It has been a pleasure to be a member of the ISJAC community for the past year. After I was honored with the Wayne Shorter Jazz Arranging Prize for my big band chart on “Ping Pong”, I met so many likeminded composers at the symposium, whose work is inspiring in its creativity and who welcomed me in as a member. Receiving a personal note from Coralina Shorter, Wayne’s widow, made the experience deeply meaningful. With this spirit of creativity and connection in mind, I’d like to share a project that is currently in the works.
Back in 2019, in what now feels like the “beforetimes,” I was buried in arranging work but craving a new spark to push me toward more original composition. To get myself moving, I grabbed a notebook and wrote a list of a dozen or so artists I admired and wanted to collaborate with. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a way to check in with myself about whose work I found inspiring and what kinds of musical worlds I wanted to be part of. I’ve always felt that making these kinds of physical lists has real power. They help clarify direction, set intentions, and make creative goals feel more tangible.
At the top of that list was Sirintip, a Thai and Swedish vocalist, producer, and research artist whose interest in the natural world and commitment to sustainable living run through everything she creates. I was a big fan of her album Carbon, which had a core message of sustainability made by example utilizing solar-powered performances, carbon neutral studios, and recycled fashion.
A year later, in 2020, we were connected by a mutual peer and she invited me to orchestrate songs for a big band album she was producing. We bonded immediately over our creative process and attention to musical details. After several weeks of working together, just as the project was finishing up, she called and asked me a simple question: “Do you like mushrooms?” I gave a slightly rambling answer about how growing up in beautiful Southern California made me love nature. Luckily, she wasn’t talking about a psychedelic trip. She meant mycelium, the wide underground network of fungal threads that allow mushrooms to grow.
That one question sparked what would become a multi-year collaboration on an interdisciplinary suite called Mycelium.
A Research Trip Into the Unseen
Our first step was a research trip spanning the Oregon coast where we met with plankton scientists and mycologists with support from the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. The residency provided housing and a creative base to venture out to visit scientists in their labs, on research ships, in dense forests and even around their dinner tables. We listened to them talk about their fascinating work, the ecosystems they study, and the realities of trying to protect environments that most people never see. Some spoke about canceled science contracts and the ongoing struggle to maintain public support for green initiatives. Even with those challenges, every researcher shared the same underlying motivation: hope.
Hearing their stories reshaped the way we approached the music. The suite suddenly carried a responsibility to communicate something these scientists could not always express through charts or data. The heart behind the science. We wanted listeners to feel the urgency, wonder and fragility of the worlds they spend their lives studying.
We pulled musical ideas from data sonification, growth equations, natural patterns like the Fibonacci sequence, and even the movement and behavior of microscopic organisms. Working in this way gave me the creative spark I had been searching for. Composing became less about craft alone and more about carrying the message of people whose voices often go unheard.
Translating the Invisible Into Sound
To bring this unseen world into musical form, we put together a nine-piece ensemble with a wide range of colors and textures; Sirintip on vocals and effects, myself on trumpet, Ben Wendel on tenor sax, Zach Brock on violin, Andrew Gutauskas on flute and bass clarinet, Jimmy O’Connell on trombone, Kengchakaj on keyboards and synths, Adam Neely on electric and upright bass, and Nolan Byrd on drums. The wide range of registers and timbral combinations gave us the freedom to blend acoustic sounds with electronics. In some sections the woodwinds chatter like forest creatures. In others the brass takes on a metallic weight that suggests machinery and human interference in natural spaces. One movement draws on the eerie behavior of Cordyceps, a fungus that can inhabit and control their hosts. The metaphorical possibilities to our human experience felt endless, and the creativity from each improvising musician shaped the suite in ways we could not have predicted. To help drive the narrative and audience experience we have been collaborating with dancer/choreographer Marie Lloyd Paspe and visual artist Nitcha “Fame” Tothong.
