Of the most difficult tasks musicians give themselves, writing about music, or specifically writing about their own music, surely must be held in equal esteem with tasks such as decoding health insurance, making small talk, and income taxes. Comedian Martin Mull is credited with the phrase, “writing about music is like dancing to architecture,” so welcome my friends as I put on my dancing shoes.
I like to think of artists as people who are on a journey, traveling through time in their own personal wilderness. Careful observation of the world in which they live and a lifetime of meticulous trial and error yields discoveries of new ideas within themselves.
For most, there is an early period of intense study where one learns the history, craft, and style of their artistic ancestors: the giants, big and small, who have traveled their own journeys before we arrived.
Some artists begin from rich landscapes of opportunity, full of inspiration and support. Others trickle along slowly to start and gain momentum with time like small streams that become rivers becoming bigger rivers, criss-crossing one another or joining for a time, and splitting again to travel somewhere new. As each artist moves through life, their river continuously collects bits of silt, sand, and stone that provide them with ideas, inspiration, and influences that eventually make them entirely unique from the many other rivers that surround them.
The next time you cross the Mississippi, the Hudson, or the Delaware, you might think of the grandness of these waterways as some of the giants of artistic achievement like Walt Whitman, Thelonious Monk, or Frida Kahlo. They all began, like all of us, from someplace small, eventually overflowing with energy to become mighty artists of influence in and after their lifetime.
For me, my own personal journey began probably like many of you, with unbridled passion for the music of the jazz masters from the 1940s through 1960s. My artistic river has continued to bend and twist in unexpected ways that I never could have foreseen from the outset. Although at times I feel my path has taken me far afield from these early influences, the prism through which I view the musical landscape today still reflects values formed as a child from study of these masters which include concepts of rhythm, sound, melody, harmony, and certainly many other nuanced facets of which I am not even aware.
One very meaningful area of discovery for me is in regard to the study of other artforms outside of music. The practice of studying artists of other mediums has provided for me a wealth of ideas and inspiration in helping me to better understand my own artform. Although I’m certainly not an expert in these other forms, the process of placing yourself in the shoes of artists in other mediums has helped me give language and perspective to what it is I am doing as an artist living in this time.
For example, the way in which poets write about the mechanics of poetry directly speaks to the way in which musicians and composers describe and analyze music. Descriptors such as rhythm, form, pace, texture, line, and tone all play a central role when talking about the building blocks of a poem. Understanding the mechanics of poetry has helped me more closely observe the structures in music and has thus helped me compose with more intention and thoughtfulness.
While I cannot describe exactly how a particular poem or poet has literally influenced my writing, I can say that the study, close reading, and practice of creating poetry has helped me become more observant and more awake to nuance, texture of language, and playfulness of rhythm. This has affected my own musical compositions and I find myself asking more from them because of this. Such questions as “what does this composition mean?” “What am I saying with this?”
Prior to working on my most recent album, Music for Sextet, I had been working on a series of pieces for a much smaller instrumentation composed for alto saxophone, guitar, and drums in which many compositional ideas for Music for Sextet first began. The music for this trio was written and performed over the course of two years and culminated in an album for Fresh Sound/New Talent entitled Wobegon released in 2018.
The music written for Wobegon was somewhat of a turning point for me in that I was beginning to experiment with letting go of harmonic devices that I felt I had too often leaned upon for much of my past music. I had increasingly been drawn toward music that blurred boundaries of styles (see this New Music Box article), and the continued process of discovery led me to further unexplored areas of composition that drew inspiration from contemporary classical music more than anything else I had written up until that time. I began exploring ways in which to balance some of the magic of modern classical music that I loved with elements from jazz which I was familiar with.
The successes I discovered working on these pieces inspired me to build new compositions containing an unusual instrumentation twice the size with a chamber music-like structure. And so in February of 2020, I recorded Music for Sextet for Innova Recordings, a culmination of my efforts to date. The music is written for two B-flat clarinets, trombone, horn, guitar, and bass.
The first piece on Music for Sextet entitled The Teller and The Tale is a representation of some of the ideas I was experimenting with at the time. It was my intention to scale back much of the harmonic movement that I normally might use and instead attempt to build energy and interest using overlapping rhythms and textural melodies in the brass to keep the listener’s interest engaged continuously through the piece.
