Lyrical Jazz For the 21st Century

8 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Bebop, JAZZ: Latin Jazz



Details:
Jacob Varmus, trumpet, cornet, vocals
Nate Radley, guitar
Toru Dodo, piano
Yoshi Waki, bass
Brian Woodruff, drums



Being pushed in a pram along the banks of La Scala in 1976 the two-year old Jacob Varmus suddenly emitted squeals and shrieks of unmasked delight. The most rapturous sounds he'd ever heard were bouncing off the plaza stone: a lone trumpeter's warming up from within open stage doors at the local opera house.
Ten years later Jacob Varmus had a trumpet of his own and began winning top marks at all the California Music Educators' Association festivals for his work as soloist (Haydn's trumpet concerto and Goedicke's Concert Etude) and chamber musician.

Evolving parallel to his love of music was an interest and talent in using language artistically thru poetry, critical essays, and autobiographical stories. In high school he won awards for poetry and sports journalism (an avid San Francisco Giants fan) as well as music. His first year of college, Jacob was admitted to the undergraduate Iowa Writers Workshop for poetry where he studied closely with MacArthur grant recipient Jorie Graham. At Iowa he also had the good fortune of studying with classical trumpet virtuoso David Greenhoe.

An initiation to the music and mastery of John Coltrane, as well as inspiring lessons with progressive trumpeter (and Iowa alum) Paul Smoker led Varmus to focus primarily on learning jazz music to the fullest. In 1994 he decided to move to New York to finish his BFA at the New School Jazz program where he received timeless lessons from a long list of artists including Arnie Lawrence and Billy Harper. Here he became known to his peers and elders as a composer of harmonically intricate yet compellingly simple and striking tunes.

In his senior year he was selected by the Jazz Composers' Collective to write a suite combining jazz quintet with string quartet which featured Ted Nash and Frank Kimbrough.
Continuing with his interest in developing as a composer (and helping others do the same) he founded Workshop 39, a jazz composers' workshop in Long Island City, and found work as an incidental music composer for theater companies like Yankee Rep. In 2005 he won a commission from the Queens Council on the Arts to present 'Queensboro Plaza' a suite for jazz quintet drawing on the types of rhythmic cross currents associated with Steve Reich, a harmonic language close to Stravinsky's and Scriabin's, and the collective improvisation of early jazz.




Track Notes by Jacob Varmus

1. 'Ecstatic Little Porpoises' is a phrase I like that my Aunt Caroline, an astrologer, used in her book 'Making the Gods Work For You'. I'm sorry I don't recall the exact context, but it refers to a good attitude to have when a daunting prospect lies ahead and one knows he's been enlisted somehow to rise to this challenge. Accept it and dive in, 'like ecstatic little porpoises...whoosh!' That I remember--the 'whoosh'.
This is for you, Aunt Caroline.

2.All the Things We Still Can Be is a play on All the Things You Are. I felt the nature of the lyrics to that old song are possessive and deluded ('that moment divine when all the things you are are mine! Mine!'). I think most songs are this way, unfortunately. I wanted to refer to a healthy relationship-and by that I mean one in which change is not feared but relished, and a couple can look outward and ahead without having to ascribe everything they desire/detest unto the other. And one in which improvement is a real possibility.
The form is the same as All the Things You Are except for a 6 bar interlude in the middle. But who could tell? I think All the Things You Are has one of the most beautiful structures of all our standards which is why I used it as a model when I wrote this as a student in the New School Jazz Program. At the time I felt I really needed to understand the musical reasons for conventionally-lengthed (8-bar) phrases. I get it now.

