Under the Mesa (2013)
Genre: Modal jazz
The winter of 2013 I had the opportunity to take another Gift of Jazz composition class with a new instructor: jazz pianist and adjunct faculty at the University of Denver, Marc Sabatella. I jumped at the chance to take his class because of Marc’s reputation as a world-class pianist and teacher.
Before the Internet was even a “thing,” Marc had made a name for himself as the author of the “A Jazz Improvisation Primer” (1992), a comprehensive text that could be downloaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP), a precursor of the “world wide web.” Later, Marc was a developer and technical consultant for Musescore, the music notation software. He’s also the author of an excellent book on functional harmony entitled The Harmonic Language of Jazz Standards.
The theme for this particular class was modal jazz. I was, of course, familiar with the most recognizable and best-selling jazz album of all time—Kind of Blue—and I knew that songs like “So What” (Miles Davis) and “Impressions” (John Coltrane) were characterized by their focus on a couple of repeating/alternating modes. (In the case of those two examples, D dorian, then up a half step to Eb dorian).
I had never heard these tunes referred to as “plateau” modal pieces—so-called because they would hang on one particular static mode before moving on to the next—before Marc introduced the term. (I always learned something new from these classes, including new terminology!)
Both of my creations for this class turned out to be of this variety, so when I went to name the piece, I was looking for some reference to or synonym for “plateau” to use in the title. [Technical note for music theory nerds: My tune centers clearly around the mode of C lydian, with a modulation up a minor third to Eb lydian, before cycling down chromatically to the root.]
My wife and I had just moved back to South Boulder. Sitting at the piano in my basement music room at the foot of two mesas inspired me. My first working title was “Table Mesa”—which I deemed too specific. I experimented with names in Spanish: Bajo la mesa for one. But, as usual, translation often introduces other problems: either redundancy (e.g. “The Rio Grande River”)—or unwanted connotations—“Under the Table”—which wasn’t the mood I was going for at all.
I settled on “Under the Mesa” as the most evocative choice to describe my new home.
The composition premiered on March 19, 2013 at Dazzle in Denver with Marc Sabatella himself on piano, Jeff Miguel on tenor sax, Tim Libby on trumpet, Ian Hutchison on bass and Alejandro Castaño on drums. (Check out the live performance video on my YouTube channel.)
For this 2024 studio version I decided to leave the piano/bass obstinato of the intro and outro and the head melody (with call and response tossed from trumpet to tenor sax) much as I had written it in 2013, but added a flute to the mix and introduced staggered/overlapping instruments on the solo sections.