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My composing revolves around three major areas: jazz, third stream fusion, and contemporary classical music.
Day of Love is inspired by the poems of Pablo Neruda and the desire to write an extended composition about love for my wife, watercolor artist Susan Adams. Susan painted the cover art for this CD. Day of Love was commissioned by Thomas Buckner. The piece features many of the musical ideas I have been exploring over the past thirty years-lyrical melodies combined with extended instrumental techniques for flute and contrabass and rhythms that are influenced by Brazilian, African, Indian and odd time-signature jazz. The three of us (Bob, Tom, and I) can flow freely between music influenced by many cultures and styles, and I explored those parameters in this piece.
Global Village was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in the 1980s, and funded by the Jerome Foundation. Again, this piece features many of the aspects 1 alluded to earlier-grooving, soulful lyrical melodies combined with extended string techniques and rhythmic elements from Indian, African, hocket, and odd time-signature jazz. This recording came about as the result of a concert, at Merkin Hall in February of 1998 where I was the featured composer, and was fortunate to meet Todd Reynolds. The string quartet ETHEL gave one of the most satisfying performances any of the compositions that I have written.
I want to thank Thomas Buckner for supporting my music over the past several years and give appreciation to him for the many magnificent performances he has given to Meditations On Truth, Day of Love, and Spirit Changes,
--Mel Graves
Mel Graves has written over one hundred jazz compositions, and others for various projects over the past 30 years. His composition teachers were Loren Rush and Robert Erickson. Graves was a featured composer at Vi Rassegna, Di Muova Musica in Macerata, Italy and New Music America. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Council for the Arts, and Meet the Composer. Commissions include three from the Kronos Quartet, two from Chamber Music Northwest, one from the Twin Pines Woodwind Quintet, four from Thomas Buckner, and one from Jazz In The City.
Some of his work can be found on the following recordings: Emotion in Motion with Steve Smith, Eric Crystal and Randy Vincent; Mirror image with Randy Vincent, Bob Afifi and George Marsh; Spirit Changes with the Turtle Island String Quartet, Thomas Buckner, Smith Dobson, George Marsh, Bob Afifi and Jon Crosse; and His Tone of Voice with Thomas Buckner and Bob Afifi.
Mel Graves is a tenured full professor at Sonoma State University, located north of San Francisco, where he is director of the jazz studies program. He can be reached at sadams@dnai.com.
Both works published by the composer Produced by Thomas Buckner Engineered by Tom Hamilton
Recorded in January, 1998, at Systems TWO in Brooklyn, NY Mastered by Nicholas Prout at Chesky Records, MY
Bass rental by David Gage String Instruments Cover painting by Susan Adams Cover design by Matt Schickele
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