Where the Project Is Now
We have had the joy of performing Mycelium at the Jazz Gallery, Winter Jazz Fest, Montgomery College and the Umeå Jazz Festival in Sweden. The reception has been inspiring, to put it simply. We’ve been overwhelmed by the interest and support in this project that started with us looking at microscopic organisms through a powerful lens. The music and overall performance have been constantly evolving with each performance, and we recorded the suite in October at the Bunker Studio in Brooklyn with John Davis co-producing with Sirintip, and are currently in post-production for the album.
The Joy of Collaboration
Working with Sirintip has been a genuinely symbiotic experience. While our backgrounds overlap in jazz and improvised music, her depth of expertise in production, songwriting and sounds balances my background in orchestration for larger ensembles. We decided early on to co-write everything: melodies, lyrics and orchestrations. It felt more natural than dividing up movements or having one person compose and the other arrange. This type of collaboration was a new experience for me, and one that I recommend composers experiment with in order to get out of their habits and comfort zone.
One example I’d like to share is the opening piece, “Into the Unseen”, from our performance at Montgomery College. It was inspired by microbiologist Anne Thompson, whose words have stayed with us since our first research trip:
“All the secrets of the earth are in a single drop of water.”
At various times throughout my tenure as ISJAC blog curator, and scheduled blogging artist fell through late in the game for any number of reasons, so in that case I would often step in to supply a blog for that month. It’s perhaps poetic that for my penultimate curated blog, I am once more in this position. I promise I did not conspire to do this at a time that coincided with the release of my new album, but here you go.
During the pandemic, I, like most of you, was trying to investigate ways I might move forward as an artist once we would all be able to play music together again. For me, part of this came out of regularly playing informally with some friends in my little town of Northfield, Minnesota. Both of these guys had very different musical training than me, but they had an understanding of the electronic side of things that I had never investigated. So in our collective improvisations, I started to experiment with a delay/loop pedal. Now I’ve heard countless horn players utilizing electronics over the years, none more notable to me than one of my most important improvisational influences, trombonist Hal Crook. But I had long resisted going down the pedal rabbit hole, partially because of expense, but also I thought I had enough to focus on as a trombonist/composer/bandleader/etc., that I just didn’t see it as practical to add another dimension to what I was doing musically. But this new sonic experience and the feedback I started to receive when using this new technique on live gigs awakened an interest I had long avoided.
When I began to explore these electronic possibilities more deeply, I was concerned I was kind of a poser with so many experienced guitarists (and horn players) having a greater understanding of what was available and how it works. It was also important to me not to have my inexperienced use of these pedals feel like a gimmick, but rather an extension of my musical language. So I started off breaking in my initial set of electronics in mostly improvisational settings where I could really experiment with colors and layering. I eventually gained enough control of my equipment to also begin to use it while playing over jazz standards. But I felt like it was time to begin to utilize these tools in a more directed way. Out of that grew my new group EQ (Electric Quartet), which, in addition to myself on trombone and effects, included effects-monster guitarist (Toivo Hannigan) and electric bass specificalist (Erik Fratzke). This put me in the right sonic environment, but writing music for this specific ensemble forced me to think about orchestration in a different way.
I have long had an interest in orchestrational investigations via non-standard ensemble instrumentation, both in small and large group settings. While I was a grad student at New England Conservatory, I started a trio with myself on trombone plus two saxophonists called Triocracy, which had several iterations over the years depending on my residence of the time, but is represented most recently on the album Pyramid Scheme. This group was initially formed largely out of the frustration that my favorite rhythm section players in Boston at the time were rarely available, but it yielded some really interesting compositional and arranging results that wouldn’t have existed if I had been able to employ a more traditional horns-with-rhythm-section band. More recently in 2023, I released an album with pianist Michael Cain and bassist Anthony Cox (no drums) called New Past, another assemblage of instruments that I would think would not be considered the most common.
But probably some of my most notable orchestrational adventures occurred in a large ensemble setting. Like many modern jazz big band composer-arrangers, I took full advantage of both woodwind and brass doubles, especially once I had access to players with a vast number of instruments available to them in NYC. But my affiliation with the composers federation Pulse (with Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., Darcy James Argue, Joshua Shneider, and others) and our projects that featured a variety of mixed chamber ensembles really opened my ears to what I wanted to do with my own ensemble. So I shifted my more “traditional” jazz orchestra to a 15-piece hybrid jazz band/chamber orchestra to fulfill more of my orchestrational desires.
