Green Dolphin Street is a fairly well-known jazz standard that contains a unique style change. The piece shifts between a Latin groove and a swing groove and its popularity has led to its performance by many of the Jazz greats such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, and more. As with much of Jazz music, each interpretation is very unique and personal to the artist - sometimes even changing the feel of the whole piece.

In Fall 2020, I began taking composition lessons with Steve Young, the head of CUI's Commercial Music program. As a player in many jazz groups both big and small, I wanted to take some time to learn the basics of how to write for a jazz group. Steve has had plenty of experience in this field and was more than willing to help me. After selecting Green Dolphin Street as a good beginner standard to work with, we decided to start small and write for a three-horn combo. From there we would work our way up to a big band.

As you can see below, the results of the semester were a polished big band score with a complete form, solo sections, and soli/group features. There was a lot of building up to this finished product and I think it is best outlined in my Jury Form from the semester. If you feel inclined, take a second to look at the various versions of this piece before it was finished.

Working on this project, I gained a much greater understanding of part-writing with extended harmonies, the function and substitution of those extended harmonies within jazz, being mindful of register and texture, how the different instruments of a big band are best utilized, overall jazz form structure, and much more. This was my first solid attempt at writing for a big band and I think it turned out very well - I just hope now to have a group read it so I can hear just where I went wrong.