(for Bob Brookmeyer)

The autumn of 2008 was an optimistic time in my life. I was just settling into my first semester on faculty at Berklee College of Music and taking in the energy that only a city like Boston and its surrounding areas - with its over 50 colleges and universities – can give at the start of a new academic year. I had just completed a master’s degree at the New England Conservatory of Music where I had intended to study with, among other compositional heroes of mine, the great Bob Brookmeyer. Unfortunately, the semester I arrived at NEC was the semester that he retired, and we sadly lost Bob in December of 2011 at the age of 81. The Sun in September is my attempt to emulate many of the compositional qualities that are idiosyncratic to his music - techniques that I gleaned from both listening to his impressive catalogue of works and internalizing his sounds as a trombonist in the James Madison University Jazz Ensemble and then the NEC Jazz Orchestra. This piece envisions a mild, early-autumn sunny Saturday afternoon stroll down Newbury Street, the area teeming with excited college students ready for another year of all that college has to offer, with the occasional gust of cool air forecasting the much colder days ahead.

 

Thank you, Bob, for continuing to be a towering figure in our lives, and for leaving us with tomes of artful playing and deft writing that will always feel as fresh and as invigorating as the New England sun in September.