Ryan Truesdell uses the About Web page on his Web site to introduce himself to any curious reader. Here is the opening sentence: “A world-renowned, GRAMMY® Award-winning producer, composer, arranger, and educator, Ryan Truesdell was voted ‘Best New Artist’ in the 2012 JazzTimes Critic’s Poll and is best known for his award-winning Gil Evans Project, a large ensemble devoted to the performance and preservation of the music of the famed arranger and Miles Davis collaborator, Gil Evans.” Clearly, this is someone with rich ambitions and the power to bring them to realization.
Ryan Truesdell conducting a string quartet during a recording session for his SYNTHESIS album (photograph by Leo Mascaro, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz)
The beginning of next month is currently the estimated date of availability for the results of his latest project. The full title of that project is SYNTHESIS: THE STRING QUARTET SESSIONS. Truesdell’s plan was to bring together fifteen of the current leading large-ensemble jazz composers, each with the task of composing a new work for string quartet. Thirteen of the composers were as follows (in alphabetical order): Joseph Borsellino III, John Clayton, Alan Ferber, Miho Hazama, John Hollenbeck, Christine Jensen, Asuka Kakitani, Oded Lev-Ari, Jim McNeely, Vanessa Perica, Rufus Reid, Dave Rivello, and Nathan Parker Smith. To this “pool” he added a never-before-recorded composition by Bob Brookmeyer, and contributed three of his own new works.
This amounted to a little less than three hours of music. As of this writing, the estimated ship date is August 1. The ArtistShare Web site currently has a Web page with hyperlinks for pre-ordering the full three-CD set or arranging to download the full complement of 30 tracks. That is a generous amount of content.
Sadly, the impact is not as strong as I had hoped it would be. Since almost all of the names of the contributing composers were unfamiliar to me, I had hoped that, having completed the three-hour journey, at least one of the participants would have left me thinking, “I want to heard more by this composer.” To quite the contrary, I was more concerned that so many creative minds could yield so much tedium.
I suppose that, at best, this was a project that “looked good on paper;” but the bridge from specifications to engaging performance was never satisfactorily crossed.