3. Untimely Intrusion
When I was living on the Upper East Side I used to practice late after midnight. I figured the walls were thick. Someone came down and complained so after that I never played past 11. One night at 1:30 I wasn't playing but taking a bath with a Chet Baker record of love songs playing at a low volume. Aaah................
Suddenly, five loud, hard knocks on my door. I rose startled, water spilling over the tub and began to dress. A brazen woman's voice said with exasperation as though she had me in her view, "You don't need to get dressed. Just open up."
Pants and a shirt on, but still dripping wet, I peered through the peephole. I saw a pair of steel blue eyes glaring back with like laser-like precision.
I let two women police officers in and they began to poke around my apartment.
Someone below had called in, they said, concerned by hearing a woman's scream.
Chet!
This piece is somewhat programmatic. You'll hear the five loud hard knocks expressed first as a high D minor major 7th chord on the piano interrupting silence after a dream-like introduction.
I wrote this tune as a challenge to put the above incident into a musical form. I don't write much music at uptempo but I thought the occasion warranted a burner.
I am surprised how many good musicians request to play this tune at jam sessions. They say they like the challenge of playing across the three bar phrases I constructed, and adapting to the alarm of the bridge which seems at times a rather untimely intrusion.

4. Everything Happens to Me
I can't help but feel something of Chet Baker when I play this song. I couldn't resist singing the last A.

5. Country Dave Tex Mex
I like the feel of those old Appalachian songs, I love how you can sense that it's something that's been passed down aurally over many generations. When I want
to get back to composing after time off I'll start off by challenging myself to come up with a melody with that feeling. To me it's a way to practice the art of creating spontaneous melodies.
The theme on this tune, a result of such practice, sat in a sketchbook untouched for several years. When I decided to make this recording I took it out and thought it would complement the repertoire well-if I developed it into a vehicle for jazz.
I took this one simple hummable whistle-able little tune and changed the harmony around it from section to section, so it takes on different guises. It's been suggested one adaptation suggests Ravel, the next Debussy.
Before and after these sections I use a rhythmic loop of a simple 3-note figure, where the trumpet, piano and guitar stagger entrances creating a sense of tension in the motion of the figure-like the relationships between three identical wheels that started rotating at the same speed at different points in time . After the third version of the melody on the whole tone chord (Debussy), we culminate in a festive montuno. All of this is conveying the scenery on a long drive culminating in a visit to Country Dave Tex Mex, a fictive restaurant just off the interstate in the Southwest somewhere. I'm talking about someplace to stop after driving from morning to night, juke box playing Johnny Cash, chimichangas, strawberry margaritas, happy waitresses that call you honey, guacamole and tortillas. Doesn't that sound like the mecca?

6. What Is This Thing We Still Can Be?
This one is a 60s Miles Davis/Wayne Shorter-like approach to the form of What Is This Thing Called Love. I don't think either ever recorded it. If you know of a version, let me know please. Maybe Wayne did with Blakey, or Miles with Bird, but that's something else entirely. We had fun reacting to one another around this familiar form.

7. Why Don't You Dance?
The title is borrowed from a Raymond Carver story of the same name. It's in 4/4 but there are places where the melody line rebels against the constriction of bar lines, and it's hard to differentiate the beats (1,2,3 and 4) from each other. That might explain why you don't dance.
The free-flowing quality of the melody owes a debt to Ornette Coleman, a melodist of the highest order, while the harmonic shadings are Bill Evans-like.
I sometimes make the joke that this is dedicated to John Ashcroft.
Then I tell them he is the highest ranking official of Assemblies of God, and it's against his religion to dance, so that's why. An alternate title for this tune might be 'Wallflower'. Ashcroft is known to be shy at most parties, as was/is (purportedly) Bill Evans, Ornette Coleman, and me. This is an ode to the inner life.

8. Perpetual Motion
I didn't know Yoshi Waki was such a fine composer when I first started playing with him but I might have guessed it from his instincts, taste and musical flexibility as a bass player. This is the only piece of Yoshi's I've ever heard. I'm glad he brought it in because it rounds out the album beautifully.
I recently wrote a prelude to this one, called Terminal Stillness. No joke!