Description
Recording released on Summit Records: Cloud Bowling with Claude Bowling: Music for Tuba and Jazz Trio
Available on all streaming platforms
Cloud Bowling (2021) was composed for Jim Shearer to be premiered alongside Claude Bolling’s Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio, rearranged for tuba. Taking inspiration from Bolling’s suite, Cloud Bowling is comprised of seven movements that blend jazz and classical styles and performance practices. The composition contains references to seminal jazz composers, along with a more progressive compositional approach with ample amounts of improvisation.
The first and last movements, “The Opener” and “The Closer” respectively, are more akin to concert music in thematic material and form, both juxtaposing notated material with improvisation.
Mvt. 1, “The Opener” moves through several contrasting thematic areas that give the jazz trio freedom to improvise in various styles.
Mvt. 2, “Ellingtonian” is a jazz ballad in the style of Billy Strayhorn, an American jazz composer that collaborated extensively with Duke Ellington.
Mvt. 3, “Brubesque” makes reference to jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck’s composition “Blue Rondo à la Turk” (Time Out, 1959), which quickly shifts from odd-meter thematic areas to medium tempo swing sections. In this movement, a 6/8 pattern influenced by Afro-Cuban rhythm gives way to jazz blues improvisation.
Mvt. 4 is the centerpiece of the Cloud Bowling suite. “Double Ones,” highlights a more personal and progressive composition style. The movement is notated in a lead sheet format that allows for much more freedom in performance. Rather than placing two distinct musical ideas next to each other, as was done in the previous movements, “Double Ones” places a steady melody directly on top of a freely performed bass ostinato.
“Borrowed Time,” Mvt. 5, is what jazz musicians would describe as a “head chart,” a jazz form with clear melodic statements at the beginning and end, bookending improvisation over the harmonic material. This movement maintains a steady 5/4 rhythm and features a lyrical melody alongside more driving countermelodies.
Mvt. 6, “Overshadowed,” is a dark and anxious piece with expansive tonalities and complex harmonic structures. This movement is notated as a one-page lead sheet with a 15-measure melody that is performed freely and repeated with variations.
The 7th and final movement, “The Closer,” takes off like “a bat outta hell” with unrelenting melodic material that highlights the tuba, giving way to a more steady rhythm for improvisation in the middle, and leading to a recapitulation of the main thematic material.
