I have to confess I had actually forgotten about this chart until someone asked about it recently, which in some ways makes me feel like a way cooler composer as opposed to the professional equivalent of someone who can't remember where their car keys are. In fairness it was commissioned and performed in an extremely busy time right before the pandemic so a couple distractions have occurred since then, but the important thing is I'm really glad I was reminded about it.

It was commissioned by George Andrikokus and the Hinsdale Middle School Jazz Ensemble to feature a guest artist at the Illinois Music Education Conference, and the recording is an excerpt from that performance. George and the group also recently performed a piece of mine at the Midwest Clinic, so it's cool to look back and see the progression that's taken place as well. Musically, the tune is a contrafact on "Nature Boy" and in fact I fairly overtly stole a lot of the ideas from Laurence Hobgood's arrangement of that song for Kurt Elling (Laurence if you're for some reason reading this, let me know and I'm happy to share the tens of the dollars in royalties that have rolled in). Kidding aside, I'm actually pretty pleased listening back to how the chart came together and both serves as a way to introduce students to the original tune but also still have its own valid musical character. In an even more full circle moment, what brought this back to my attention was a school reaching out to use this as a way to feature another friend and composer on trombone as a guest artist, so with any luck I'll be able to make it out to that performance and share an updated recording.