I think this demonstrates how I had really thought about orchestrational options through contrasting/complementary instrumental timbres, but using electronic effects as orchestration was a new way of thinking. I wanted to see how I could use these new colors in a pre-determined context in addition to the improvisational experimentations I had been doing, and how I might combine those effects with some of my own compositional philosophies and techniques.
The first track “ausgleicht” (loosely meaning “balanced” in German) is a good example of how I planned out what my effects could do color-wise, and how that orchestrational concept combined with my compositional one. I have written a number of pieces that contain a clear duality to them in one way or another, like two contrasting sections, characters, moods, etc. (Your Word Alone is a prime example), so I thought I would try and add another dimension of timbral duality to the mix, as well.
It begins with a rocking-out mixed meter ostinato played by the rhythm section, while I use a chorus-effected sustained sound above that, soon adding a perfect 4th above with one of my harmonizer pedals.
Click to view full size score.
After this initial statement, the band tune changes character by metrically modulating to a flowing 12/8. At that point, my sound also shifts character by switching to a more “acoustic” sound, which creates a notable contrast.
Click to view full score.
This alternation of color and groove characters carries on through the track, until a final statement of the melody, where I superimpose the initial 12/8 “head” material over the mixed-meter ostinato. To add to the intensity here, I add not one 4th, but two stacked 4ths above, creating a much thicker texture, really building the intensity in a climactic moment. Again, this is a decision I could not have made without the particular equipment I have, which includes two separate harmonizer pedals.
I took a different approach when conceiving of my arrangement of Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” again being inspired by the “forces” available to me. I’ve always loved how many Stevie tunes, particularly this one, would vamp the ending for extended periods of time, almost uncomfortably so. So I wanted to see if I could capture that vibe, even without having my own backup singers. So after a solo opening colored by a delay effect, I used the combination of the diatonic triad function of my harmonizer pedal (it’s great to have my own personal horn section available at the push of a button!) and my loop pedal to try and capture that mood so that I could then improvise over the top of that repeating chorus. I added an additional octave with my second harmonizer to try and emulate Stevie’s soaring improvisational descants while we eventually blend into a more introspective and questioning ending.
Bottom line: I still feel like a novice with all this stuff and that I’m just scratching the surface of my understanding of what’s possible. And clearly nothing I’m doing with these effects is novel or innovative in any way. Did I violate some rule by jumping in so uniformed and inexperienced? My belief is no, since I really feel like I’ve approached this new world honestly and authentically (and I know I don’t know what I don’t know). But I do plan to keep heading down this road as I investigate more sonic possibilities. And I intend to follow the advice my great mentor Bob Brookmeyer gave to another of my great mentors Jim McNeely: “Write another one.” So I’ll continue to see where that leads.
JC Sanford has been recognized in the DownBeat Magazine Critic’s Poll over the past ten years, in the trombone, big band and arranger categories. While he originally built a reputation through big band writing, Sanford has forayed into many other areas, including composing for solo piano, wind and brass formations, and various mixed chamber ensembles, and often his original works defy labels such as “jazz” or “classical”. A founding member of the composers’ federation Pulse (with Darcy James Argue and Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.), Sanford was a member of the BMI Jazz Composer’s Workshop led by Jim McNeely and Mike Abene for five years. His works have been performed by John Abercrombie, Lew Soloff, Dave Liebman, Danilo Perez, and a number of universities and high schools across the United States.
His 2014 debut recording with the JC Sanford Orchestra entitled Views From The Inside yielded international acclaim and was awarded a 2014 Aaron Copland Fund Recording Grant alongside organizations and ensembles such as the Seattle Symphony, Nonesuch Records, and American Composers Forum. He is also the leader of several small groups: the JC Sanford Quartet, the Imminent Standards Trio, the chamber jazz trio Triocracy, the New Past Trio with pianist Michael Cain and bassist Anthony Cox, and EQ (Electric Quartet).
