CD Notes - Fantasy - The Inventions TrioBill Mays:
This is family. I love Marvin Stamm and Alisa Horn. They are wonderful friends, and as musicians I love their sound and the drive, the passion and the unexpected surprises they put into the music. A little background on how this came about: the first seeds, coming to full flower in this project, were planted back in the 1970s when Bud Shank expressed a desire to do a “crossover” (in the newly-coined jargon of the day) project. Bud commissioned me to write a five-movement flute suite for him, one that would incorporate classical and jazz styles, and have lots of room for blowing. In the 1980s I mixed musical genres again by orchestrating The Nutcracker Suite for four woodwinds and rhythm section. In recent years I’ve teamed with members of the Finisterra Trio and the Philadelphia Piano Quartet to play jazz versions of Arensky, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Rodrigo and Vivaldi. I always liked Duke Ellington’s axiom, “there’s only two kinds of music: good music and bad music.” A great melody is a great melody, be it from baroque or bebop. Interesting, challenging harmonic schemes that invite improvisation come from all styles and periods.
Marvin Stamm and I have done a lot of playing as a duo; some years back we started to include some classical repertoire in our musical conversations. We called the duo Inventions. Of course, that’s what jazz musicians are always doing: inventing new melodies on the spot. Now enter Alisa. When I was commissioned by Howard Horn and Frank Osborne to write the piece that became "Fantasy for Cello, Trumpet and Piano," the duo expanded into The Inventions Trio.
The cello’s certainly one of my favorite instruments and I’ve always enjoyed hearing it in jazz (Oscar Pettiford, Fred Katz with Chico Hamilton, Ed Lustgarten in Roger Kellaway’s cello quartet, Ray Brown, Todd Coolman, Eric Friedlander, to name just a few). Looking for other themes with beautiful melodies and rich grist for improvising led me to these other themes by Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Borodin, Gershwin, Bach and Bird! We hope you’ll have as much fun hearing these as we did writing, rehearsing and recording them.
Marvin Stamm:
Little did I think when introducing Bill to Alisa that it would one day result in a working group and the release of this CD. I have known Alisa since she was a very young lady as her parents and I have been friends for years; her father and I have known each other since we were in our teens. Bill and I have been working together for more than ten years, and, as everyone knows, he is my all-time favorite musician with which to play. For me, working with Bill is like working “hand in glove.”
I had wanted Bill to hear Alisa play for a good while, hoping he might write a piece for the three of us, though I had no idea where we might perform it. In 2005, when Bill and I were in Memphis to play at Jazz Week at the University of Memphis, the opportunity for Bill to hear Alisa presented itself. Howard and Jan Horn invited us to brunch, and I prevailed upon Alisa to play for Bill – and then again to play WITH Bill. I knew he would be taken with her musicality and her passion, and, as this CD attests, he was! A commission followed from Doctors Howard Horn and Frank Osborn, and the "Fantasy for Cello, Trumpet, and Piano" was born.
What greater pleasure than to perform wonderful music with two people to whom I feel so close and who share my deep passion for music.
Alisa Horn:
Three years ago, when Marvin (my long-time mentor) came to Memphis for a visit and introduced me to Bill Mays, I had no idea that a life-changing, musical experience was ahead. I remember distinctly on that day that I played Rachmaninoff’s "Vocalise," my favorite piece of music, and Bill played along with me, urging me to try and improvise with him—to just “take a chance”. Three years later, I have embraced this new concept whole-heartedly and I am thrilled to be a part of The Inventions Trio with Marvin and Bill, the two most spectacular musicians that I know.
Coming from a strictly classical background, the idea that every note, every phrase, and every shift must be perfect was pretty much beaten into me with a stick.
There is no one to blame for this, but only the stigma in the competitive world of classical music that in order to stand out, you feel as if you must be, well, perfect. Although most real musicians know that this isn’t actually true and that musicality does ultimately matter, it is almost impossible to trash this notion of perfection after years of trying to achieve it. When I began rehearsing and recording Bill Mays’ Fantasy, I felt frustrated by my imperfection, especially in the hard, fast parts and even more so in the improvisation sections. Improvisation is like a classical musician’s nightmare—you have never heard what you are about to play and since it has never been written out and is composed on the spot, it can NEVER be perfect. You would think this would be liberating, but at first, it was terrifying—what if I mess up? What if I play a WRONG NOTE? During the recording session, I almost had a break-down worrying about a shift that I had “missed” during an improvisation section. No one else in the studio even heard the mistake or noticed it at all and these are some of the most experienced and well-trained ears in the business! Almost in tears, worried over this horrible imperfection, Bill and Marvin looked at me and just said, “No one is ever perfect and that isn’t what this is about. Screw it!”Since that moment, I have a new outlook on my music and the meaning of “perfect” has changed. Now I understand that perfection is an individual’s perception of what the music is and this idea applies to both classical and jazz styles of playing.
The music on Fantasy embodies this concept by introducing standard, classical themes with a twist of jazzy flavor. Through Bill’s wonderful arrangements, you can hear themes like Debussy’s "Girl with the Flaxen Hair" and Bach’s “Invention #8” in a new and creative way with original melodies and improvised themes. Although I adore the jazz/classical fusion of the “Fantasy for Cello, Trumpet, and Piano,” Bill’s arrangement of Rachmaninoff’s "Vocalise" is still my favorite piece on this recording. What could be more beautiful than the improvisation section when Bill and Marvin create a new melody, building on Rachmaninoff’s heart-wrenching chords, and I play fragments of the original melody over the top? To me, that is truly perfection.