I also let go of the notion of keeping a strict form, preferring to let ideas wander in a free verse/through-composed fashion. The rhythmic complexity and harmonic information presented struck a balance between simple and complex ideas. I fought to maintain clarity in the overall musical statement to give the listener challenging but not overly complicated material. I hope you like the music and video I created for The Teller and the Tale:
I don’t recall when I learned of the scientist Leonard Hayflick’s striking contribution to the understanding of human cell growth and the de facto understanding of the limits of our mortality, but his discoveries spoke to me and warranted a composition dedicated to his groundbreaking discovery.
Simply put, Hayflick’s work established a finite number of times that a human cell could replicate before it stopped, thus proving a finite limit on human life. The potential to live forever was effectively disproven, counter to many in the field at the time who feverishly sought evidence for the human cell’s ability to divide ad infinitum thus allowing for immortality. The Hayflick Limit or Hayflick phenomenon is the number of times a human cell will divide before cell division stops.
In working on my piece, The Hayflick Limit, I was confronted with my own limits. The continuing process of editing and revision is something that continues to be a part of my writing process. I am sure that the musicians in the ensemble were overjoyed when I presented huge revisions to the music they had already worked so hard to parse, however for me, it is the only way that I have found I can improve. That is to “Try, Fail, Try Again, Fail Better.”
The Hayflick Limit was born from many false starts and revisions that sometimes took me forward two steps only to find myself three steps backwards, somewhere in the weeds. In the end, I think I can live with how this finally came together:
Lastly, in order to create anything new in music, I have come to recognize that the process often feels like wandering about in the dark, stumbling into random objects, bumping your foot, knocking over a lamp, and hoping someone will finally tell you that what you are doing is good enough. But in reality, no one can really tell you that what you are doing is good, great, or anything in between. The only person that can give you the approval that you are seeking for the work you’ve done is yourself.
With so many of us on a wheel of social media-driven content, it seems worth saying that we should endeavor to live lives of our own making and not through the lens of other people’s narratives. Let us strive to be unique and individual, each singing with a clear voice. Rather than seeking reward or the approval of others to validate what can only be validated by ourselves, our ambitions can instead reflect our own beauty of being. The reward comes through the process of work and practice. By this and this only, will we be able to conjure art that is meaningful and true to ourselves.
We can become rivers both big and small, all vitally important to the ecosystems of music, art, and humanity.
About the Author:
Saxophonist, multi-woodwind player, and composer Aaron Irwin is from Decatur, IL. Known as a lyrical alto saxophonist and a compelling original composer (Steve Futterman, The New Yorker), Irwin is a sought-after commodity in both the jazz and commercial worlds. His latest recording Music for Sextet was released on Innova Recordings in January of 2021. He has seven other recordings as a leader with various instrumentations. In addition to his own groups, Irwin has performed with many leading jazz voices in the New York jazz community including the Grammy-nominated Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Bob Sabin’s Tentet, The Mike Fahie Jazz Orchestra, the mixed wind group Weathervest, as well as pop performers Kristen Chenoweth, Rufus Wainwright, Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and The Roots. Prior to the global pandemic shutdown, Irwin maintained a busy schedule as a freelance musician, performing in jazz clubs, concert halls, and Broadway theatres working with many of New York’s finest musicians and bands.
Irwin holds a bachelor’s degree in music from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois and a master’s degree in music from the University of Miami in Miami, Florida. He is a dedicated educator with over 15 years of teaching experience and currently serves as an adjunct saxophone professor at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, and woodwind instructor at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two cats.
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It’s traditional, when paying compliment to drummers, to draw comparisons with the octopus, implying agility beyond the means of a paltry pair of human hands. But when considering John Hollenbeck, the multi-limbed creature that seems most appropriate to invoke is the mythical hydra; for while Hollenbeck is certainly no stranger to rhythmic intricacy, it’s ideas that seem to spring forth like so many heads, two more arising as one falls away.
Across a diverse range of work, GRAMMY-nominated composer Oded Lev-Ari showcases his own, individual soundprint, one of cinematic richness and open-hearted lyricism. He has created and collaborated on music that span recordings, stage, and media, reflecting a genre- bending sensibility, expansive creativity, and unique ability to bring out the best in his collaborators.
