Randy Pingrey – trombone, piano, tape recorder, etc.
James Wylie – alto sax, tape recorder, etc.
Jerry Sabatini – trumpet, tape recorder, etc.
Feel free to download or stream all of these files. Be aware: Subsequent Variations is quite a large file.
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On October 1st, the Randy Pingrey Trio played this hour-long piece. My goal was to create my first evening-length work, and in the spirit of past trio performances, I wanted the piece to reflect the vibe of the venue and of the performance opportunity. We played in a giant, old church at night, with just enough light to see the written music.
The piece consists of oblique variations on a hymn, which is performed every year in Cambridge, MA during the Feast of Cosmos and Damien. I originally learned the melody when I was playing at the feast from Salvi Pugliese, the musical director and lead trumpeter with the Roma Band - an organization which I play with a lot during the summer months.
Special thanks goes to Peter Terry for having us play, to James and Jerry for their excellent performances, and for all the people that came to check it out.
Things have been busy, here at trombonist-at-large HQ, but some exciting things are on the horizon! Coming very very soon is a post on the concert that James, Jerry, and I gave on October 1st, including the score and audio from the gig, plus (potentially) special supplementary materials.
Also coming soon are some exciting gigs – with the Randy Pingrey Trio and other groups – and some documentation on the exciting changes that are happening in my little insane trombone world.
A big thanks to everyone who came out last night! The concert went quite well, and I am extremely grateful to Peter Terry for having us play and to be willing to let me experiment. Watch this space in the next few days for documentation of the concert – I’ll put up the whole concert and the score to what we played, just as soon as I have time to process it.
October 1st is quickly approaching! I’m hard at work finishing this damn piece – right now I’m a little stuck, I have about 2/3rds of it written out but the last third is proving to be quite difficult to come up with! Please come on October 1st to see what happens! Hopefully I’ll be able to post some clips late tomorrow night from our rehearsal.
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted any solo work – the last time was in mid-June. I feel very different than that trombonist who recorded those tracks three months ago. I no longer have the time to be constantly obsessing about technique and virtuosity. I mourn the loss of that time, but the very lack of time that has made it seemingly impossible to work on trombone mechanics has also taught me something about the power of ideas over the allure of chops. Anyways, I think “Missing You” – which is dedicated to my sweetie, Kathy Olson - and “Decay” are two of the best solo pieces I’ve ever tried. I hope you enjoy the music.
Please come and check it out! It’s going to be a really fun night – it’s an amazingly beautiful space, and all the music will be brand new! There’s never been a finer way to spend a fall evening!
Here are two choice tracks which were recorded on August 21st at La Luna Cafe in Cambridge, MA. I might put up a few more tracks in the next several days, as I have time. Download the track by clicking on the name, or listen to it via the streaming flash player.
I’m particularly excited about the track Low Contrast. I wrote it for this group, and my idea was: what if Morton Feldman wrote a tune for the Mulligan/Brookmeyer band? I’m quite pleased with the results, and it’s a thing I’m definitely going to pursue in future projects.
So I have this gig coming up with my killin’ bari-sax-playing sweetie, Kathy Olson, which was partially inspired by the legendary Gerry Mulligan/Bob Brookmeyer quartet. And it got me thinking about the history of great trombone-saxophone pairings throughout jazz.
Let me first say that playing with a saxophone player poses unique aesthetic questions to the trombone player, and it’s something that I’ve had to think a lot about in the past few years. Think about it this way: imagine you are the trombonist Dickey Wells, in Count Basie’s big band in the 1930’s. Herschal Evans and Lester Young are dueling every night, re-inventing the jazz vocabulary on the band stand right before your eyes. When it’s time for the trombone solo after choruses of brilliant saxophonics what can you play that won’t be instantly forgettable? What can you play that will convince an audience that you have something valuable to add to the conversation? It’s a musical mindbender that persists to this day – when I’m on a jazz gig, and there is a tenor saxist who shreds right before my solo, I think to myself as I step up to the mic: “whelp, here’s old Dickey Wells standing up to take his little solo”. Dickey Wells’ victory is that he managed to find his own vocabulary amid all the saxophone posturing, and he was able to play solos that weren’t instantly forgettable.
So there’s the rub. How can saxophonists and trombonists ever get along? Well, fortunately there are a couple of examples in the history that lead the way. The ones that pop out immediately to my mind (one for each voice in the saxophone family):
Curtis Fuller & Benny Golson
Bob Brookmeyer & Gerry Mulligan
Roswell Rudd & Steve Lacy
George Lewis & Anthony Braxton*
Each pair dealt with the issues in their own ways: Curtis Fuller played it cool against Benny Golson’s heat. Brookmeyer and Mulligan shared vocabulary and a similar sensibility about timbre, and they embraced counterpoint. Lacy’s clever terseness matched well with Rudd’s humorous generosity. And Braxton and Lewis were such monsters that they could make anything work.
Anyways, that is what’s been on my mind recently. It’s a pleasure to work with Kathy on it, and you should check out the gig we are playing at La Luna Cafe in Cambridge, MA on August 21st at 10 PM. I will, as always, put recordings on this site as soon as they’re available.
*And there are also a few pairs in newer music. Like:
Wolter Weirbos & Frank Gratkowski
Nils Wogram & Hayden Chisholm
Can you come up with any other examples? I’m having trouble thinking of current long-standing pairs in more conventional genres, but I’m sure that they’re around.
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