Charts for Jazz Orchestra

These charts are original compositions and arrangements for jazz orchestra. In addition to charts written prior to COVID and recorded on the CD “Playing Alone Together”, I have recently added some rough mixes of tunes recorded at Primary Sound Studios in Bloomington, Indiana for a CD we will release later in 2024.

 
 

Naught Won 57

The title refers to a pitch set that gets used A LOT in this chart. This is probably going to be the opening track on our new CD.

 

Make it So

This is the ONLY tune I wrote in 2020. I spent much of the year working on arrangements of existing tunes, as well as dealing with the same issues everyone was reacting to in 2020! That was the first year since the 1990s (when I was pre-tenure and had small children) that I have not written multiple tunes in a year.

 

The Serpent

This is an update of the first big band chart I did as an undergraduate at Indiana University for Dominic Spera’s first semester Jazz Arranging and Composition class. The intro and the first sax chorus are pretty much the same as what I wrote in 1980, but everything else has been radically altered.

 

Last Song of Summer

I wrote the bass riff of this tune in August 2018, then added the rest. The first arrangement was a combo chart that I wrote for a Berklee Online class. This is a version for Jazz Orchestra (Big Band).

 
 

Cats and Mouses

This is a bit different that most of my charts, but it was fun to do. This is based on part of a larger work for Woodwind Quintet called “Four Cartoons”, which should give you some of what this is like. It uses various non-tonal techniques, but was also inspired by my misspent youth watching Tom & Jerry cartoons (among others). The scrolling score gives a Finale realization, the Soundcloud link is to a studio recording from our forthcoming CD.

 
 

Simple Song

This is from the forthcoming CD. It uses piano and bass pedal point and a simple diatonic melody that gets reharmonized over the course of the chart.

En La Casa De Los Perritos

This was originally written as a combo chart for an assignment in a jazz composition class I took through Berklee on line. The task was to write a tune that started in G phrygian, went to E Dorian, and the back to to phrygian. I was listening to a LOT of Snarky Puppy around the time I wrote this, hence the title.

Ballad for the A1 Band

I wrote this as a tribute to the Al Cobine band. I grew up listening to this band and other bands my dad played with, and the desire to write for my own band was no doubt due to their influence. I wrote a lead trumpet solo that my dad (or any of the great lead players in Al’s band over the years) would have played, and, of course, an ad lib section for Al to play a tenor solo. In this recording these roles are taken by Clark Hunt and Chance Davis.

Uno

The first chart we recorded for our “COVID CD”, entitled UNO, was a new arrangement of the first jazz tune I wrote (back in 1975), which was also the first big band arrangement I did (in high school back in 1978). This version is significantly updated from the originals! We also did a studio version of this at Primary Sound.

 

Blues for Porter

A Basie style arrangement with tasty solos by Tiffany Johns and Ana Nelson.

 

With You All the Way

This was written for my wife and is an attempt at a “Great American Songbook” style tune.

 

Bossa Monday Suite

This was inspired by the local Monday night jazz jam in Terre Haute, Indiana. This version starts with a minimalist take on the opening riff, followed by a standard bossa feel, and then a double time section at the end.

Book One

Something else a bit different This is channeling my years spent listening to progressive rock. This is a studio version with the flutes parts that were missing now added.

 

Well You Better

This was originally written for a local High School jazz band back in 2014. In 2019 I updated it a bit. The instrument ranges are not too difficult, but the lines are pretty angular, so it can be a challenging chart. This is a mix from a May 2023 recording session.

 

Jazz Combo Charts

Three for Three

This is a 2 horn (trumpet and tenor sax) arrangement of a tune originally written for 3 horns. We performed this at a local fundraiser back in 2019, but only have a partial video of that, so I included the Finale realization here instead of a live performance.

 
 

Stealing Silver

This piece was selected to be performed by the Denison University Student & Faculty Jazz Combo at the 2022 TUTTI Music Festival. The performance video is below. I wrote it as an exercise in working with minimal materials, in this case a sequence of minor 9th chords a minor 3rd apart. There is also a bit of Snarky Puppy influence here in the use of repeated riffs. The original version was for 3 horns, but Denison requested a 4 horn version for the festival performance.

 
 

Stealing Silver

The inspirations for this were Snarky Puppy’s use of riff and groove based tunes and Horace Silver’s approach of doing detailed arrangements in a small group context rather than just unison horns and blowing on the changes. This was performed at the 2022 TUTTI Festival at Denison University in March.

 
 

Con Fusion

This is a fairly simple chart for 3 horns. It should be playable by many high school or college combos.