Sanford is in high demand as a conductor of new original music. He conducts the Grammy-nominated John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, the Alan Ferber Nonet with Strings, the Frank Carlberg Large Ensemble, and the Alice Coltrane Orchestra, featuring Ravi Coltrane and Jack DeJohnette. He recently was guest conductor for the North German Radio Big Band (NDR), and Quinsin Nachoff’s new “Patterns in Nature” multimedia project. He was also the curator for the “Size Matters” large ensemble series in Brooklyn for four and a half years.
Since returning to Minnesota with his family in 2016, Sanford has performed as a trombonist in the Twin Cities area with JT Bates, Chris Bates, Davu Seru, Anthony Cox, Babatunde Lea, Zacc Harris, Dave Hagedorn, and Laura Caviani. In 2017, he co-founded the Twin Cities Jazz Composers’ Workshop alongside his wife, Asuka Kakitani. Sanford received a 2018 McKnight Composer Fellowship, a 2019 MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant to record his quartet, 2021 and 2022 Creative Support Grants to record his Imminent Standards Trio, and another in 2023 to record his NEW PAST Trio with Michael Cain and Anthony Cox, and another to record his electric quartet (EQ) in 2025 featuring drummer Satoshi Takeishi. He is currently teaching jazz, Western music theory, and composition courses at Gustavus Adolphus College.
JC Sanford is a fiscal year 2025 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Header photo by Asuka Kakitani; Bio photo by Bryan Murray.
“As I wind down my time as the ISJAC blog curator, I find myself reflecting on the folks I’ve managed to gather here these last 6 years. So much great insight from composers and arrangers about their own work, other’s work, and general philosophical considerations. I hope they’ve all been of great value and variety to the readers, but one blog has always stuck with me as being particularly unique and deep. So I’d like to repost Andy Milne’s blo from August 2021. If you hadn’t already absorbed it, here’s another chance. Enjoy!” –JC Sanford
For the majority of my career, I’ve composed music, largely for ensembles I lead or co-lead. During my early years playing in Steve Coleman’s bands, I occasionally had the opportunity to compose for his groups. Aside from the musical rewards of developing one’s voice within Steve’s universe, it was also gratifying to be in a band– not just by name in the generic sense–, but also to be able to contribute beyond one’s instrumental (or vocal) role.
While thinking about what I wanted to explore for this article, it occurred to me that one of the things that I think about when pondering the subject of composition in jazz, is the contemporary role and function of composition and the composer. There was a time in the somewhat distant chronology of jazz, where there was a universally shared repertoire, typically referred to as “standards.” Of course, there were also the great bands performing the works of their celebrated leaders: Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Charles Mingus, to name a few. We are of course aware that many jazz musicians during the 30s, 40s and 50s composed their own pieces, but I wonder if all of them identified as “composers” in the same spirit that so many musicians active on the scene do today. When I think of a bandleader like Art Blakey, I think of all the composers he mentored by virtue of leading a “band” with a culture that supported a different kind of community, one that often appears absent in so many of our current leader/composer ensembles (my own included.) Horace Silver, Wayne Shorter and Donald Brown all come to mind as exemplary illustrations of how the band/community culture of the 50s and 60s helped to foster distinct voices, stylistic diversity and deeply refined personal compositional aesthetics.
Considering that one of the more distinguished aspects of jazz is the pivotal role of collective and individual improvisation, it is interesting how composition has increasingly received more and more airtime within our contemporary jazz discourse. It is particularly interesting when examined within the larger public discussions surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion, and within the music education conversations around creating parity for African-American and other non-Western European traditions. In some ways, it seems that creating new works has become the great incentivizer, despite the fact that every time we perform a piece of music with improvisation at its core, we are creating new works. Perhaps the emergence of service organizations and foundations offering commissioning opportunities and grants for composers has contributed to what appears, to me on the surface, as a profound shift. Especially when compared to the relationship to composition versus arrangement and/or interpretation in the 1960s. Of course, it is undisputed that Ornette Coleman, Thad Jones, Dave Brubeck and Mary-Lou Williams were all prolific composers. What interests me is how might they have regarded their roles as composers, relative to their identities as performers/improvisers and artists as a whole.
