This album of music written and arranged for classical brass quintet (2 trumpets, french horn, trombone and bass trombone) + rhythm section (guitar, bass, drums) was a foray into finding a real synthesis between classical-chamber and jazz-improv sensibilities. It’s not a typical crossover album, with several members of the ensemble walking in both worlds comfortably, playing in a literature-music idiom one moment, and improvising the next, using the language of the former to inform the latter.
This was a collaboration with the inimitable composer and jazz trumpeter Niran Dasika (go check him out!) who co-wrote and co-produced this album with me. Together we blurred the lines of authorship – each track had creative input from both of us, several swapping hands between us multiple times before settling into their final shape. On top of that, several tracks draw inspiration from other places still – perhaps most notably my (mostly) arrangement of the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony, that spills out into an open improvisation in it’s development.