In Creeps The Swing

At this point in my compositional journey, I’ve been working through ideas and motives written down in a musical notebook. Many of these ideas are well over ten years old and my ‘Swing’ idea was next in line. The motive I wrote down for this is a note for note copy of what you see in the opening Saxophone line.

The form of the piece came from a lesson I taught in my Theory IV class. We were going over the Rondo Form (ABACA) and I used an example from Duke Ellington to illustrate: Concerto for Cootie. Knowing that the rondo form could be used in jazz, and that I had a jazz idea to complete, I put the two together and came up with what you have in your hand.

This is my fourth attempt at jazz writing, and I feel I get better each time. This go around, I watched several videos by Elliot Deutsch who is a Big Band composer in Los Angeles. He described a method of voicing called ‘closed’ voicing. I thought this appropriate for my piece, in keeping with the title, and voiced the instrumentation this way throughout most of the piece.

MIDI Realization