I recently had the pleasure of moderating a conversation between my students and Sir Ron Carter. It was fascinating to hear him reflect on the time in his life when he did four or five record dates a week. He described how it was quite normal to arrive at the studio and be faced with the reality that the bandleader didn’t necessarily have an entire album’s worth of material. According to Carter, very often the solution was to solicit original material from the side musicians, sometimes in advance, sometimes at the session. I can only surmise how this everyday occurrence probably contributed to the appearance of so many compositions by Andrew Hill, Joe Henderson, Joe Chambers, or Harold Land on the recordings of Bobby Hutcherson for example. With so much recording happening during this prolific period in the history of jazz, labels, producers, and performers were perhaps more amenable to improvising over compositional sketches, versus polished, semi through-composed, multi-page arrangements.
Thinking back to how my compositions found their way onto Steve Coleman’s recordings in the early 1990s, the culture wasn’t quite like that described by Ron Carter, nor that of Art Blakley’s bands, but perhaps somewhere in between. At that time, the members of the band identified with being integral members of a tight knit group and the music that we all contributed to these recordings (“The Tao of Mad Phat” and “Drop Kick” in particular) reflected our artistic, cultural and personal relationships with one another. Not long after this, Steve began to explore compositional structures that in part, were directly linked to mathematical representations of the musicians’ astrology. In essence, we were given material that was constructed to formulate a personal and scientific resonance. Part of Steve’s role as composer was to determine how to combine these very personal structures. At the time, I struggled as an improviser to make the translation from the more familiar musical constructs using vertical harmonic structures, rhythmic melodies and pitch-based melodies, to these new compositional frameworks.
I’ll fast forward about 15 years to 2010 when I became curious with creating music that harnessed individual musicians’ emotional DNA as source material for the composition. By this time, I had been leading various bands and projects for about 20 years and had developed a compositional voice through an enduring commitment to writing for these groups. I also had numerous sideman experiences performing other bandleaders’ compositions, AND some distance perspective from my very immersive 10 years performing with Steve Coleman. What emerged was a fascination with why we, as performers, often experience differing degrees of synchronicity with the material to which we’re asked to contribute improvised solos and interpretations. Simply put, I was somewhat obsessed with why any one of us was or wasn’t “feeling it”, AND how I might be able to short circuit these invisible preferences and optimize my compositions for specific performers. Although not terribly practical from the point of view of having modular flexibility for selecting musicians, it was for me, the flipside to what I had experienced with Steve Coleman back in the mid-1990s.
My inquiry, which ultimately included an examination of homeopathy and neuroscience, yielded several rearrangements of my existing compositions, as well as an entirely new project and recording, “The Seasons of Being,” released in 2018. At first, I was determined to develop a mathematical formula for translating the emotional profiles I was uncovering about my musicians into personalized pitch sets and rhythmic codes. I eventually opted to direct my findings into sound and texture impressions that mirrored the essence of what was being revealed as the musician’s “sonic remedy.”
Without getting overly technical, as I reflect upon this period of artistic inquiry, my mind is drawn to some interesting universal themes that emerge which I want share. As a music educator, I both mentor and witness how the infatuation with composition is, to some degree, inseparable with other current social trends. Namely, self-promotion, credit-less appropriation and an insatiable desire for envelope pushing. On the surface, the idea of pushing boundaries and encouraging innovation are cornerstones for nearly all artists and are certainly forces which have fueled the most important evolutions in music and jazz specifically. What’s the problem with innovating? Nothing really. I am a bit little less merciful with regard to self-promotion and credit-less appropriation as I find these two trends to be particularly disheartening as we survey the human, cultural and environmental toll of the past 25 years of global digital economic expansion. We are at a point where the Marxist “means of production” are within reach of an ever-increasing demographic. With this newfound democratization for creating and publishing “content,” comes a responsibility — a stewardship — which I, frankly, rarely if ever hear discussed.