Trombonist/composer/conductor JC Sanford is a musician of rare breadth, deeply rooted in the traditions of Jazz and Classical music, yet constantly pushing at their boundaries. Equally at home in many roles, Sanford works regularly as a composer, performer, arranger and conductor. A disciple of the legendary composer/trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, Sanford has had his works performed by Danilo Pérez, Dave Liebman, John Abercrombie, Ingrid Jensen, Lew Soloff, and others. His jazz orchestra CD Views from the Inside garnered international acclaim and received the coveted Aaron Copland Fund Recording Grant. The ensemble has also been recognized as a “Rising Star Big Band” in DownBeat Magazine’s Critic’s Poll the past 4 years. As a conductor, he is a member of the twice-Grammy-nominated John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, and also conducts the Alan Ferber Nonet +Strings, the Frank Carlberg Large Ensemble, John Ellis’ Ice Siren, and conducted the Alice Coltrane Orchestra featuring Ravi Coltrane, Charlie Haden, and Jack DeJohnette before her death. He also curated the Brooklyn-based creative large ensemble series known as “Size Matters” for over 4 years. He was a member of the BMI Jazz Composers’ Workshop led by Jim McNeely and longtime contractor for the BMI/New York Orchestra. In 2017, Sanford founded the Twin Cities Jazz Composers’ Workshop alongside his wife, composer Asuka Kakitani, with whom he also co-leads the Twin Cities-based Inatnas Orchestra. He was recently awarded a 2018 McKnight Composers Fellowship and a 2019 MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant to record his quartet. In 2019 he took over as musical and artistic director of the JazzMN Orchestra.
Anna Webber (b. 1984) is a New York-based flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live in the overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. Her most recent album, Clockwise, featuring a septet comprised of several of the most creative musicians working in New York’s avant-garde, was released on Pi Recordings (February 2019).
Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer SATOKO FUJII as one of the most original voices in jazz today. She’s “a virtuoso piano improviser, an original composer and a band-leader who gets the best collaborators to deliver,” says John Fordham in The Guardian. In concert and on nearly 100 albums as a leader or co-leader, the globe-trotting Japanese native synthesizes jazz, contemporary classical, avant-rock, and Japanese folk music into an innovative music instantly recognizable as hers alone.
Jason Palmer was recently named to the inaugural class of the Boston Artist in Residence Fellowship for Music Composition. He also received a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works for 2019. In 2011 and 2017, he was named a Fellow in Music Composition by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. In 2014, Jason was honored as a recipient of the French American Cultural Exchange Jazz Fellowship where he collaborated with French pianist Cedric Hanriot, collaboration on an album and touring the United States and Europe. Jason won 1st Place in the 2009 Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition and was cited in the June 2007 issue of Downbeat Magazine as one of the “Top 25 trumpeters of the Future”. 
The Twin Cities Jazz Composers’ Workshop (TCJCW) was born in 2017 soon after my husband JC Sanford and I moved to Minnesota with our daughter for our new adventure after over a decade in New York City. Both JC and I are some of the lucky people to proudly call ourselves former members of the 
Mike Holober served as Artistic Director/Conductor of the 
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Richard DeRosa received a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Composition in 2015 for his big band composition “Neil” which is dedicated to Neil Slater: the director of the One O’Clock Lab Band at the University of North Texas from 1981-2008.
Montreal-based saxophonist, composer and conductor Christine Jensen has been described as an original voice on the international jazz scene, while being regarded as one of Canada’s most compelling composers. She is a recent winner of the Downbeat Critic’s Poll for Rising Star Big Band, Arranger, and Soprano Saxophonist, as well as being a recipient of the Montreal International Jazz Festival’s 2017 Oscar Peterson Prize. She currently leads her own jazz orchestra as well as other diverse ensemble projects featuring her saxophone playing. “Jensen writes in three dimensions, with a quiet kind of authority that makes the many elements cohere. Wayne Shorter, Maria Schneider and Kenny Wheeler come to mind.” –Downbeat. 
John Clayton is a natural born multitasker. The multiple roles in which he excels — composer, arranger, conductor, producer, educator, and yes, extraordinary bassist — garner him a number of challenging assignments and commissions. With a Grammy on his shelf and eight additional nominations, artists such as Diana Krall, Paul McCartney, Regina Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gladys Knight, Queen Latifah, and Charles Aznavour vie for a spot on his crowded calendar.
PAUL READ
Bob Mintzer, born January 27, 1953 and a native of New Rochelle, New York is what’s known as a triple threat musician. He is equally active in the areas of performance, composing/arranging, and music education. While touring with the Yellowjackets or his own quartet, or big band, Bob is busy writing music for big band, various small bands, saxophone quartets, orchestral and concert band music.
