Program note

Morning Rush is my first-ever jazz composition. It was originally written for a group of music students, with their demands being simply jazz and ideally upbeat.

The composition of this piece proves to me that preparing compositions for a whole lot of time before writing them down is just counter-productive. I spent about two weeks trying to figure out what jazzy passages to write for these instruments and how to blend them together. In the end, I just sat down on a Saturday and started writing. The absolute majority of what I came up with earlier was scrapped and the first theme in the saxophone (the opening) I came up with on that same day.

In the single day it took me to write this composition, I learned a ton of new things. I now understand how swing rhythm works, how the notation for drumsets works and of course some famous jazz beats. In preparation for this, I also listened to some classical saxophone repertoire and I found it very inspiring. Maybe in the near future, I will write more pieces like this or more chamber pieces in general, since that is the area I haven’t explored yet.

I am looking forward to having this piece performed and maybe to reworking it for a jazz band in the future.

Versions

The original version is a little over 5 minutes, however, that was deemed too long for the performance for which the piece was written, so a shorter 4-minute version has been arranged. It is mostly the same, with some passages (usually where neither sax nor flute plays) omitted.