Officially, my site is still under construction...
For now..
Here are the sound clips from my first doctoral music recital
(recorded live: Oct. 28th, 2007), including my recital program. Since the theme was
"The Music I've Written for USC", the pieces were recorded and presented that day
(and now here) in their chronological order of creation. So...
IF YOU ONLY HAVE A FEW MINUTES,
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO
CHECK OUT MY LATEST PIECE FIRST - FALLING GRACE (2007)!
University of Southern California
Flora L. Thornton School of Music
presents
The Music I’ve Written For USC
Sunday, October 28, 2007,
3p.m.
Alfred Newman Recital Hall
In partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts degree with a major in Jazz Studies
PROGRAM
Just One of Those Things? Well, It’s Alright With Me… But You Gotta Ask Your Mother
(Right click on song title and "Save As" to download this file: mp3 format - 128k/low quality - 6.9MB)
Written by Cole Porter; Arrangement By Paul Young (2004)
Due to by my former
career in music licensing, when I started my master’s degree at USC I still had
the sound of modern-day remixes, samples uses, mashups, etc. in my brain.
I couldn’t get it out of my
head how much the public had embraced this form of
arranging as modern and creative, no matter what
the purists (or copyright
laws!) thought of it.
So I thought, “Heck, why can’t jazz musicians have some
fun here? Did we have
to limit ourselves to straight recreations, or medleys?” So in 2004 when I began
studying
composition and arranging privately with Kim Richmond (a major L.A. saxophonist
and USC faculty
member), this was the first idea I brought to him. Also worth
mentioning,
I was (and still am) a HUGE fan
of trombonist, John Allred. So in the middle of
this tune there’s a transcription of one of his solos, voiced into
a sax soli….
So here it is -
my first full big band swing chart ever, wherein I threw in just about
everything
but the kitchen sink (and if my wife would’ve let me have the sink…).
Solos: Kari Harris, Jeremy Levy, Jim Quam, Adam Schroeder, Jamie Hovorka, Paul
Young
A Night In Tunisia
(Right click on song title and "Save As" to download this file: mp3
format - 128k/low quality - 4.4MB)
By Dizzy Gillespie, Arrangement by Paul Young (2005)
I wrote this in 2005 for
Bruce Eskovitz’s Jazz Ensemble Development class. The assignment was to
write a
standard that an 8-piece high school combo could play. I happened
to be enrolled in a combo
class with Kim Richmond at the same time, who also
required we bring in a new chart per semester,
and since the instrumentation
fit…I figured I’d just
kill two birds with one stone (sshh, don’t tell them!
J).
Kim was also talking to me about adding more spice to my voicings, with
“fourths” and managed/intentional
dissonances. All in all,
it makes a perfect fit in many respects as a feature here for Ron Barrows, Andrew
Lippman, Alex Budman and Kevin Garren with this great rhythm section, on the
classic Dizzy Gillespie tune.
Solos: Ron Barrows, Andrew Lippman, Alex Budman.
What Lies Ahead
(Right
click on song title and "Save As" to download this file: mp3 format -
128k/low quality - 7.1MB)
Written and Arranged by Paul Young (2005)
I took a graduate-level composition class with Shelly Berg, and that experience has the most impact
on me as a writer. After discussing a bit about standards/swing, Shelly introduced us to writing
with new forms, melodies, inventing our own chord logic. At first it felt like being a new bicyclist
whose training wheels just got ripped off, but it changed my style. This was my final project for that class.
Solos: Paul Young, Kevin Garren, John Storie
Outskirts of Town
(Right click on song title and "Save As" to download this file: mp3
format - 128k/low quality - 3.6MB)
Writer - unknown. Arranged by Paul Young (2006)
Credited at times to
Fats Waller, Louis Jordan, Andy Razaf, Will Weldon (and anyone else that’d like
to claim a royalty, since no one knows for sure), this is an old blues standard
that I
originally arranged
for the pop/rock singer, Steve Miller. In 2006 he was a
guest at USC for a concert, wherein Shelly Berg
and several of us students all
wrote big band arrangements
for him to sing with us, in a jazz-hybrid
style (including Fly Like An Eagle,
The Joker, Space Cowboy, etc.). He was so taken back
he had us make a
record at Capitol (where he is
still signed since the 1970s!). Unfortunately, Capitol
must have hated it (perhaps a
bad image-marketing fit, in their eyes). So the album is sitting in a
can,
likely never to see the light
of day.Well, this arrangement will live here anyway! Too bad Steve Miller
couldn’t be
here, but I was just so happy with my arrangement—my first really
s-l-o-o-w-w blues—that you’ll
have
to put up with me filling in for him, by default (sorry - I'm not a singer
normally)…so my writing can be heard.
