“At Peace” is dedicated to the radical bass virtuoso, educator, and  civil rights activist Richard Davis, who always challenged the  boundaries of what was possible and where he belonged, both  musically and socially.  While improvisational based music is certainly more and more accepted in concert music settings now, it is still often considered as "the other", as opposed to thru composed classical music or song based musics.  As a lifelong student and practitioner of a few disparate musical traditions, I often find the separation between different musics that I love disappointing and frustrating.   Why can’t Arnold Schoenberg’s music be heard in concert alongside Charles Mingus’?  Why must Franz Joseph Haydn remain segregated from freely improvised music or Noh theater?  Why can’t the high  lonesome sound of Bill Monroe stand next to the grandeur of Duke  Ellington within the same work?   

As someone who loves so much music, I often feel pressure to conform to the boundaries or trends of a given style or genre, and feel like I'm not “supposed” to express everything I hear, or everything I want to say, if “doesn’t belong”.  Obviously many of these genre or stylistic limitations are conscious hundred(s) years old ways to segregate groups and classes of people, but remain a part of how institutions view styles of music.  Crazy, I know!  But as someone who has so much love in their heart for so many different musical histories, I really don’t care to separate the things that I love, and whether I planned on it or not, that is what is at the center of “At Peace”, for improvising trumpet and string quartet, written for Nate Wooley & Daedalus Quartet.  

This piece marries my love of the entire history of improvised music with my love of the classical tradition, taking far too many influences from in and outside of those histories to clearly identify to creatr something unlike anything I’ve written before.  So that’s pretty cool if you ask me!  Does it  mean it’s good?  Heck no!  But, it does mean that I can take all these things that I love, that I’ve been told to keep separate all of my life, and smush them together in one piece of music that feels like me, and that’s  something that makes me happy.  The bass playing and music of Richard Davis is something that constantly inspires me to be more of myself, no matter what, and with “At Peace”, I feel just a little bit more like myself.  Enjoy!

Daedalus Quartet + Nate Wooley - At Peace (2024)

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