My intent here is not to be a downer. I sincerely hope that, embedded within the revelations of Covid-19, there will be a commitment to create meaningful art that is respectful of the sacrifices of past generations; innovative, not just for the sake of stroking oneself on the back in a myopic spirit of being innovative; and an expression of humanism, honesty and integrity. There are jazz academies in almost every corner of the globe, many emphasizing the mastery of technique over the study of culture, community and the aesthetic intersections of the individual and the collective. I believe we have a responsibility to uphold HOW and WHY this music came to be, not just WHAT, and by WHOM. It is, of course, very inspiring to hear the amazing creations of so many capable and talented artists who are presenting exceptional musical works for all to enjoy. I just hope we remember that not every piece needs to be released, not every moment needs to be captured and shared, and spending equal amounts of time celebrating those who are no longer with us isn’t abdicating one’s creative responsibilities but rather contributing to an embodiment of refining one’s understanding of self. Community engagement and the uplifting of others can yield great artistic magic. As improvisers, we experience this every day. In a way, I’m motivated to express these ideas as a reminder to myself as I re-emerge into a post-Covid scene.
Hang, honor, hold-space
Andy Milne
About the Author:
For more than 30 years, two-time Juno Award winning pianist/composer Andy Milne has demonstrated boundless versatility, collaborating with dancers, film makers, authors, visual artists, poets and musicians spanning multiple genres. He has released
12 recordings as a leader or co-leader, and is actively composing for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and scoring for film and television. A fearless improviser and respected voice at the heart of New York’s creative jazz scene, Milne has recorded and toured throughout the world with Ravi Coltrane, Ralph Alessi, Carlos Ward, Carla Cook and Steve Coleman, and has collaborated with a range of artists including Andrew Cyrille, Sekou Sundiata, Avery Brooks, Bruce Cockburn, Fred Hersch, Ben Monder, Dianne Reeves, Jen Shyu, Tyshawn Sorey and Jamie Baum.
In 2024, The Toronto Symphony, along with featured saxophone soloist Joe Lovano, premiered select Milne orchestral arrangements as part of the John Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra project. These works were also performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra. Another 2024 highlight for Milne included the premiere of Milne’s piano quintet, commissioned by the Banff International String Quartet Competition, and performed by Milne and the Isidore String Quartet. In addition, his score for the “Revolution Redux” episode of the CBC Television documentary series “Black Life – Untold Stories” was nominated for a Canadian Screen Music Award. Milne’s music can also be heard in the Emmy nominated Showtime series “Fellow Travelers”, for which he served as a music arranger and director, and cast member. Milne’s career scoring for film and tv began in 2011, when he scored The Captains and six additional Star Trek themed documentaries for acclaimed actor/director William Shatner. It was during this period that Milne’s foray into composing for orchestra would blossom. He subsequently attended the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute at UCLA under the direction of George Lewis in 2012, and in 2013, was invited to compose for the American Composers Orchestra’s JCOI New Music Readings.
A former student of Oscar Peterson, Milne was at the center of the M-BASE Collective as a core member of saxophonist Steve Coleman’s bands in the 1990s, performing frequently with Cassandra Wilson and Greg Osby. After a formative apprenticeship with Coleman, Milne stepped out on his own to conquer his own musical frontiers. For the next two decades, he created multiple inspired projects, including his longstanding quintet Dapp Theory.
In 2017, Enriched with creative insights from his multiple projects, Milne formed his latest group, UNISON, to return to his first love: exploring the intimacy of the piano trio. The synchronistic relationship Milne enjoys with his bandmates represents the complimentary threads within the fabric of Milne’s piano trio philosophy — the intersection of texture and groove. Unison’s 2024 Sunnyside Records release “Time Will Tell” was nominated for a 2025 Juno Award and was included on numerous “best of 2024” lists. Their 2020 debut, “The reMission” won the 2021 JUNO Award for Jazz Album of the Year: Group and received widespread media praise.
In 2014, with support from The Japan Foundation and New Music USA, Milne premiered Strings & Serpents at Lincoln Center. The interdisciplinary collaboration combines two pianos and two kotos with animation depicting The Rainbow Serpent Mythology. A synthesis of Japanese and Western structures in terms of melody, form, improvisational language and rhythm, the work merges musical and visual forms into a unified experience.
