Talents are transmitted from generation to generation, yes, but always with a twist.

Music was both sides of my family.  My Grandpa Sowash could play any stringed instrument, excelling particularly at the banjo and mandolin.  His son, my father, had no ability with stringed instruments but was an enthusiastic swing band trumpeter.  I tried trumpet and guitar with no success, but I can slap around a piano and, as you know, I compose.  

My son Chapman, it turns out, is a terrific jazz trombonist and improviser.  He started playing professionally right out of high school, skipped college, toured America and Europe numerous times with various bands.  A year ago he settled in Cincinnati and co-founded (with vocalist Jason Burkett) The Hot Magnolias, Cincinnati's own smokin', eight-piece, traditional New Orleans jazz band.  Wait 'til you hear 'em!  (See below.)  He's written a few songs but his creativity flowers in improvisation, not composing.

My Grandmother Hoff played the violin.  My mother, her daughter, was a far better pianist than I and a lead vocalist with big bands during the Swing Era.  That was how she met my father.  My singing voice is mediocre.  Contrariwise, my daughter has a beautiful soprano voice.  She tinkers at the piano, but her creativity blossoms in writing, not composing.

I've lived in the proximity of jazz all my life but I've never been drawn into it.  This makes no sense, I know.  I'm an American composer; what is more American than jazz?  Oh, I like Ragtime, traditional New Orleans and Dixieland.  A friend recently put me onto Louis Armstrong's 1920's recordings.  It took me a while but now I like that music, too.  Which brings me up to about 1928.  Sigh.  I'm just not a hep cat.

Yet elements of jazz appear in much of my music.  The first four notes of a descending Blues scale -- C - B flat - G - F sharp -- appear in many of my works.  Those four notes are my musical signature, my autograph.

None of my music would ever be mistaken for jazz ... yet jazz informs it.  That's part of what makes it sound American.  

Take the third movement of my quintet for clarinet and strings.  Almost every note the clarinet plays is derived from the above-described descending four-note Blues scale fragment.  Yet the character of this music is closer to a Bach partita than to the Blues.  American content fills an European structure, a conjoining of Bach and the Blues.

See what you think.  Listen to marvelous Michele Gingras make this music seem effortless to play on her clarinet.  (She's performing with a string quartet of Cincinnati musicians but they play only pizzicatto chords; be assured, they shine in the other three movements; I'll share those another time.)  

Click here:

http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/cl_quintet_three.mp3

To see a PDF of the score, click here:

http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/cl_quintet_three.pdf