Points in Time by John Yao & His 17-piece Instrument (JY-17 for short) is set for release on July 11, 2025, on multiple streaming platforms. It chronicles my musical and personal journey over the past 20 years since moving to New York City from Chicago. The album has been 10 years in the making. It’s hard to believe, but yes, sometimes a big band album takes that long! The album draws on some of my favorite tunes from my discography, taking small group compositions and expanding them for big band, as well new pieces written in the intervening years. This is the story of how the music for this album came together.

After the release of my first big band album Flip-Flop by John Yao & His 17-piece Instrument in 2015, I founded the “Big Band & Beyond Concert Series,” which included the premiere of new works with three concerts from 2015-16. We also held a monthly residency at the ShapeShifter Lab for several months in early 2016. The band was playing a bunch, and even though I enjoyed every moment of it, I got burned out from the day-to-day tasks of leading a big band. Booking venues, players, subs, fundraising, grants, publicity, prepping parts, printing/taping parts (all the things that have nothing to do with playing or writing music), took a toll on me, and I needed a break. Like I said in the liner notes for Points in Time: a funny thing about recording a big band album—it makes you want to never do it again!

I turned my attention back to the trombone and to composing/arranging for other people’s bands/projects, and during this time I founded a new project, John Yao’s Triceratops. The challenge of writing for three horns, bass, and drums, with no piano or guitar scratched my composition and arranging itch. Also, around this time, I was commissioned by several musicians and friends to take their small group songs and arrange them for big band, which kept my big band urge at bay. As I did more arrangements of other people’s songs, I started to wonder—what if I arranged some of my own small group songs for big band?

My plan was to get at least one song from each of my previous four small group albums. I wasn’t able to grab a tune from every album, but I ended up going with “Not Even Close” and “Triceratops Blues,” that latter of which was the first tune written for the Triceratops project. “First Step” was originally intended for my first quintet album, but even before forming the JY-17, I recognized that it was meant to be a big band chart. Both “Upside” and “Finger Painting” were commissioned for high school ensembles; Points in Time is bookended by updated versions of these commissions. “The Other Way” is one of my first ventures into twelve-tone technique and points the way to a new compositional direction.

Points in Time marks not only my musical journey, but my personal journey too. In 2009, my girlfriend—now wife—Natalie was diagnosed with cancer. And to put it mildly, it was a difficult time. Needless to say, I had a lot of emotions during this time, and one of my coping mechanisms and outlets was writing music. One morning, Natalie was feeling frail and exhausted; she asked me to take her on an early morning walk to get some fresh air. She remembers this walk vividly, and me being the great partner that I am—I don’t remember it at all. “Early Morning Walk” is a musical depiction of what I imagined her journey must have been like—starting strong, facing doubt, then pushing through to a triumphant finish. In celebration of her clean bill of health several years later, I wrote “Getting Good News” (which we’ve not yet recorded).

After several years of enjoying our newfound freedom, we finally decided to explore having a family together. Before Natalie had started chemo, our efforts to prepare for this were not successful, and years later, after several rounds of IVF, we finally had three embryos. The first two didn’t work out, and we were extremely fortunate that our third and final one was successful. I was so overjoyed and euphoric, and I needed a way to channel all these feelings. “Song for Nolan” was the vehicle for these emotions and was written in celebration of the birth of our son. Composing music, for me, is a great way to celebrate when things are going well, and an outlet for when life throws you a curveball. Little did I know that I was creating a musical journal of my life during this time.

In reimagining small group compositions from my discography into big band arrangements, I encountered several challenges. The process of revisiting these older songs proved to be more difficult than I imagined at first. Breaking my attachment to the original song took some time, and in the beginning, I felt boxed in. After reconnecting with the song and letting go of the original version, it finally dawned on me to treat them like they were someone else’s song—basically, take the same approach I had been using when arranging another person’s song for big band all these years. Duh!!!

I won’t go into detail here about each song, but rather focus on the steps I took when arranging “Triceratops Blues.”

Once I got the ball rolling, all the usual questions started coming up: How much of the original song’s character do you want to retain? Are you going to deconstruct it and put it back together to make a totally new song? Are you looking to drastically change the original intent and mood of the song? Or have the big band arrangement sound similar and beef it up using existing material from the song? For “Triceratops Blues,” I chose the last option. My goal was to keep the original character but dress it up in different clothes and develop the existing melodic and harmonic material. My plan was to develop one of the vamp’s using transposition and reharmonization, all while incorporating material from the melody. As you can see on the roadmap of the arrangement, this development section came after the solos.

