Coming Up with the concept for the Tales of Time album
Initially, when Clarence Penn suggested I do a record in 2015, I was hesitant. I thought to myself, I’m not someone who has an overwhelming amount of chops. Also, I’ve been playing Broadway tours for the past ten years. Who will listen to this record? Will my musical theater friends care? Will I be able to make a statement musically? After all, I hadn’t even played jazz regularly since 2003!
In May of 2019, the Charlie And the Chocolate Factory tour got its closing notice for the fall. We only had four and a half months of tour left. What’s the next adventure?
I was scoring a short film at the time and started to play around on the keyboard with ideas for a theme for a movie. It was just something to do to be productive and put me In a creative headspace! Then I thought as I was scoring this movie to myself, maybe I do have something to offer to the music community! (After all, I did win a Telly Award for the Invaders Web series! ). I was chatting with a good friend of mine about this potential record project that was briefly an idea years ago. His words inspired me ( speaking of Clarence) as he said “ He’s not going to put his name on it, if he did t believe you could do
this! “
I contacted Clarence soon after about his interest in doing this record project! He was interested and we set up a meeting! The meeting was exactly what I needed to hear! He had a game plan for what to do! It was almost like having an assignment or homework! He knew that I had done film scores so his assignment was for me to write original music in different time signatures. He had given me a potential budget, lists of musicians to try to be on the album and a list of how he could help me make this project come to fruition!
I went home after this meeting incredibly excited! I was inspired to check out as much odd time music as I could. Much of the music were artists I were familiar with but many I had discovered because of my eagerness to discover! I found myself checking out artists like Sting, Radiohead, Aaron Parks, Bartok, Avishai Cohen, Dave Holland, Dave Douglas and Maria Schneider amongst many others. My goal was to write music that was in 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9. The trick was to make it sound like music and not like a math experiment.
I came up with a few ideas for grooves first. Then the chords, then the melody. Wasn’t on purpose, it just was my process. I had never written anything in 9 or even played in the time signature! Now was as good a time as any to learn! I set out to write singable melodies that can address as the glue for keeping these tunes together.
One writing style that I’ve always wanted to try writing was a Fugue! I realized that soon into the process, I had a difficult time bebop type melodies. So I set out to do something different! Sir Roland Hanna used to say “ If so and so ( insert artist or composer) could do it, then why can’t I?” So I decided if the Modern Jazz Quartet can play fugues and such, why can’t I?
At my first pre production meeting with Clarence, I asked him straight out. “ is this too classical? Is this ok to do this on a jazz record?” His reply was “ Its honest and you’re not trying to do something or write something you can’t do!” As an artist, is there anything better than hearing that? I always want my playing to be honest and I always approach music with a certain amount of integrity. I hope that when you listen to my music, you as a listener, not for the fugues I wrote but for the record as a whole, you feel that way too!
