Effigies of Angels (Live, 2010)

Genre: Big band jazz

Where can an amateur musician take a nine-week course on jazz arranging and composing, get expert feedback on an original work, and as a final recital conduct his piece in front of a live audience with a 17-member big band in one of the premier jazz venues in the country? Answer: Denver, Colorado.

For three months in 2010, I had the privilege of joining seven other aspiring composers in the Advanced Composition Class sponsored by The Gift of Jazz and hosted by Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge in Denver.

[NOTE: Dazzle has since moved twice from its Ninth and Lincoln location, once to the Baur’s building on Curtis Street and again to the Denver Performing Arts Complex, where it now has its home.]

Our instructor was Tyler Gilmore, a young composing phenom, who at the time headed the local ensemble Ninth+Lincoln. Tyler’s compositional talents transcended big band, having written and conducted for studio orchestra, symphonic wind ensemble, string quartet and brass quintet as well. He won the 2009 ASCAP/Columbia College Commission in Honor of Hank Jones and the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer’s Award in 2008, 2009 and 2010. He was also a great teacher!

During the first class, Tyler talked about the composing process. It always starts with a “spark,” he said—the simple germ of a musical idea. When massaged and elaborated, it becomes the foundation of any composition. He urged us to spend time away from our instruments, thinking about how to develop and expand that fragment, while remaining “true” to the original idea.

I got to thinking about the creative process in general and it reminded me of what Michelangelo said about sculpture: that every slab of marble already contained a statue. It was the job of the sculptor to chip away all the unnecessary elements to bring the object to life. He called it setting free the “angel in the marble.”

There are obvious problems with this analogy when it comes to music. The idea of an angel brought to life by the work of an artist is a spiritual idea anchored in Renaissance thought; it doesn’t necessarily conform to modern thinking about the artistic process. Furthermore, musical creation is more often about augmenting and layering than it is about whittling and stripping away. Nevertheless, I liked the simile.

For Michelangelo this “angel liberation” was a seemingly effortless feat, but for the rest of us, the chipping away, the molding and remolding, is easier said than done. It’s hard work! And the results are never as satisfying as the Pieta or David. This was the first time I had attempted to write and score anything for this large a group of musicians. I felt that the most I could hope for were some very crude representations of angels, which is how I arrived at the title for the piece.

“Effigies of Angels” premiered at Dazzle on Tuesday, November 17 along with the works of seven other area composers. It was a great turn-out; the crowd was enthusiastic and supportive. Although we had a short rehearsal the Saturday before, some of the musicians were sight-reading the score, a task for which they are all very gifted. The musicians never complained about any shortcoming and they worked to make all of our pieces sound the very best that they could.

My personal thanks to Tyler Gilmore for his encouragement and coaching, to The Gift of Jazz for making these courses available and to Dazzle for continuing to lend their inspiring setting for these events.

It was a memorable night for those of us who aspire to set a few angels free. (Check out the video of this live performance on my YouTube channel.)

Personnel for the night were—

Trumpets: Brad Goode, David Froman, John Lake, Gabe Mervine

Alto sax: Pete Lewis, Serafin Sanchez

Tenor sax: Matt Burchard, Danny Meyer

Bari sax: Clare Church

Trombones: Rob Borger, Gary Mayne, Kenyon Scheurman, Beth Smulow

Guitar: Matt Fuller

Piano: Adam Revell

Bass: Jean Lucy Davis

Drums: Matt Amundsen

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Invisible by Day (Live, 2011)

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Premonition of The Hunter Gracchus (Live, 2011)