 

 

Original Version:

 

When compared to the original, small group version,  you’ll notice how the big band arrangement is very similar on the first line of the timeline, just bigger and with more players. But once you get to the end of the first line in the roadmap, the new and developed material kicks off, including a trombone soli, ensemble send-off and following the solos, the development, call and response with drums and ensemble, shout chorus, and finally a coda make up the rest of the chart.

The development (listen above starting at 4:48) is where I really expanded on the song, transposing vamp #2 up a half-step several times. And each time it moves up, it uses the same bass motion but with new sonorities above, ranging from sus chords and 4th voicings to bi-tonal chords. While the harmonic landscape is changing below, several motives from the theme, combined with new motives, are passed around the ensemble, building in intensity and activity until a final big chord. Here’s a piano reduction of the harmonic structure of the development section:

I ended up writing Interlude #2, the development, and the coda all at the same time, and then distributing the material according to how close or how far from the original I wanted it to sound. Arranging my small group compositions like “Triceratops Blues” and others tunes on Points in Time really allowed me to explore the songs in a deeper fashion. It also gave me an opportunity to put my melodic fingerprints on these songs in a way that I hadn’t done before.

The experience of putting all this music together—music that came from different personal and musical milestones in my life over the last two decades—has really made me appreciate the process. From composing to recording, to post-production, to mastering, to distribution, and then to publicity, the life cycle of a large ensemble project is long.

While I worked on Points in Time, I also played trombone on several other composers’ big band projects and kept up with colleagues’ projects as they went through various stages. Observing them has made me appreciate the process even more.

It makes me happy to know that I’m not the only ‘crazy’ one—that others out there, like me, are willing to carry the torch for large ensemble jazz. We all know it’s completely unsustainable and financially crippling, but we do it anyway because we love the music. We have to do it.

I’ve come to realize that forwarding this genre is like running a marathon, where we each carry a torch that represents our love and dedication to this music. We carry this torch for as long as we can before we run out of energy, and then we pass it on to the next person—and the process continues.

With Points in Time, I’m happy to say that after many years, I’ve picked up the torch with both hands. And when I run out of energy, I look forward to passing it on to the next person.

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About the Author:

For almost twenty years, John Yao has been honing his talents as a trombonist, composer and arranger, and cementing his place on the New York City jazz scene. Yao’s lyrical soloing and expressive, round tone, combined with his relentless drive to push the boundaries of harmony and rhythm, have established him as a unique and forward-thinking jazz talent.  Yao has earned wide acclaim. In April 2025 he was appointed to the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows in the field of Music Composition.  In 2023, Yao earned a place in both the Rising Star Trombone and Rising Star Big Band categories in the DownBeat Critics Poll.  Lucid Culture proclaims, “John Yao is one of New York’s elite trombonists,” and All About Jazz called him “a strong compositional voice and effective band-leader able to use his 17-piece band to paint across a wide spectrum and infuse his complex writing with a thoughtful balance of audacity, structure, humor, and sonic might.”

Masterfully leading and composing the music for both his large and small ensemble, Yao has released five albums as a leader.  John Yao Quintet’s debut album In the Now (Innova Recordings, 2012) followed by Presence (See Tao Recordings, 2017).  In between, Yao released his first big band album Flip Flop (See Tao Recordings, 2015) by John Yao and His 17-piece Instrument.  DownBeat magazine declared “[Flip-Flop] showcased Yao’s unpredictable compositions and inventive arrangements, which spring from tradition while pointing towards future portals.”  John Yao’s Triceratops Albums How We Do (See Tao Recordings, 2019) and Off-Kilter (2022) have been called “complex, modernistic and updated, full of counterpoint, it’s very accessible and so much fun” by Hot House Jazz.

As a trombonist, Yao has worked extensively as a sideman for Grammy-award winning New York City ensembles, such as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, New York Afro-Bop Alliance Big Band and Manuel Valera’s Cuban Express Big Band to name a few.  He has also performed with such esteemed musicians as Paquito D’Rivera, Eddie Palmieri, Danilo Perez and Chris Potter among many others.

As a composer/arranger, Yao has been commissioned to write arrangements and original works for the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, New York Afro-Bop Alliance Big Band, JMI Jazz World Orchestra, and numerous other professional ensembles.  He has been commissioned to write programs for the Arsonore Spirit Orchestra (Graz, Austria), Joseph Bowie’s Defunkt big band, Joe Fiedler and Angel Subero. In addition, Yao writes for both educational and professional ensembles with over two dozen works published and available on ejazzlines.com, sheetmusic.com and ijazzmusic.com.

An in-demand educator, Yao serves as Assistant Professor of Trombone at Berklee College of Music and Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and as Adjunct Professor of Music at Molloy University. He is an XO Brass Clinician, as well as an active guest artist and soloist at colleges and universities throughout the United States and abroad.

 

Cover photo credit: Chris Drukker