Elkjer Quartets.

[hyperbolica]

Elkjer sells booklets with several tunes, a score and parts. I-ve got these:
- Gershwin
- Ellington
- Sinatra
- Jazz quartets vol3
- Latin vol1
- Classical vol1
- 1960s
- Patriotic
- Traditional Jazz vol1 and 2

From those books, the only actual tunes that we use in our books are:
- When the saints
- Somewhere over the rainbow
- Corcorvado
- Do you know what it means to miss new orleans
- Swan

That's like one tune from every other book.

Once a year I take out the stack of Elkjer stuff and make the guys read it to see if any of the tunes got better sitting on the shelf. Usually we start with enthusiasm - "Yeah, let's play some surfer music!" and by the end of the first book (4-5 tunes) the guys are looking mutinous. We played the Latin Vol1 and Classical Vol 1.

We did find a couple more we might put in the book.

Ravel's Pavane is really beautiful in parts, and then it seems to lose its way. Here's a midi sample of the good part (https://robertelkjer.net/RPAVCLP2.mp3). Here's a Korean tbone quartet playing it way too fast, and without a lot of delicacy:


And then, yes, we played through the entire 4 pages of Beethoven 5 arrangement. I can't think of a place where we might actually play this. So it's not going in the book.

And then the Habanera from Carmen. Again, really beautiful. Sounds much better on tuba instead of bass bone with all of the walking lines. The upper lines sound better on tbone than euph, though. This is actually a great arrangement.


Besame Mucho, looks on paper like a decent arrangement. The first 8 bars could be pulled off to be performable, but in the only recording I could find doesn't really paint it in its best light, it's pretty slow and maybe not very nice in spots:


Brazil is a fun one, but you've got to play it clean or it's a mess. There aren't great recordings of these tunes because they're all pretty difficult or really strange or both.


After that things went down hill. I noticed that we played 5 charts in a row, IN A ROW... that ended on pedal F. I think he changed the key for several tunes just so he could end on a pedal F in the bass bone part. And then he figured out that if a pedal F was ok, then a pedal E must be ok too. Of course by this point, I'm writing note names in the music.

We found some laughably unplayable. How Long Has This Been Going On - we all just stopped at one point and moved on to the next chart.

Elkjer is a talented guy, but he doesn't always use his superpowers for good. We all wanted to play a bunch of these tunes, but his rendering goes in and out of sanity. You can make stuff that's challenging that's also something people might want to listen to.

Does anyone have experience rehearsing or performing any of these quartets? We've been playing some of the simpler ones for years, but a lot of them just step right out of the doable range. It's tough to make the tunes sound believable.



I Got Rhythm

[JohnL]

Elkjer is a talented guy, but he doesn't always use his superpowers for good. We all wanted to play a bunch of these tunes, but his rendering goes in and out of sanity. You can make stuff that's challenging that's also something people might want to listen to.

My theory is that the target market is university tuba/euph ensembles, where the priority is challenging rather than listenability.

I've played his arrangement of Theme from "New York, New York" a few times; I think it's pretty serviceable. Here's a recording:

I don't necessarily agree with interpretation, but it'll give you an idea of how it sounds.

[hyperbolica]

I've played his arrangement of Theme from "New York, New York" a few times; I think it's pretty serviceable. Here's a recording:

I don't necessarily agree with interpretation, but it'll give you an idea of how it sounds.

Yeah, that's comparatively tame. The arrangement sounds good. Should be a bit faster and cleaned up a little. I don't find NY, NY on Elkjer's list of quartets. I agree academics is probably the target. But geez, they'd have to be a pretty good college group to tackle some of these.

An example of weird is hard to find recorded, because I think people avoid the weird stuff.

Here's one that leans hard on the bass and lead bones. These guys almost pull this off. That's a valliant effort right there Watermelon Man:


Here's St. Thomas going off the rails in the middle for the first and second and third tenor solo, but otherwise a great performance. If you could take the beginning and end, I'd love to perform this without that crazy tenor solo stuff.


Hungarian Dance #5, Brahms goes rogue. Maybe I'm just jealous of these really crazy good bass bone players who can actually handle these parts without crying.

[tbdana]

I love Elkjer's trombone quartets. I confess Bob Elkjer is a friend, but that's not why I'm saying this. We became friends because I liked his quartets. You know he's not a trombone player, right? I think he does a great job, considering. I laughed at your pedal F story. I once played four of his quartets in a row that all ended on a minor-major-seven chord (what I think of as "the James Bond chord"), so I get it.

And yeah, I play and perform them all the time.

I don't find them unplayable or unlistenable, at all. I find them a wonderful respite from the drudgery of much of the literature out there. A breath of fresh air.

Different strokes.

I did have a word with him about his unmarked triplets, though.

[hyperbolica]

I love Elkjer's trombone quartets. I confess Bob Elkjer is a friend, but that's not why I'm saying this. We became friends because I liked his quartets. You know he's not a trombone player, right? I think he does a great job, considering. I laughed at your pedal F story. I once played four of his quartets in a row that all ended on a minor-major-seven chord (what I think of as "the James Bond chord"), so I get it.

And yeah, I play and perform them all the time.

I don't find them unplayable or unlistenable, at all. I find them a wonderful respite from the drudgery of much of the literature out there. A breath of fresh air.

Different strokes.

I did have a word with him about his unmarked triplets, though.

I read that Elkjer studied trumpet with Joe Alessi's father. I was curious why he seemed to have a special relationship with Joe.

Oh, yeah, the unmarked triplets get comments every time. And the little hand notations he adds on some charts are helpful, but hard to read.

I don't find them all unplayable. In fact, I usually don't find whole charts unplayable. But there are sections that you just don't want to play. For example, in Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans (https://robertelkjer.net/TradJazzBone4t ... s4Tbns.mp3) at about 1:26 is a part in the 3rd and 4th parts that when you play it by itself, it has this lonely cowpoke riding the dusty trail sort of bum-ba-dee-da sound. When you hear it in the context, it kind of goes away or sounds different, but on it's own, it's a little embarrassing to play.

Some of his tunes are just hard to pull off or to play them believably, and that may be the real issue here. Sometimes I think it's mostly a matter of balance. Our quartet I think tends to try to play all four voices equally, when in this style you really have to know when to back off and let the lead have the spotlight.

I bought 10 of his collections, so I must like something he does.