In the early 1990s, Scott Martin wrote a rhythmic and vibrant orchestral work for his master’s thesis as a composition student at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Thirty-one years later, the jazz-inspired piece is enjoying its world premiere on the ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ campus.
Improvisation for Orchestra will be performed at Studzinski Recital Hall by the ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ Symphony Orchestra as part of a performance on (and again on March 5.) The twelve-minute piece draws heavily on Martin’s background as a jazz and contemporary music performer and arranger.
Martin, who teaches jazz/pop piano at ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿, says the piece was completed in May 1994 but was never performed. In fact, it was pretty much forgotten about until a couple of years ago.
“When I was packing up my house in Colorado to move to Maine in May 2023, I found the handwritten score—forty-four pages of orchestral manuscript. I was shocked that I had put so much time and care into it. I could barely recognize that I’d been able to use such good penmanship and graphic skills.”
It was time for this piece to be heard, decided Martin, who last summer embarked on a five-month project to enter the score into a music notation software program called Finale. Then he had to edit the score and extract out all the individual instrumental parts for orchestra. “It was a very labor-intensive job,” Martin recalls, “and at times I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish it.”
Never having heard the piece until recently, Martin said it was “very rewarding over the course of the rehearsals to see that a lot of what I had imagined sounded exactly that way when played by the orchestra.”
The piece itself explores the harmonies and voicings Martin loves as a jazz pianist. “Using an orchestra, I wanted to explore ways to bring out the various subtleties, dissonances, and inner voices found in jazz and classical music of the early twentieth century, like Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky. I also wanted to incorporate the sounds of Hollywood and the recording industry in general—the way music is scored and arranged,” said Martin, whose résumé includes time as a top studio musician and producer, working with artists like Carly Simon and Mariah Carey.
“I was also interested in rhythms found in jazz, funk, Cuban, and Brazilian music, figuring out ways to apply those to the orchestra without being heavy-handed or departing too far from orchestral tradition,” he added.
The piece is called Improvisation for Orchestra because it came out of Martin’s improvisations at the piano. “Although it’s written, and not improvised,” said Martin, “the piece develops in a way that follows the type of improvising a pianist might do. For example, the way Keith Jarrett might structure a ten-minute long improv with a slow, rubato intro, one kind of groove in the middle, and some sort of final wrap-up statement.”
Martin’s composition method, he explained, involved sitting at the piano and exploring sounds, textures, rhythms, and patterns. “I would keep the ones that seem the most promising and piece them together in a way that built and developed through a slow introduction, moving on to a section of rhythmic and varied themes, leading to a kind of minimalist passage that stays within the same time signature and harmonic mode, gradually building to a full ending.”
Following the performance of his piece, Martin will be taking to the stage, alongside ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿’s Beckwith Artist-in-Residence George Lopez (who will be conducting the work), for a conversation with the audience.