One of Milne’s most ambitious projects, The Seasons of Being, showcases a 10-piece ensemble featuring Dapp Theory, plus five distinguished guest improvisers. Commissioned by Chamber Music America, the music explores the body, spirit and mind on music, using the diagnostic principles of homeopathy to captivate the emotional characterization of each soloist. It premiered at Millersville University and Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2015. The recording, released on Sunnyside Records in 2018 was awarded the 2019 Juno Award for Jazz Album of the Year: Group. This special project followed the dynamic 2014 Dapp Theory release Forward in all Directions, produced by multi-Grammy winner, Jimmy Haslip.
Milne’s early Dapp Theory recordings helped forge a foundation for the creative diversity he would explore in subsequent projects. Forming Dapp Theory in 1998, Milne cited his desire to “tell passionate stories, promote peace and inspire collective responsibility towards uplifting the human spiritual condition.” Milne used rhythm to bend listeners’ minds and bodies, mixing R&B, jazz, rock, pop and hip-hop influences, and incorporating free-style and composed lyrics to promote a profound sense of social commentary within the music. One of the most compelling expressions of these ingredients was Milne’s ambitious collaboration with Canadian folk-rock icon Bruce Cockburn on the 2003 Concord Records release, Y’all Just Don’t Know.
In 2008, Milne was awarded the French-America Jazz Exchange from Chamber Music America and formed Crystal Magnets, a duo piano collaboration with French pianist Benoît Delbecq. Inspired by the 5.0 surround sound format, Milne set out to compose for the medium and capture sound in harmony with that environment. During their recording residency at The Banff Centre, Milne and Delbecq exploited the unique potential for placing specific compositional elements in distinct regions of the surround sound mix. In 2009, Songlines Recordings released Where is Pannonica?, which The New York Times lauded as a “strangely beautiful new album” from two “resourcefully contemporary pianists, both drawn to quixotic interrogations of harmony and timbre.”
Milne released two unique piano recordings in 2007. Both CDs received wide critical acclaim, presenting complementary reflections of his questing musical personality. Dreams and False Alarms [SongLines] features deeply considered re-workings of long- remembered pop/rock/folk/reggae classics, reaffirming and expanding Milne’s creative process as a jazz improviser. Scenarios [Obliqsound] presents a more textural, almost cinematic series of intimate duo encounters with harmonica virtuoso Grégoire Maret. Their duo developed naturally during Maret’s four years as a member of Dapp Theory. Also in 2007, Milne collaborated with tap dancer/choreographer Heather Cornell to create Finding Synesthesia, which premiered that year at the London Jazz Festival. Together they combined a wide and unexpected range of sounds and influences, integrally weaving tap into the texture and sound of the orchestration.
Milne is a Yamaha Artist and sought-after educator, currently a full-time assistant professor of music at The University of Michigan and most recently a celebrated panelist at the 2025 National Conference for Keyboard Pedagogy. He has received numerous awards and commissions, including the prestigious Civitella Fellowship in Italy.
Yuhan Su discusses works from her upcoming album using electronics, the theme of duality in orchestration, and bringing cultural dualities into musical form.
Working through a brief history of Cuban big band writing, Elio Villafranca discusses the influence of traditional cuban rhythms and more on his writing.
