The title “The Road Taken” is based on of one of more popular Robert Frost most poems, “The Road Not Taken.” The whole idea for the music stems from a particular chord that I like to use, a major chord with the 4th added so a kind of consonant dissonance occurs between the 3rd and 4th steps in the chord. In improvising one would usually refer to the mode, in this case the Ionian mode, which is the 1st mode of major scale harmony. I like the contemplative nature of this sound, open to me, and good place to start the music from. The melody then ascends and descends alternating between major and minor chords. The improvising takes place over the form of the melody with the 1st chord extended for a bit at the beginning. I liked how this distinguished the piano and saxophone solos. If one looks at the written lead sheet there is a two measure ending. On the take that we used however, I liked just fading on two repeated chords, an ending just seemed too final. The aspect of recording influenced the form and arrangement of the composition which I find interesting. Recording becomes part of the composition process.
Quadrivium — from Latin, meaning “a crossroads. A place where four roads meet”
This composition is a modern choral of sorts, with four clarinet parts playing what might be more traditional sung in four part harmony, or played on an organ. My inspiration came from the fabulous ECM recordings of saxophonist Jan Garbarek improvising over the top of the incredible four-part vocal group called the Hilliard Ensemble. But, unlike their work, which sticks to very authentic early-music compositions, I chose to write a new piece with some modern twists thrown in.
Clay gets to play the part of Jan, using the melodica’s bright sound to cut through the darker sonority of the clarinets and bass clarinets below him. Most of his part is improvised, with a short melodic hook that happens once in the middle and once at the end.
“The Memory of Water” (the title is co-opted from Lynn’s story, featured in the other video), is divided into two distinct sections. The first section has a melodic statement that repeats twice, each time through a different progression of chords. The second section has what is called a “pedal point,” meaning a repeated common tone, usually in the low register.
When Clay and I set out to record the piece, we decided that the second section of the piece might fit will with some extended techniques. In particular, Clay experiments with using different percussive effects on the piano, including an idea taken from modern classical “prepared piano” pieces that involve putting objects inside of the piano. In this case, it was a piece of paper on top of the strings.
This is a special video project, featuring a collaboration with writer/journalist/musician Lynn Darroch, who has been following our project since the beginnings and has been kind enough to feature us on KMHD and in the Jazz Society of Oregon’s JazzScene magazine. Lynn has been working on his own video projects, pairing his spoken-word pieces with jazz performances from artists such as Randy Porter, David Evans, Pere Soto, and others.
This particular video features a composition of mine from week 42 of our project, called “The Memory of Water.” The piece was actually untitled until Lynn wrote the words to accompany it, at which point I co-opted the title for the song as well. Clay and I would both like to thank Lynn for working with us on this piece.
Here’s what Lynn has to say about the piece:
When Clay and John asked to write a story to go with this composition, I immediately thought of water. And my desire to develop a magic realism suited to the Pacific Northwest. I also thought of singing whales, and though this story’s not about whales, what we know about them may well apply here …
Every year, when humpback whales gather off the Mexican coast, the males arrive singing. Early in the season, each whale’s song is short, simple and different from the others. But as time passes, they adjust; by season’s end, every whale is singing the same long, complex tune. The next year, each returns with only fragments of the previous song, but all leave singing in unison again, though the collective tune is slightly different every year.
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been at Portland Center Stage as part of the orchestra for a production of the “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” The show is a musical comedy, following a rather unusual group of children (as well as some audience volunteers) through a farcical spelling bee in which the word the students are challenged with is just as likely to be chosen because of its ridiculous definition as its difficulty to spell.
The score to the show is an uncommon combination of instruments, with myself on reeds (flute, clarinet, and alto saxophone), Liz Byrd on cello, Ben Wasson on percussion, Kurt Crowley on synthesizer, and our musical director, Rick Lewis, on piano. Instead of playing from an orchestra pit below and in front of the stage, our orchestra instead plays behind the back wall of the stage (if Superman were in the audience with his X-ray vision, he’d see us performing behind the actors) with the music piped in through a sound system.
William Finn’s compositions for the show run the gamut from quirky themes that complement the comedy on stage, to powerful melodies that support the more emotional moments. Unlike some musicals, where orchestras get bored quickly with ironically the often less-than-musical compostions, there’s always something new to find in Finn’s score, which I’ve been scouring to find bits and pieces to serve as inspirations for Duo Chronicles pieces.
The title for this piece is taken from the lyrics of a song in the show called “Woe is Me,” sung by a character who is pushed by her two dads to “be smart, be cool, be adult” and “be remarkably adroit in social situations.” I toyed with other titles that didn’t sound as flippant, but in the end, it seemed like that line just worked best. In the show, the cast breaks into a Stomp-inspired dance section in the middle of “Woe is Me,” where the 3-part vocals harmonies are accompanied by the percussion sounds made by clapping, stomping, and dancing on stage. Something about 3-part vocal a cappella always gets me interested, so from the first time that I heard that section performed by the PCS cast, I knew I wanted to do something with it.
For the Duo Chronicles piece, I took that section and started altering it bit by bit. The first change was the time signature — instead of being 4/4 like the piece in the show, our version is in 7/4. The next, was the structure — we start with the “Be Smart, Be Cool” section, and the “Woe is Me ” hook happens in the middle. The vocals have been replaced by three overdubbed saxophone parts. Instead of the Stomp-inspired percussion, Clay and I use a couple tracks of clapping and a track of using storage boxes as percussion instruments.
Throughout the song, I tried to reference each of the distinct sections from Finn’s composition. There are direct references in the piano part, the clarinet parts, and certainly the saxophone parts. After all of the revisions and editing, making it fit the Duo Chronicles style, it ended up farther from Finn’s “Woe is Me” than I had intended originally, but only because Clay and I are putting our own spin on things. Check out the sheet music from the link below.
Since I’m at Portland Center Stage doing this show eight times a week until the end of June, it wouldn’t surprise me if another Finn-inspired song makes its way into the Duo Chronicles songbook before we’re done.
In writing this composition, I decided not to write chord changes purposely. This gives the improviser the utmost freedom in a sense, hence the term “free jazz” or “avant-garde” which have been coined to describe this style. Without a harmonic structure the improviser must then create some shape on his/her own or by interacting with other musicians. Since the melody is comprised of mostly two-bar phrases, John made an interesting suggestion to improvise based off these phrases or two bar cells or cellular improvisation. By that I mean that the improviser is free to play these melodic fragments in any order or repeat them without rules. This shows the influence of twentieth-century classical music, but with the interaction aspect of jazz. This way of playing then defines the structure. We did three takes, all of which were quite different due to the open nature of the music, but the third one seemed to have the best interaction.
