FIRST TIME OUT - CD

This album started out as a way to kick start work for a new company. I figured the best way to to bring as many talented musicians together as possible was to bring them back to what I assumed brought them together in the first place many years ago. 

To that point, I am no different. Big band has been a very large part of my life from an early age. I remember during the holidays, when I was younger, my Dad introduced me to Harry Connick Jr’s “Harry For the Holidays” record. I was floored. I listened to that record all year round because it just felt good, never mind it was Christmas music. From there, was introduced to Duke Ellington and the Marsalis brothers and continued to reenforce my utter love for jazz. 

It wasn’t until several years later, after I had picked up my horn, that I actually began to try my hand at big band writing. As with anything, it was overwhelming to try to navigate the many hurdles that came with the format but the ability to dictate what roughly seventeen individual musicians will do at any given moment was wild. There are so many emotions and textures that could be created but more importantly, it was a way to communicate things I had always felt listening to Harry Connick and Wynton Marsalis but had never been able to describe with words. Needless to say, I was hooked. 

Throughout college, I discovered many approaches to writing music. And while all were valid in their respective contexts, their music only ever really found their way to listeners that subscribed to the same beliefs. These approaches were something I didn’t agree with. Most of them seemed to over complicate the genre for the sake of adding intellectual interest but truly netted nothing in return. I might even go so far to say that many approaches benefitted only that writer or arranger but rarely the listener. I know I don’t make many friends by saying that. My greater point is that big band music at one point was as popular as Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa and Justin Bieber. Sure, music evolves, new genres take their place and world moves on. But I can’t help but think that there might be a reason certain genres inadvertently caused their own demise. 

My goal for this record was to find a way to acknowledge a few of the approaches I learned along the way while still giving the every-day-listener something they can enjoy as well. Big band might not be as popular as it was ever again, and that’s okay, but that doesn’t mean that the world doesn’t still crave it and we should stop writing music for the common listen. In fact, we should be writing more than ever now because one day the world may come back to listened we will need to a hefty supply to keep up.

MH