Zhengtao Pan: Scenery In My Story Counterpoint writing in modern large jazz ensemble music I recently released my debut jazz orchestra album, “Scenery In My Story,” with Outside In Music. Initially planning to study film scoring at Berklee, I was captivated by the sounds of big bands, particularly Jim McNeely’s work. Despite my growing interest, I struggled to see myself as a “jazz musician” among peers who were more experienced. Meeting my first jazz mentor, Steven Feifke, was transformative. He introduced me to pivotal albums like Maria Schneider’s “Concert In The Garden,” Steven Feifke’s “Kinetic,” and Miho Hazama’s “Dancer In Nowhere.” These albums were my first real experiences with jazz, much to the disbelief of many. Steven’s advice, “You don’t need to be good at playing to write music,” reshaped my approach. This reassurance led to my first big band piece, “Dancing In The Dream,” and continued growth in compositions like “Mirror, Floating On The Water” and “On That Bus.” While my cultural background discouraged making mistakes, I’ve overcome a long way to see them as opportunities for growth. Embracing 融会贯通 (integrating knowledge), I explored diverse influences—from folk-inspired melodies to heavy-metal djent combined with Messiaen modes. “Scenery In My Story” embodies my Berklee journey, highlighting that personal expression shapes our music. After a little bit of my background, musical journey, and the inspiration for this album I’d like to talk about an essential compositional technique that I use throughout the album: counterpoint. Counterpoint writing for large jazz ensemble in modern setting Counterpoints are very useful tools in jazz, and because of the certain level of space and freedom given in a jazz setting, counterpoints don’t have to follow strict rules to create a certain effect. Instead, counterpoint can be used as an interesting way to express your ideas…
Last month, a two year collaboration finally came to fruition. My long time friend and colleague, John Hadfield, a phenomenal drummer and percussionist reached out a few years back to do some dates with a French jazz artist he was working with – John currently resides in Paris. Within the time we were doing these Europe shows, we realized that our musical connection was fun and also deep, and that we had to do something about it. So, the idea for this duo project was started in the summer of 2023. It became a much bigger endeavor than we originally imagined, but I suppose that’s how things often go. The idea of piano and drums alone really doesn’t have any obvious tradition except maybe for through composed concert music. And in the realm of jazz, it’s not done too often, so this was the first challenge to explore. We wanted something that could tour easily, something sustainable and something that transcends the boundaries of genre. Our initial thought was to be solely improvisational. This was the simplest conceptual idea in terms of being ready for a performance NOW. So in order to get things started, we’d need to get together in a studio so we could figure out what our sound would be and forge a sonic identity. We both arrive to this project with diverse musical influences and points of study. John holds graduate degrees in western classical percussion, and also has spent many years studying with masters of Gamelan in Indonesia, Carnatic Music in India and Gnawa and Berber music in North Africa. He has graced many prestigious stages performing with orchestras as well as playing in groups with progressive jazz musicians such as Brad Shepik and Ron Blake. My foundations are in modern jazz but I also…
Greg Ward discusses various project that grew out of collaboration with other disciplines, the process, the impact, and how it continues to impact him.
Bruno Råberg talks about translating tone sets, how he orchestrated for a 10-tet, and balance in composing with tone sets through his analysis of “Erebus.”
Danny Jonokuchi is a multi-talented jazz artist based in New York City and Los Angeles. As a jazz trumpeter, vocalist, composer, arranger, producer, and educator, few artists are as diversely involved in their craft. Whether arranging for artists like Lady Gaga, composing original works for full orchestras, or performing in intimate jazz trios, his distinctive musical voice always shines through. Recognized for his performance on two GRAMMY© Award-winning projects, Jonokuchi has been praised for his “world-class arrangements” (Broadway World) and his work as both a performer and producer. He is also a recipient of several awards including the 2024 ISJAC Wayne Shorter Jazz Arranging Prize, the 2020 ASCAP Foundation Louis Armstrong Award, and he was unanimously named the winner of the 2020 Count Basie Great American Swing Contest. He has released five albums as a leader with his large and small ensembles.
JC Sanford has been recognized in the DownBeat Magazine Critic’s Poll over the past ten years, in the trombone, big band and arranger categories. While he originally built a reputation through big band writing, Sanford has forayed into many other areas, including composing for solo piano, wind and brass formations, and various mixed chamber ensembles, and often his original works defy labels such as “jazz” or “classical”. A founding member of the composers’ federation Pulse (with Darcy James Argue and Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.), Sanford was a member of the BMI Jazz Composer’s Workshop led by Jim McNeely and Mike Abene for five years. His works have been performed by John Abercrombie, Lew Soloff, Dave Liebman, Danilo Perez, and a number of universities and high schools across the United States.
