专辑简介

Somewhere between the coolness of the Bossa nova and the hysteria of the Beatles, I found Miles Davis. Of course, I didn't understand where he was coming from or exactly what he was all about, but after a few years of listening, I recognized that Miles loved to take songs to places that they had never been to before or since. Amid years of listening, education and paying dues, I longed to write a song that a famed jazz artist might cover someday. A song that possessed a beautiful, fragile melody open to being played over a sparse framework of subtle, complex voicings. It was during these early writing years that Evalyn Coleman and I wrote "How Quickly I Forget". It may seem out of place here, were it not for her experience in performing jazz standards with bands in the Bay area and helping me to simply state the emotion that I wanted that song to convey. Several years later, while studying at the University of Utah, Kevin Johansen and Geoffery Miller further encouraged my writing by playing my originals, offering critical reviews, and exposing me to jazz that I have yet to appreciate. I owe Geoffery a wonderful debt for a single note in "Summer of Love" that still excites me to this day! Still, not possessing all of the skills to interpret my vision as I could hear it, I first reached out to jazz artist Emilee Floor who gave me the intimate satisfaction of "The Little Things" in a solo setting. A few years later, Mizz Hix challenged all of my writing sensibilities with a cold splash of R&B. Yes, I "heard the news", but I was still deaf to the voice I wanted others to hear in respect to these songs. Unable to bridge the unwieldy expectations of these two beautiful sirens, I asked Rich Dixon to arrange and direct the voice of these songs. He, with Todd Sorensen and Jim Stout, provided a melodic landscape for Bob Taylor, Tanya Barkdull and Melanie Shore to explore. Melanie's generous contributions made it difficult for me to choose which piano solo to select; so I started naming her performances in an attempt to hear which ones were unique enough to listen to again and again. I was only able to narrow the selection down to the three included on this EP. It's pretentious and too late for me to say, "Oh yeah, Miles would have covered this tune", but not too early for you to have a listen and let the songs take you somewhere you've never been before. And that's all I ever really wanted to do.