“Eventide” was written in the beginning of 2014 for my former trombone mentor, Jim Pugh.  This upbeat piece features the trombone throughout, as well as the ensemble in several tutti passages.

Eventide

"Too Late" was written in the spring of 2014 for the BMI Jazz Composers workshop. Using a modern palette of diatonic color in an open straight-eighth rhythmic feel, this piece features the piano and soprano sax. The band and the drums also are featured in trading later in the chart.

Too Late

"Fields of Green" makes large use of slash chord harmony in this happy tune. The pianist is given a large section to solo alone in the middle of the chart before the ensemble re-enters. The melody morphs and shifts throughout this second half of the chart, not resting until the final chord is sounded. 

Fields of Green

Written in commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr., this uplifting piece is given a patriotic flavor in the simplistic melody and its march-like rhythms. Three solos from the tenor sax, trombone, and trumpet enliven the piece with an energetic groove from the rhythm section. The brilliant sound of the full band brings the piece to a triumphant climax before the closing on a more somber tone.

Hope Eternal

A commissioned arrangement for eight trombones by Jim Pugh and the University of Illinois.

As performed by:
Tenor Trombone 1- Scott Ninmer
Tenor Trombone 2- Scott Ninmer
Tenor Trombone 3- Scott Ninmer
Tenor Trombone 4- Scott Ninmer
Tenor Trombone 5- Scott Ninmer
Tenor Trombone 6- Scott Ninmer
Bass Trombone 1- Scott Ninmer
Bass Trombone 2- Scott Ninmer

Silent Night

This arrangement of Bill Evans' "Waltz for Debby" eschews the waltz and instead relies on constantly shifting meters, metric modulations, and reharmonization to create an entirely different kind of piece.

'Waltz' for Debby

"Open Worlds" was written in 2009 for the group Eponymous, a sextet consisting of saxophone, trombone, guitar, piano, bass, and drums.  Written in 7/4, it features oddly placed rhythmic hits under an angular melody featuring the clarinet and guitar.

Brian Krock- clarinet
Scott Ninmer- trombone
Sam Hasting- guitar
Dan Pierson- piano
Chris Nolte- bass
Matt Plaskota- drums

Open Worlds

"Sylvan Spirits" is a piece for orchestra and narrator.  The text of the piece consists of three poems, Anne Brontë's "Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day", Rudyard Kipling's "The Way Through the Woods", and Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".


Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves, beneath them, are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!




The Way Through the Woods
by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods....
But there is no road through the woods.




Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Sylvan Spirits

A setting of the tragic scene on Big Bittern Lake in Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy".

An American Tragedy

This piece was written as an assignment for the 2013 Metropole Arrangers Workshop.  During the week-long workshop, we were given a lead sheet on Sunday night and were asked to write a two-minute arrangement to be performed by the Metropole Orchestra at a recording session on Thursday morning.

The assignment was designed to test our ability to function under heavy time constraints.  In hastily writing the piece, I tried to be as creative as possible while still retaining the swing flavor of the original.  Similarly, I sought to vary each section of the form melodically, harmonically, or orchestrationally while tying all of the pieces together into a cohesive form.

Scott Ninmer

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