Ricochet (2020) is my newest work for big band, based on my composition Ricochet (2019) for solo piano. I was inspired by the minimalist music of Steve Reich to compose the piano piece, focusing on taking a single rhythm in the piano and stretching it out into a whole piece. For the pianist, I scored the two hands in close proximity, bouncing off of each other in a kind of rhythmic ricochet. However, as I was performing the piece on the piano, I started to hear imaginary drums and bass in the back of my brain, accompanying my playing. The driving rhythms of the piece inspired me to translate the whole piece to the jazz orchestra, feeding even more new ideas that I did not explore in the original piece. Ricochet for big band features some of my extremely talented friends that I have been lucky to collaborate with multiple times over my undergraduate career: Paulo Santos (alto saxophone), Thomas Wenglinski (piano), and Fabio Augustinis (drums). Thank you very much to my piano teacher Farshad Zadeh for nurturing my piano playing and composition and to John Mills, Jeff Hellmer, and the UT Jazz Orchestra for helping me turn my piece into this final product.
Austin Ali 