From rap to spoken word, the big band sound has never been quite like this.
Tonight, CAC’s Monday concert series will feature a performance by second-year ethnomusicology student Robert “Chili” Corder and his friends in the ethnomusicology department. The group will be called “Chili Corder and Friends”.
Corder, who will play guitar, put the group together specifically for this performance. It will include guitar, two pianos, double bass, trombone, two trumpets and two drum sets. Corder said he chose friends whose musical skills he was familiar with and respected.
Corder said the concert is a chance for each member to express their own musical voice.
“It’s a group of eight people that … have very different backgrounds,” Corder said. “We’re all studying jazz here but it’s not going to be a jazz concert. Every member will bring a song they really like into the group, be it a (cover, arrangement) or an original song.”
Corder said the set list will include a Death Cab for Cutie song arranged for big band, an ambient rendition of two Erik Satie pieces and original compositions by other members. The originals will include a polyrhythmic, funk-influenced song as well as one based on the jazz classic “All the Things You Are,” among others.
Corder said the performance is also a chance to collaborate musically with his friends.
“It’s not really me presenting my “˜masterpiece.’ It’s just putting my friends together to see what happens and see what I can draw from it to put it to something more permanent,” Corder said.
Corder, who began playing rock and blues in sixth grade and now studies jazz, said one of his personal goals for the concert is to try and strike a balance between his various interests.
“(In my future career) I’d like to do something that incorporates multimedia and incorporates a listening and viewing experience rather than just technically advanced playing,” Corder said. “I would like to present something that combines my influences and brings it to an audience that might just like one of my influences and tie things together. It’s about tying different cultures and scenes together.”
Other members of the group have their own outlooks on what they can gain from the concert.
Second-year ethnomusicology student Harmony Chua, one of two pianists in the group, said the concert will help her improve her composing abilities. She will arrange Death Cab for Cutie’s “Title and Registration” for the group. The song will include two trumpets, trombone, electric bass, upright bass, guitar, drums and piano.
“You don’t get many opportunities to create something and have people play it,” Chua said. “(It’s) also to have fun and surprise yourself and the audience.”
Second-year ethnomusicology student Masai Marcelin, the group’s trombone player, said the concert will allow the band members to showcase their work to the student body.
“My aspirations are that people enjoy the stuff we put out there (and) to get more attention on a larger scale, but also just to express ourselves through the idiom we’re so comfortable in,” Marcelin said.
In addition to collaborating with his friends, Corder said the concert will be useful in helping him toward his career goals of bringing jazz to a new audience.
“I’m trying to be relevant with what I’m doing and bring music and art to a new audience,” said Corder. “I’m trying to figure out how to take the best of jazz and all the music and put it together into something that’s hopefully a voice of mine.”
Email Malik at amalik@media.ucla.edu.