SST Blog

9/30/19   I was going to spend this morning working on my upcoming book: Creative Jazz Composing and Arranging, Volume III: Writing for Small Groups, but while I was reading through my email and Facebook posts, a member of the Jazz Arrangers group asked a question about Triad Pairs.  I’d never heard this term before, but I assumed that he was referring to stacking two non-related triads on top of each other. My assumption was borne out by the responses from other arrangers.   The online conversation led to comments about writing what you hear rather than using intellectually-derived techniques....

Shoptalk about making the old chestnuts relevant 8/23/19   Over the past few days I decided that I’d like to perform a couple of classic charts from the Big Band Era. When I was 12 or 13 I bought a recent Les Brown recording from the mid-’50s where the band re-recorded a dozen of their hits from the previous decade. I loved the crisp brass playing (especially the tasteful lead trumpet playing of Wes Hensel), Billy Usselton’s swinging tenor solos and Donn Trenner’s piano playing. Trenner was then the musical director on the Steve Allen TV Show, of which I...

9/17/19   It all started in 1975. A friend of mine was in a record store where he saw a reissue of Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite and bought two copies—one for him, and one for me. When he gave me my present, I asked him if it was any good, whereupon he told me that it was fantastic. I listened and was immediately in love with the arrangements.   At the time, I was arranging and playing trumpet for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. We were performing Night Creatures, The Mooche, Liberian Suite, and several other Ellington pieces that Alvin had...

8/25/19   I was giving a lesson the other day. Toward the end of the lesson, my student informed me that he would like to make a career orchestrating shows. I asked him if he would like to hear the demo recording of a show that I composed. After listening to a few of the songs, he wondered if audiences would be distracted from the vocal by all the interesting things going on in the orchestration. I’ve been thinking about this issue ever since.   When I go to the opera, I often focus my attention on the beautiful orchestrations....