Oh hi there… just casually announcing the culmination of my second season as Composer-in-Residence of the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, with our special guest Walter Smith III .
Walter is the consummate musician’s musician, admired by just about everyone on the scene. (Exhibit A: he was among the artists chosen to inaugurate NYC’s latest great new jazz venue.) I first heard Walter play in the early 2000s, when he was a student at Berklee and I was studying down the street at New England Conservatory. I’ve wanted to work with him ever since, so I’m delighted it is finally happening!
It’s been a pleasure to immerse myself in his discography, and I ultimately extracted eight tunes to arrange.
The earliest of these is the lead-off from 2014’s Still Casual , “Foretold You,” an anthemic uptempo burner filled with sinewy counterlines, tricksy displacements, and a sprinkling of 5/4 stutter-steps. Little did I know when I set out to arrange this that it is also Walter’s viral hit, with multiple cover versions out there, in a dizzying array of styles.
From Walter’s (nonchalantly lowercase) 2023 Blue Note debut return to casual , I zeroed in on four tracks. “River Styx” is a minor key waltz that contrasts a sweeping rise-and-fall introduction with classically elegant pedal-point harmony. The title “quiet song” is characteristically wry: the band comes in guns blazing and never lets up. Walter recounts how he hoped the title would get the track placed in the middle of a “Romantic Dinner” playlist, thereby ruining said dinner. “Amelia Earhardt Ghosted Me,” another typically Walterian title, is originally a weaving duet between Smith and his longtime friend and collaborator Ambrose Akinmusire, and it seemed a perfect fit for Frankfurt trombonist Christian Jaksjø , who I also met during my Boston years. “REVIVE” is Walter’s gorgeous tribute to the late jazz impresario Meghan Stabile . On the album, it’s a duo with pianist Taylor Eigsti, but Walter also shared with me his solo multitracked version, which I elected to adapt as an unaccompanied chorale for the Frankfurt sax section.
The last three selections are from Walter’s impeccably titled 2024 Blue Note followup: three of us are from Houston and Rueben is not. (No lies detected.) The opener, “seesaw,” has a sing-song melody of strung-together dyads, paired with an intricate, mesmerizingly off-kilter form. (For those keeping score at home: [A] (10 bars), [B] (9 bars, divided 6+3), [C] (7 bars, divided 5+2), [A], [B], [C’] (10 bars, divided 5+5), [D] (8 bars, divided 3+3+2), [D]. That’s just the blowing form, mind you, there’s a whole other routine after the solos.) “Misanthrope’s Hymn” (named after a notoriously gloomy high school classmate) is one of Walter’s most charismatic themes, with a rich and ingenious harmonic progression. “Lone Star,” the album closer, is an honest-to-goodness cowboy song originally written for Jason Moran. In rehearsal, Walter revealed the original working title: “weird that I would write this.” But it is an unironically great tune, one that gave me the opportunity to channel my old-school big band arranging heroes, like Kansas City Suite-era Benny Carter.
The concerts take place June 11 at Frankfurt’s hr-Sendesaal and June 12 at Giessen’s Stadttheater — if you are in der nähe, I hope you’ll join us. But for those located further afield, the June 11 concert will be live streamed on the Frankfurt Radio Big Band’s YouTube channel, beginning at 2 pm EDT.
P.S. My previous Composer-in-Residence concerts, with Brad Mehldau , Aaron Diehl , and Warren Wolf , are all also available for your viewing and listening pleasure.
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