Composer Joshua Green takes a quirky, colorful approach to melding modern jazz and contemporary classical music on Telepathy & Bop
Green’s 16-piece Cyborg Orchestra will celebrate the irreverent album’s release on March 2 at National Sawdust
"Josh Green's music is full of surprises and left me smiling. If Fellini directed a Twilight Zone episode about the artist Paul Klee, this would be the soundtrack. It is evocative and playful, and certainly does not fit in a box, a quality I wish more composers would find. Mr. Green has found a truly original and engaging voice." - Ted Nash
By day, Joshua Green, recently awarded a Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award from ASCAP, plies his trade as Music Supervisor for ITV America, the world’s largest unscripted television company. While devising the perfect soundtrack for battling housewives, rampaging bridezillas and scheming chefs comes with its own rewards, Green found himself in need of a creative outlet apart from the voyeuristic pleasures of reality television. Enlisting some of the finest musicians he’d discovered while working on film and TV soundtracks and Broadway musicals, Green assembled a singular ensemble that deviated from the standard big band to incorporate unexpected voices, including accordion, bass clarinet, Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI) and strings.
Band members include Charles Pillow (oboe, alto sax, tenor sax), Todd Groves (EWI, flute, alto sax, tenor sax, Eb clarinet, contrabass clarinet), Jay Hassler (Bb clarinet, bass clarinet), Nathan Schram (viola), Nick Revel (viola), Clarice Jenson (cello), the adventurous PUBLIQuartet – Curtis Stewart (violin), Jannina Norpoth (violin), Nick Revel (viola) and Amanda Gookin (cello) – John Lake (trumpet), Chris Misch-Bloxdorf (trombone), Nathan Kochi (accordion), Sungwon Kim (guitar), Michael Verselli (piano), Brian Courage (bass), Josh Bailey (drum set).
“I really looked up to Michael Brecker,” Green says, “and when I found out he’d died it was a trigger for me to go back to my jazz roots. I wanted to write something that showcased the jazz language, bebop in particular, in a contemporary classical setting. It evolved over a really long time until it became ‘Telepathy & Bop.’ I had no idea what the piece was going to be until it became what it was, but that was the impetus to create this ensemble.” That piece, which gives the album its title, is a constantly surprising three-part suite that refracts the angularity of bebop through an avant-garde classical lens, creating a tumult of acute swerves and clamorous textures.
It was a number of years before Green finally put together the Cyborg Orchestra to bring “Telepathy & Bop” and other pieces to life. In the meantime, he’d worked on films by directors like Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson and David Cronenberg while writing orchestral arrangements for the New York Pops, Emmy Award-winning television shows and Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals in New York and London. He’s carried his gift for scoring narrative ideas into the Cyborg Orchestra, finding the spark for several compositions in visual art and personal stories.
“The Lauer Faceplant” sonically recounts the story of one of Green’s awkward brushes with fame (since moving to New York in 2009, he’s tallied quite a few, which he’s in the process of turning into a suite). Shortly after arriving in the city his not-yet-developed urban compass led him into a face-to-chest collision with Today Show host, journalist and recent Presidential Forum moderator Matt Lauer. Their destinations being in the same direction, Green then proceeded to follow Lauer, giving the bandleader the uneasy sensation of being an inadvertent celebrity stalker.
The composition born from that encounter plays like a clumsy spy-movie soundtrack, capturing the accidental intrigue and only-in-NYC hilarity of the incident. “I hate to take myself too seriously,” Green explains. “I’m a very lighthearted person, and while I can get inside my own head a lot when I’m trying to write, the thing that speaks to me the most is that wackiness in life. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in Seinfeld and I see this as a great opportunity to express the fun I get to have in life in a way that’s meaningful to me.”
“I always start writing with a narrative in mind when I write,” Green explains. “In all of the paintings that have inspired me, there’s a narrative that’s beyond what’s right in front of us.”
The same could be said about the photograph of a cobblestone street in Cuba, lined with classic American cars, that inspired “Reverie Engine: The Ambiguous Rhumba.” The driving rhythms of Cuban music are hinted at but subdued by a sense of uncertainty in Green’s conception. Finally, like “Telepathy & Bop,” “Improvisation & Nebula” nods to another of Green’s musical influences, Hungarian composer György Ligeti. The piece’s stark atmosphere, dark harmonies and spectralism all have their roots in Ligeti’s music.
Having realized Green’s musical vision on record, the Cyborg Orchestra will take on full-blooded human form for its live debut at National Sawdust on March 2 to celebrate the album’s release. Meanwhile, Green is hard at work on a new batch of music for the band while trying to avoid literally bumping into stars on the street. Regardless, it will no doubt combine the accessible with the avant-garde, the zany with the zeitgeist.
- ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award
- Music Supervisor for ITV America
- Music for films by directors including Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, David Cronenberg
- Orchestral arrangements for the NY Pops, Broadway musicals (NY and London), Emmy Award-winning TV shows
- Studies at New York University, Berklee College of Music, University of Vienna
- Saxophone studies with Todd Groves (Radio City Music Hall, NY Phil, Broadway) and Lenny Pickett (Saturday Night Live)
- Worked with film composer Howard Shore for several years
About the CD and beyond:
- Green is creating a suite based on a series of awkward encounters with famous people. One such encounter is sonically expressed in a track from his new CD, "The Lauer Faceplant." Shortly after arriving in the city Green found himself in a face-to-chest collision with Today Show host Matt Lauer.
- Green wrote the record's title track in response to the death of jazz great Michael Brecker. Says Green, "I really looked up to Michael Brecker, and when I found out he'd died it was a trigger for me to go back to my jazz roots. I wanted to write something that showcased the jazz language, bebop in particular, in a contemporary classical setting."
- Several of the tracks on Telepathy & Bop are based on paintings, including "La Victoire," based on an image by Magritte, one that also played a role in a condominium commercial scored by Green.
- "Improvisation & Nebula" is a nod to another of Green's influences, the Hungarian composer Ligeti.
- One of Green's first compositions was a wind quintet that replaced the French horn with an alto-sax and featured a bebop-style fugue.
- Green's arrangement of "Sesame Street" was presented by the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, with all the Muppets on stage.
