Grades 9-12 2024/25

Giant Steps (Arrangement)

Composer Name
Jonathan
Description

I was inspired to write this arrangement of Giant Steps by John Coltrane because of a recording I heard by Michael Mayo, an American singer and composer. His creativity and exploration of Giant Steps inspired me to arrange this challenging tune by Coltrane, an icon in Jazz. My arrangement focuses on layering in different instruments (like Mayo does when he sings) and moving away from the more common jazz sound. I hope you enjoy it!
 

Untitled - For now!

Composer Name
Gigi Guerin
Description

This piece of music isn't really inspired by anything in particular. I have an idea of what I want it to be, but my process of mind to noteflight is not very strong! I would say that my inspired vision is change, in some form. I also mainly just want to have fun with this! I feel like as I get stronger at composing, I'll be able to more fluently translate my inspiration into the music. It's hard for me to submit this, especially when I don't feel like its good - I dislike a lot of things about my composition, and I don't know how to change a lot of the stuff I'm not happy with. Anyways, I really hope I get the opportunity to make this piece good, and learn a new cool skill. 

Backdoor Barbeque

Composer Name
Ethan Spritzer
Description

For this project, I chose to compose a piece of a jazzier style because aside from playing Jazz piano in our school's jazz band, I have minimal experience composing music of this genre. The instrumentation of three horns, a piano and a drum set is like that of a jazz combo group, but without a base, so therefore, I hope to try to include baselines within the left hand of the piano. The harmony of this piece I envision to be rooted in F natural minor, but the first four bars I have revolved around a C7 flat 9 chord, while utilizing C phrygian scale. Later on, I hope to resolve this C phrygian harmony to F minor, or oscillate between these two harmonies to create dense, jazzy chord progressions.

What Could it Be

Composer Name
Lucas Flinner
Description

My general idea for this piece is for it to be "playfully weird." I have the opening piano solo (which I may add to or change later) which is followed by the introduction of a drumbeat and some sparse, sort of funky statements from the brass and sax, stylistically contrasting the intro. I plan to develop this section and shift to other contrasting sections, subverting expectations whenever possible. I also want it to get to a place later in the piece where it's more filled out harmonically.

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