each of those, a few songs began to emerge. “Sky Blues” is perhaps the most straight forward of all of them. Not as low down and greasy as “Sugar” or as smooth and mysterious as “Stolen Moments,” but with a charm all its own.
It is a bright tune for a minor blues, hence the name, “Sky Blues.”
After a long absence (from blog posting, not from composing), I am back with a series of new jazz tunes. You may be aware that my jazz group, Outside Pocket, just came out with an album titled Grace Notes. But you know my motto: “Can’t stop. Won’t stop.” Even while Grace Notes was in production I was writing new music. Over the coming weeks I’ll be posting the fruit of that labor, in the form of a casual read-through recording session with Steve Talaga.
Steve Talaga
Today’s song is “Flutter.” It is a breezy tune that ascends, dips, and floats like the butterflies that visit our house’s monarch waystation. On a future recording, I could hear flute on “Flutter,” but for now Steve creates his own magic on the piano.
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A few months ago, I accompanied my wife to Detroit. She attended training for a new job while I stayed behind as a “hotel husband.” Since I had only a bass to work out my musical ideas, I gravitated toward ideas that were playable on that majestic, yet cumbersome instrument.
I called this song “Americana” because it has so many echoes of classic American folk tunes and their roots. It is expansive like “Oh, Shenandoah,” pentatonic like “Were You There,” and bears the same four starting notes as “O Danny Boy.” It is not jazz in the traditional sense, but as you can hear in this recording it lends itself well to improvisation.
I’ve been reading Faith, Hope, and Carnage by Nick Cave. I highly recommend it. In a series of interviews with Seán O’Hagan, Cave discusses his artistic process, the death of his son, and the way his faith has changed and grown in recent years. I’ve found it immensely inspiring.
Even though neither is “orthodox,” Cave leans toward Christianity and O’Hagan leans toward agnosticism. This makes for some interesting dialogue. At one point, O’Hagan pushes against Cave’s superstition about life’s mysteries, to which Cave responds “Perhaps it is a kind of delusion, I don’t know, but if it is, it is a necessary and benevolent one.” I love that line, and immediately wrote down the phrase, “A Beautiful Delusion.”
You may remember that I’m on a quest to write jazz with deeper lyrics than the typical themes of romance and unrequited love. I thought “A Beautiful Delusion” would be a perfect fit. One of the things I love about the way this song came out is that the first verse could actually be a love song in which a suitor tries to woo a love interest: “You think I’m crazy, but if you listen to your heart you’ll know that we could be lovers.” But verse 2-3 move on to “if you listen to your heart you’ll know there is too much mystery, beauty, joy, and pain in life for humanity to be mere configurations of carbon responding to the world via the chemical soup bowl known as our brain.”
While the lyrical subject is heady, the music is simple and pretty. In fact, when we played it instrumentally at our weekly restaurant gig, a patron rushed up and asked the name of the song. She thought it was a tune from a musical!
Lest you think composing and performing music is always serious, I’ve included an outtake from Thursday’s recording. Even though Ed and Susan are great musicians, there are always snafus when reading a new song. Below is our false start, a conversation about how the song should actually begin, and the successful restart of the song. When I say, “Don’t talk!” I’m not being misogynistic. I’m kidding Susan because every time we record a song she’ll lean over to me and say something during the recording. But even my stern warning didn’t work; you’ll hear on the full recording that she turns to me and says, “So pretty!” at 1:58. I guess the recording could be interrupted in worse ways…
1. A beautiful delusion– maybe that’s all it is. An innocent confusion– that there might be more than this.
A beautiful delusion– that’s all it is to you. And though you may be right, is it your heart or just your mind that can’t believe it’s true?
2. A beautiful delusion? Look all around, you’ll see a thousand aching beauties, a million mysteries.
A billion stars are shining. You catch your breath with awe. When your heart wants to explode with all the longing in your soul, it doesn’t seem delusional at all.
2. Ineffable illusion, a faint remembered dream, a sorrow for no reason, a joy inside a pain.
Questions that search for answers and hearts that yearn for love. Oh, how do you explain the little magic of each day? Maybe this delusion’s enough.
