12/19/2025
📆 Friday, 12/19/2025, 10:15 am
🎶 Jazz New Music Reading Session featuring the US Air Force Airmen of Note, led by Chief Master Sergeant Brian MacDonald! 🎺🥁
📍 Room: W196
MOONLIT SKIES by Debra Stempien & Gregory Turner
Give your ensemble the classic Big Band sound of the 1930s and 1940s with this laid back swingin’ chart reminiscent of “I’m Beginning to See the Light.” This catchy tune will engage your players and listeners!
RAMPART HOUSE by Joey Stempien
A remote trading post on the Yukon-Alaska border, "Rampart House" is a place where history lingers in the silence. This ECM-style work captures the vast loneliness of boreal landscapes, the quiet beauty of the trading post’s endurance, and the stories frozen in time within its walls. Featuring a tenor saxophone soloist, “Rampart House” is energetic, yet haunting and contemplative—a meditation on northern solitude and history.
JUEGO DE NIÑOS by Toshi Clinch
"Juego de Niños" (Child's Play) is a Cha-Cha built around a small number of rhythmic cells commonly found in the style. The piece was composed with the purpose of demystifying "Latin" music at the high school level, while also providing a chord progression that allows any level of player to learn how to improvise. Throughout the piece there are references to two great Cuban composers, Cachao Lopez and Arsenio Rodriguez, as well as the well-known American composer, Tito Puente.
EASY, FELLA by Nic Johnston
"Easy, Fella!" is a composition in the style of Count Basie, featuring conversational interplay between sections and a driving, accessible groove. The piece unfolds like a gathering of old friends, with the saxophones introducing ideas, the brass responding, and the piano occasionally interrupting before a final consensus emerges. The head draws on gospel influences, particularly through harmonic inversions and a walking bass line that shunts the piece forward.
