Meet the Jazz Composers Forum (6): Ohad Talmor

Els vuit compositors convidats per l'Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos parlen sobre la seva experiència amb la big band portuguesa. Concert el 16 de març a Luz de Gas (20.00h). Entrades a 1 euro pels Amics del Jazz/Club The Project.

1. How was for you the experience to work with the OJM?

I am a long time collaborator of OJM as I have had the privilege of working on many of their projects, including writing music for a couple of their records (with Lee Konitz and Kurt Rosenwinkel) as well as other special endeavors (Piano Concerto for Jason Moran, 3 Tenors suite for Joshua Redman, Chris Cheek and Mark Turner, etc). Having worked with this orchestra so much, I came to know the individual voices of each of its members and developed strong relationships with many of them. All of this means that working with OJM means to me a unique place of comfort where the opportunity to create music comfortably is unhindered by the usual process or meeting new musicians in an unknown setting with different set of expectations. In short, working with OJM is probably the best experience I have ever had working with such ensembles.

2. Can you define the piece you wrote for them, Étude No. 2?

This piece is part of a set of 12 études written specifically for OJM. Even though I am a saxophonist, my musical upbringing is one of a classical pianist and much of my material is linked to a deep reverence for the western classical world, from middle age music to post modern. I am always influenced by specific repertoires, and in the past few years, Gyorgi Ligeti’s Piano études in particular. The idea came then to write my own set of études but for a less conventional setting. Because of my close relationship to OJM, it seemed only natural to do it for them. The material of Étude No. 2 is the (un)Happy merging of 2 different sources;  hip-hop beats, and in particular things I liked in some of rapper’s Q-Tip productions, and the "comfort music” I heard in the score of the TV series The Love Boat. The form is that of a classical rondo inside of which the basic frame of the rhythmic cell used is constantly rotated to create an ongoing contrapuntic rhythm. The idea in the end is to provide a sort of kaleodoscopic image of the music using seemingly simple base elements.