© -Steven
Cerra , copyright protected; all rights reserved.
I was going to add
the phrase - “not a law firm” – to the title of this piece, but then I realized
that it was an unnecessary qualifier.
Pat Metheny and
Lyle Mays are names even more widely known in musical circles outside of Jazz
and Jazz cognoscenti have been aware of Bob Curnow’s contributions to the music
for many years.
In all honesty, I
was just looking for a vehicle to present Bobby Shew’s masterful trumpet work
on Bob Curnow’s big band arrangement of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays’ tune, Always and Forever.
As sometimes
happens, I made the video using this track from Bob Curnow’s L.A. Big Band: The
Music of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays [MAMA Foundation MMF 1009] and then
backed into this piece.
The following
annotation details the evolution of Bob Curnow’s career as a composer and
arranger for big bands, as well as, his current activities as the proprietor of
Sierra Music. You can checkout more about the later at www.sierramusicstore.com. The site
also includes a biography on Bob.
Its almost
impossible to encapsulate the overarching musical careers of Pat Metheny and to
a somewhat lesser extent that of Lyle Mays.
I first became
aware of their music on a 1978 ECM LP entitled The Pat Metheny Group [1-1114].
Although I was
never a big fan of the Jazz-Rock-Fusion genre, some aspects of it appealed to
me because in the hands of capable musicians, aspects of it could offer new
approaches to developing melodies and alternative harmonies. I
also liked the looser feel to rhythm that some of this music conveyed.
Of course, the
overall texture or sound of the genre was heavily influenced by the use of
electronics, particularly synthesizers.
What attracted me to the music of The Pat Metheny Group was the fact that it was easy on
the “Rock” while being heavy on the use of electronic instruments to advance
beautiful themes and interesting new approaches to harmonies such as the use of
different tonal centers and chromaticism.
Pat and Lyle
created music that was lighter in sonority and that just seemed to float,
rhythmically.
Their music evoked
moods and was easy to “visualize.” It had a down home feel to it and contained
some elements of blues, country-and-western and folk.
As described by
Richard Cook and Brian Morton in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th
Ed.:
“Metheny seemed content to
drop his playing into whatever context it might find. …. At this time Metheny
favored a clean, open tone with just enough electronic damping to take the
music out of 'classic’ jazz-guitar feeling, but he clearly owed a great debt to
such urban pastoralists as Jim Hall and Jimmy Raney, even if he seldom moved
back to bebop licks.
The Metheny Group albums
settled the guitarist's music into the niche from which he is still basically
working: light, easily digested settings that let him play long, meticulous
solos which can as often as not work up a surprising intensity. Pat Metheny Group and American Garage each have their ration
of thoughtful improvising which the guitarist settles inside a gently
propulsive rhythm, more ruralized than the beefy urban beats of the contemporary
fusion bands.
That strain also colors the
playing and composing of Mays, who has been Metheny's principal collaborator
for 20 years. Scarcely a major voice in his own right - … - Mays is the perfect
second banana. He feeds Metheny all kinds of tasteful orchestration without
getting too much in his way.
New Chautauqua is a rare all-solo album in the Metheny
canon. A pleasant, sweet-toned diversion, it hints at the multifarious-ness;
with various electric and acoustic settings, including a i5-string harp-guitar,
with which Metheny has grown fascinated in recent times.”
Given these
descriptions of the form and format of the music of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays,
imagine my surprise when in 1994 I stumbled upon a recording entitled Bob
Curnow’s L.A. Big Band Plays The Music of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays [MAMA
Foundation MMF 1009].
I had a fledgling
awareness of Bob Curnow as a budding arranger for some of the bands that the
legendary Stan Kenton led in the 1970s before his passing in 1979 and I knew of
his work with Stan in marketing and distributing the band’s music through
Kenton’s Creative World enterprises.
But never in a
million years would I have figured the Metheny/Mays musical canon fitting into
the big bold sound of a Kenton-like orchestral setting.
If anyone had
proposed it to me conceptually, I would have thought of it as a musical
contradiction in terms.
And yet, I was
holding the realized promise of such a union in my hand; all I had to do was
buy it, take it home and play it.
Which is exactly
what I did and much to my delight, the combination of Pat and Lyle’s music as
orchestrated and arranged for big band by Bob worked extremely well together.
As Bob Curnow alludes in his insert notes to
the recording: the big band arrangements of Metheny and Mays music became one
example of what Stan Kenton’s Orchestra might have sounded like in the 1980's and beyond.
© -Bob
Blumenthal , copyright protected; all rights reserved.
Acoustic and
electric. These are the categories most frequently employed to compartmentalize
jazz these days. Many diehards in each
camp will tell you that never the twain shall meet. Obviously, they have not
heard this incredible album.
Bob Curnow’s L.A. Big Band
Plays The Music of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays
is an amazingly
successful translation to the idiom of jazz big band of music originally
created in an electric context. The source material, a dozen compositions from
the book of the Pat Metheny Group, was created by musicians who have never
allowed simplistic categories to place restrictions on their imaginations. It has been adapted by a kindred spirit who,
while working from a more traditional base, has an equally open mind and the
requisite big ears.
Bob Curnow's name
is not as familiar as Pat Metheny's, yet he too has enjoyed a rich and diverse
career. Curnow was a trombonist with The Stan Kenton Orchestra (which also
performed his compositions and arrangements) and served as A&R Director,
General Manager and Producer for Kenton's Creative World label.
