In Sea

In Sea is an up-beat, joyous "through composed" romp written as a tribute to master jazz composer, Bob Brookmeyer. Brookmeyer's works have highly influenced the Wolking's concept of jazz composition technique and the possibilities for individualistic expression within the confines of the traditional jazz orchestra. This work uses "add 4" voicings, a tricky harmonic device used judiciously by Brookmeyer over many years. An add 4 voicing includes the normal avoid note 4th degree with the third in major chord configurations. Another device employed often by Brookmeyer is a sort of bubbling ostinato on unison notes with different rhythms. In Sea opens with this effect, and is followed by simple motivic snippets strung together to form miniature call and response phrases. The title is a wordplay as the piece is essentially in the key of C, but the ending coda paraphrases a few parts of the well known tune "By The Sea". The Trumpet 1 part goes to one written high E.