Reflections
(Right click on song title and "Save As" to download this file: mp3
format - 128k/low quality - 7.7MB)
Written by Paul Young, Arrangement by Jeremy Levy (2007)
This piece was one of
the other products I was proud of, coming from that class with Shelly Berg
that
I mentioned earlier. At the time it was just a lead sheet (melody and chords),
and
even that
was only half the melody that I eventually finished after the class
was over. But Shelly had given me
new tools to look inside myself for melodies,
non-standard forms and
chord movements in ways I didn’t
know I had in me, and this one just haunted
me. I couldn’t let it go. It was originally titled
“Reflections in Crystal” –
a reference to what you see when
you hold fine crystal in light, spin it, and
see the reflected light change
colors. But after about four measures, the melody started to write itself,
and
became far less objective than that.
I began to think, “what if this vase was a leftover material gift
from a
relationship now gone? How would that look and feel if that would ever
happen to me?
The melody to “Reflections”
is a painting of what I imagined to be the process of reflecting on such a
loss—
the astonishment, pain, remembering the good times, realizing again that’s
gone, and all you are now is a
person, alone, hurting, staring at an empty, beautiful vase. Thankfully, it’s a
story/sonic painting – not my reality!
But by Fall 2006, I was a full-time
doctoral student, simultaneously now
teaching three classes as USC,
and getting more calls than I had ever had before
as a freelance musician (by the way, thanks for those
lessons, Bill Watrous!).
I didn’t know when I
would ever get around to arranging it. Around that time,
Jeremy Levy was a new
trombonist in town, bringing his big band arrangements down to the musicians
union, and clearly had
great skills. I sensed he would “get” what the tune was about, so I showed him
the lead sheet one morning, and by that evening he had the whole thing done –
from new counter-melodies
to
charts, and even an example recording from his computer, all delivered by
e-mail. It was not only right on,
but probably as good if not better than I could
have done if I had several weeks or months to myself!
Solos: Kevin Fukagawa, Paul Young
Falling Grace
(Right click on song title and "Save As" to download this file: mp3
format - 224k/med-high quality - 14.7MB)
By Steve Swallow, Arrangement By Paul Young (2007)
Without originally
having any recordings of this tune, and only quickly perusing its non-traditional
melody, chord structure and song form many years ago (when I first found it in The Real Book),
I initially passed it up as “just not my kind of tune”. It didn’t speak to me until
I took a graduate
jazz improvisation class with Shelly Berg, when a student in the class asked for
his help to look into
this song
further. And after Shelly finished breaking it down and presenting it
in his unique way,
I was forever hooked. Falling Grace now means something to me, in its title,
understated beauty,
never-ending melody, inherent rise and fall of emotions…
Coincidentally, in 2007 I began listening
a lot more to writer/bandleader Maria Schneider, noticing how she takes beautiful
melodies, develops
little fragments therefrom (a pseudo-classical
approach—developing motifs out of a melody), but paints
new
sonic colors that take the listener through an emotional experience. I
hear this song as inherently
having that character in its base, so her style was my inspiration
here, to stretch its motifs, chord colors
and spin out those elements into yearning chorales…in an attempt to paint a very
complex, deeply internal
human journey, complete with uncertainty, turmoil, darkness, hope, happiness,
exhilaration, awakening
and eventual peace...in search of grace.
Solos: Paul Young, Jeff Jarvis
My sincere thanks to these wonderful musicians!!!
(They're
the reason these live recordings came out sounding so good!)
Saxes:
Kevin Garren, Jim Quam, Alex Budman, Jim Youngstrom, Adam Schroeder
Trombones: Andrew Lippman, Jeremy Levy, Kari Harris, Matt
Hoormann
Trumpets:
Ron Barrows, Jamie Hovorka, Rob Schaer, Jeff Jarvis
Guitar: John Storie
Piano: Kevin Fukagawa
Bass: Geo Valle
Drums: Peter Buck
Recording engineers: Rick Schmunk and Dick McIlvery (USC
Music Industry Dept. faculty)
All recordings (P) 2007 Paul Young
This site is (C) 2007 Paul Young