Dave Hartl: Music
Requiem for Rick I: Hindemithy
(Dave Hartl)
Dave Hartl: piano, Chapman Stick, synths:
Kurzweil K2000RS (samples from Sampleheads’s Living Drums, orchestral instruments)
Waldorf Microwave Xt (arpeggios on end)
Yamaha FS1R (voice pads, plucks)
Dennis Wasko: trumpet & fluegelhorn
I wrote this piece in the winter of ‘99-’00 as a remembrance of Philadelphia trumpeter and musician Rick Kerber. It was my honor to perform with Rick over the years and share a friendship that ended with his passing from cancer in 1999. We shared a common heritage, growing up German in a town where all our friends seemed to be Italian, although Rick’s heritage was much keener than mine since he was one generation closer to the old country than I was. We also shared a background of classical training turned to the service of jazz and a work schedule that included many theater shows and teaching at the University of the Arts.
When it came time to try to sum up my relationship with Rick and remember him in a tribute, I returned to our discussions about music we used to have and decided to try to put a trumpet solo into the styles of two musicians that showed the variety of influences Rick had in his playing: Paul Hindemith and Miles Davis. Hindemith was a very German modern classical influence and had a body of work including sonatas for all the major instruments with piano that served as a working model for the first movement of this Requiem. The second movement tries to capture some of the chromatic color of Gil Evans’s arrangements for Miles Davis. Where Gil used a big band with augmented instrumentation, my joke on Rick is to do the whole thing with synthesizers, something he would have given me grief about. The last movement uses the melodic themes of the first two movements in a minor mode to pay a sad farewell to a beautiful and funny soul who was taken too soon.
Dennis Wasko does an incredible job with a very technically demanding chart. His cleanness, improvisational ideas, and gorgeous tone are a testament to his own great talents, but also echo the fine performances Rick himself gave. We hope that the performances of the two of us are worthy of the standard that Rick Kerber set, and hope that the listener can feel the spirit we felt from him. Rick was a great teacher who touched a lot of young players’ lives; if this piece helps carry on his memory and legacy, we were successful.
Technical notes:
Recording engineer: Steve Goodsell
Synthesizers used: Kurzweil K2000, Yamaha FS1R, Waldorf Microwave Xt
Drums are assembled from Peter Erskine: Living Drums! by Sampleheads
Thanks to Marc Dicciani and the School of Music for support and for letting us record there in MARS.
Composition and notes © 2005