Absolutely beautiful. What a great arrangement.

Back To The Island

Many of you are aware that I have several hours of rehearsal tapes of Leon's 11-piece band I was in during the Fall of 1981. I've been transferring all of those tapes to a digital format recently. 

Here's a gem I found among those tapes: Leon's interpretation of Paul McCartney's, "Yesterday." 

Please be aware that these are recordings of a rehearsal. The audio fidelity isn't high, but it's good enough it enjoy what Leon came up with in the form of an arrangement for "Yesterday." 

And what a poignant concept. Leon wanted this one to be almost elegiac, quietly mournful. To get that feeling, Leon limited the instrumentation on this one to just piano, violin (Jonathan Yudkin), and trombone (Yours Truly) to provide a short interlude between the vocal sections. The overall result is a type of chamber music in the form of art song, in many ways analogous to the concepts of Schubert and Brahms, especially in the piano accompaniment Leon plays here. 

Leon instructed me to play the melody in the warm and mellow middle register of the trombone. He told me to play as if I were singing it and to hear the words in my mind as I played. Leon told Jonathan to improvise a countermelody all around my trombone solo to provide an added tenderness to intensify the feeling of yearning in the melody on trombone. The vocal parts are sung by Leon, Jack Wessel, and Bob Britt. 

Leon's concept on this song worked beautifully as you'll hear.

Leon - Yesterday 1981

Paul Brewer

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