Stevie Arranges Stevie
What an OVERJOYED treat it was to be a part of THIS project! My pal Art Bouton runs a wonderful group based in Denver, Colorado called the Colorado Jazz Repertory Orchestra that plays ALL KINDS of stuff INCREDIBLY well. He came up with a helluva great idea on this project where we would all write arrangements of compositions by the legendary Stevie Wonder.
What a project! I wrote three charts, and the marvelous composer/arrangers Paul McKee, Wil Swindler, Dave Hansen, and Drew Zarimba also contributed pieces for what turned out to be quite the classic endeavor. With folks like Greg “Gizzy” Gisbert and Jake Boldman on lead trumpets, Mike Marlier on drums, Mike Abbott on guitar, and Eric Gunnison on piano…WOWZA! A good time was SHO NUFF had by all!
With my arranging of Living for the City, a fortuitous mistake occurred that set the tone for the entire piece.
These unplanned “wrong” moments can often MAKE a chart if we are open and simply listen to what the universe is telling us. In this case, I was sketching the piece out from memory not having listened to it in awhile. I thought that I remembered the vamp at the top and throughout in major (like the Sesame Street Theme🙃) After writing an intro and the basic treatment of the tune, I listened to the original for some specifics of form and D’OH! That classic vamp was MINOR! What to do?
Well, being both lazy and open-minded, I kept the major version, but. incorporated my favorite harmonic obsession: the sus chord with a major third. In other words, that delightfully ephemeral and deliciously confusing sound that comes from having both the third and the fourth rubbing together as a half step or exploded as a major seven.
“Wait…is this major? Is it minor? What-the-WHAT?”
Thus was born my arrangement of one of my all-time favorite Stevie tunes.
Enjoy!
