Chamber Music Flute(s)
SKU: PR.144407290
Composed by Ali Ryerson.
Performance Score. 4
pages. Duration 4
minutes. Theodore Presser
Company #144-40729.
Published by Theodore
Presser Company
(PR.144407290).
ISBN
9781491135150. UPC:
680160687008.
Jazz
luminary Ali Ryerson
traces a unique and
personal artistic path in
this solo work. With an
engaging form reminiscent
of jazz charts (a dreamy
introduction, a catchy,
swinging head, and
improvisatory-feeling
12-bar choruses),
Ryerson’s music
pays deeply-felt homage
to Charlie Parker and
other jazz greats, while
maintaining an organic
connection to the lineage
of unaccompanied woodwind
music in the classical
tradition. Classical
players will gain insight
into jazz harmony,
rhythm, and expression as
they learn this knockout
recital piece, while
Ryerson fans in the jazz
world gain an image of
her musical mind in this
fully-notated
composition.
Jazz
Dream, a jazz-inspired
solo flute piece, was
commissioned by Claudia
Anderson for her Glass
Ceilings project. Claudia
once told me that playing
jazz flute has been one
of her musical ambitions.
I daresay her performance
of JD could very well
break a glass ceiling of
her own!Moved by the
events of 2020, composing
Jazz Dream became my way
of honoring my musical
heroes from the Black
community, namely the
jazz musicians who
created this music and
truly broke glass
ceilings. As jazz shares
its origins with the
blues, both genres having
originated in the
African-American
community, I decided on a
12-bar blues form as the
framework for the
piece.The opening theme
gently draws us into a
dream-like state, with a
melody in slow motion and
lines that linger. When
the REM cycle kicks into
gear, there’s an
abrupt rhythmic shift
that leads straight into
a swingin’ blues.
Idiomatic jazz rhythms
abound, with blue notes
galore – the
tension notes that
virtually define the
sound of both the blues
and jazz (i.e. the
flatted third, fifth, and
seventh notes of a scale
in place of the expected
major intervals).After
several groovin’
choruses of a 12-bar
blues in B(, often played
as if the soloist is
improvising, the blues
modulates to the key of
E(, and as a tribute to
the great Charlie Parker
(AKA Bird), I
harmonically suggest the
more complex set of bebop
changes that Parker
introduced in his
composition, Blues for
Alice. Often referred to
as Bird Changes or Bird
Blues, instead of the
basic I - IV – V
chord progression
commonly used in the
blues, Parker used a
series of sequential ii-V
progressions (and
secondary ii-V
progressions). With the
addition of some tritone
substitutions, a
chromatically descending
bass line deftly replaces
the original I-IV-V root
movement. This is the
harmonic background I was
hearing as I wrote this
particular chorus.After
my 12-bar nod to
Bird’s changes,
the introductory dream
theme returns, now in
tempo and with a
straight-ahead swing
feel. Variations on this
theme follow, again to be
played as if improvising,
with the soloist once
again bringing their own
personality into the
performance. This section
builds to a climax, the
music pauses, then
modulates to C, with a
return to the original
blues theme. The energy
and groove increase
through the final
flourish, where a blues
line ends on the
idiomatic flatted
fifth.