His conducting
career has brought him to the podium of symphony orchestras and jazz ensembles
throughout the United States, and his extensive experience as an educator
includes the presidency of the International Association of jazz Educators,
teaching positions at California State Los Angeles, Michigan State and Case
Western Reserve Universities, and an eight year directorship of the McDonald's
Ail-American High School jazz Band during which he helped to discover and
nurture many now-prominent jazz musicians.
Sierra Music Publications, his publishing company, carries charts from
the likes of Bill Holman and Maynard Ferguson and Bob's own arrangements of the
music of the Yellowjackets and others.
Finally, he is a long-standing fan of the Pat Metheny Group.
"The music
inspired me from the first time I heard it," Curnow explains. "I initially transcribed If I Could just to find out how the
piece worked and exactly what Pat was doing." Curnow then went on to
complete some 12 arrangements of compositions by Pat Metheny and/or Lyle
Mays. Working from source material
heavily steeped in electronic and synthesized sound was no deterrent to
Curnow's labors. He was responding to
the strengths of Metheny's music — to its heart, its sophistication and its
ability to simultaneously communicate to a mass audience while still providing
a musical challenge.
Further, Curnow
recognized that the dynamic and coloristic range of the Metheny Group was not
that far removed from the directions he had pursued with the Stan Kenton
band. "From my perspective,"
he says, "the earliest keyboards, going back to violin and flute stops on
organs, were frequently trying to emulate acoustic sounds. When I hear Pat's
group, I layer in acoustic sounds in my mind. To my ears, the possibility of
presenting this music in a big band context has always been there."
Possibility is not
realization, however, and Curnow has done a magnificent job of writing
arrangements that preserve the integrity of the originals without deviating
from the big band tradition he knows so well. In each case, Curnow's rendering
retains the nucleus and builds logically upon it, using the larger palette of
the jazz orchestra and its expanded timbral possibilities to transform these
already sublime pieces. The result is nothing less than a series of masterworks
for jazz ensemble. Fans of the Metheny Group who spend little or no time
listening to big bands will feel immediately comfortable here, just as big band
fans who may never have listened to Metheny could be forgiven for assuming that
these pieces are simply original works of uncommon quality. It was all there in
Metheny's music, and now it has been preserved in a new context by Curnow.
It takes more than
a skilled arranger to bring off a project of this scope, which is where the
talented ensemble that Curnow has assembled comes in. "As exciting and challenging as it was
to score these pieces for big band," Curnow states, "it was even more
thrilling to hear them played by these magnificent musicians. It was truly the culmination of a ten-year
dream."
"These
arrangements have gone through a real metamorphosis in preparation for the
recording," Curnow adds.
"Several were altered to fit the players, and to create solo space
for as many members of the band as possible." The role of guitarist Paul Viapiano is
indicative. "There was originally
very little guitar in these charts, but I loved the way Paul played and wanted
him to be heard." As his feature
track See the World makes clear,
Viapiano was creating very much in the spirit of respectful individuality that
characterizes Curnow's arrangements. The
same can be said for the other musicians.
Examples abound, from Bobby Shew's heartfelt flugelhorn on Always and Forever and Danny House's
alto sax on If I Could to Bob
Sheppard's volatile soprano sax on The
First Circle and the simple eloquence of Bill Cunliffe's piano throughout.
…
And we could go on
listing such treats (the liquid clarinets behind Lockart earlier in the piece,
those brass shakes at the start of See the World ...) for pages. These are
Curnow's gems, his way of honoring music that clearly means a great deal to him
in its original form. A string of such gems has created one large triumph — an
album which will be enjoyed alike by every Pat Metheny Group fan, big band fan
and plain old music fan who hears it.”
The liner notes
also contains these thoughts by Bob Curnow a about the project.
© -Bob Curnow, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
To many people,
the words "big band" conjure up an image of music from the ‘30s and
‘4Os. But I have never felt that the big band should be limited by a style
created long ago. While I have a deep and abiding respect for the older music,
I also know that the music of the '70s, '80s and '90s works beautifully in this
medium. To me, a "big band" is simply a band that's big — in this
case big enough to include twenty of the best jazz musicians in the world.
There are two
unmistakable and pervasive influences on this body of work. The first is, of
course, Pat Metheny and his unique and timeless compositions — often created in
collaboration with his partner Lyle Mays. The second is the arranging styles of
those who wrote for the Stan Kenton Orchestra during its almost 40 years of
existence. Whether it was Bill Holman, Pete Rugolo, Johnny Richards, Lennie
Niehaus or Stan himself, my love of the big band comes from years of listening
to, studying and playing the music created by these men for that great
orchestra. Kenton's composers were
always on the cutting edge, using the entire dynamic range and colorful palette
of the big band. Stan would have it no
other way.
The question has
been asked: "What would the Kenton band sound like today?" Perhaps a little like this CD. In retrospect, I think I wrote these arrangements
as though the Kenton band still existed. I certainly tried to use the hallmarks
of that
band — the many colors,
the powerful soloists, and the range of dynamics, from quiet and pensive to
roaring ….”
The following
video contains a track from Bob Curnow’s L.A. Big Band Plays The Music
of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays in the form of “ …Bobby Shew's heartfelt
flugelhorn on Always and Forever.” Caution, Bobby’s gorgeous playing on Bob
Curnow’s arrangement is guaranteed to make your heart skip a beat.
Perhaps after
you’ve had a chance to listen to this music you’ll understand why I found it to
be so impressive and enjoyable.
