Dave Stryker With Strings Goes To The Movies
Dave Stryker Guitar
Xavier Davis Piano & Fender Rhodes
Jeremy Allen Acoustic & Electric Bass
McClenty Hunter Drums
ORCHESTRA: Brent Wallarab - Arranger & Conductor
Trombone - Jim Pugh (lead), Tim Coffman, Jeff Parker, Andrew Danforth, Richard Dole (bass) / Alto & soprano saxophone - Greg Ward Trumpet - Mark Buselli, Jeff Conrad / 17 piece string section - Sara Caswell (Concertmaster)
Track Listing
1 In Your Eyes (Gabriel) 5:34 from Say Anything
2 Cinema Paradiso (Main Theme) (Morricone) 4:51 from Cinema Paradiso
3 You Only Live Twice (Barry/Bricusse) 5:57 from You Only Live Twice
4 Taxi Driver (Main Title) (Herrmann) 6:18 from Taxi Driver
5 Theme from Shaft (Hayes) 6:08 from Shaft
6 Cavatina (Myers) 5:59 from The Deer Hunter
7 Flirtibird (Ellington/Strayhorn) 6:07 from Anatomy of a Murder
8 Low Key Lightly (Ellington/Strayhorn) 5:22 from Anatomy of a Murder
9 Moonglow (Hudson/Mills) 6:14 from Picnic
10 Dreamsville (Mancini/Livingston/Evans) 5:14 from Gunn
11 Edelweiss ( Rodgers/Hammerstein) 4:53 from The Sound of Music
Music and movies are the most captivating, the most arresting of all art forms. In their immersive magic they spark the inner powerhouse of emotions and dreams that illuminates the soul. We feel music and film in our bodies. We fall in love with albums and movies, we return again and again to them like lovers who meet our fantastic expectations of what art can do for us, like friends we can count on to keep us connected to the centrifugal motion of life.
Music and movies linger in our blood, stamp themselves upon our DNA, help make us who we are. They are a living museum of human expression and experience. If this album were a movie, it might be titled Dreamsville, in honor of the Henry Mancini song that is at the heart of its genesis. In a mingling of the art forms, the emotional power of movies often depends on the undercurrent of music that guides them, and few are better equipped to appreciate that mingling than guitarist Dave Stryker and composer-arranger Brent Wallarab, both musicians and passionate lovers of film. Stryker and Wallarab had crossed paths for years as fellow members of Indiana University’s jazz faculty, but their cinematic and musical meeting of minds began, appropriately enough, in the visual medium of a public TV broadcast celebrating the 2023 centennial of Indiana jazz guitar legend Wes Montgomery. Wallarab crafted some arrangements from Montgomery’s repertoire for a Stryker-led rhythm section accompanied by a big band and strings. Not an easy undertaking, it came off beautifully, and Wallarab’s arrangement of Henry Mancini’s melodically lush “Dreamsville” inspired Stryker to exclaim, “We’ve got to do a record!” And so a project was born. Successful though the Montgomery tribute was, Stryker did not want to take those charts into the studio. “I just love Wes too much,” he says. Instead he and Wallarab hit upon the idea of doing an album of music from the movies, drawing on their shared fandom to come up with a program deeply rooted in late-20th-century film. Each musician brought an impressive jazz pedigree to the collaboration.
Stryker’s resume includes significant stints with organist Jack McDuff and saxophonist Stanley Turrentine before establishing himself as a name and a force in his own right, propelled in recent years by his long-standing popular organ combo (which lends drummer McClenty Hunter’s considerable talents to the ensembles heard here). This is his 37th album, and his second outing with strings in the mix (his exquisitely adventurous 2022 release As We Are, featuring Stryker compositions in a rhythm section plus string quartet setting, precedes it).
Wallarab has co-led the Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra for three decades now, helming album tributes to Indiana songwriting legend Hoagy Carmichael and the music of the late jazz educator and Wallarab mentor David Baker, as well as his magnum opus to date The Gennett Suite, an expansive 21st-century big-band reimagining of classic jazz that Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and others recorded for the Gennett label in the 1920s. Stryker and Wallarab decided to employ an unusual instrumental configuration for this album (30 musicians) with all charts written for jazz quartet, 17 strings, and 5 trombones punctuated by solo work from violinist Sara Caswell, saxophonist Greg Ward, trumpeter Mark Buselli, and trombonist Jim Pugh. The rich but always tastefully-restrained strength of Wallarab’s writing for brass and strings is underpinned by what Stryker calls a “take-no-prisoners, real New-York-style” rhythm section of Xavier Davis on piano, Jeremy Allen on bass, and Hunter on drums that keeps the groove flowing throughout the album, whatever the mood or tempo. The result yields much for everybody to enjoy, from the most seasoned jazz aficionado to the most casual listener, with a fresh repertoire that draws heavily on films from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s—formative cinematic years for the two artists at the wheel here. So much for this trailer—let’s get to our featured presentation.
The 1989 teen romance Say Anything could rest its laurels solely on one iconic scene if necessary, in which John Cusack holds a boombox aloft to blare Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” to the girlfriend, played by Ione Skye, who has reluctantly spurned him. The scene and the Gabriel song may be a well-known staple of pop culture, but “In Your Eyes” is not your garden-variety modern pop jazz standard, and it’s a bold choice for an opener. A trombone chorale serves as an overture to the album (imagine “A Dave Stryker-Brent Wallarab Production” flashing on the screen before a dramatic opening shot) and establishes the five-piece trombone section’s role in all that will follow.
“Trombones can sound like a big band, and they can also sound like part of an orchestral brass section,” says Wallarab, who played trombone himself for many years before giving his work over entirely to composition and arrangement. “They help propel the rhythm here as well, while the strings offer a contrasting lyricism.” Our leading man Stryker makes his first appearance, soon accompanied by the murmuring entry of Sara Caswell’s violin, the two of them stating the majestic melody over a lilting beat. The beautifully expressive moves of Stryker’s solo, Caswell meeting him with elegantly sensual fire, underlying eruptions from the strings and brass, and an extended, dizzying Stryker-Caswell pas de deux as the orchestral colors swirl around them in the closing minute all make for a bravura album introduction, coming to a sudden stop that recalls the blackout ending of the movie itself. Music from Cinema Paradiso,
Giuseppe Tornatore’s poignant 1988 coming-of-age story about a movie-loving boy who befriends a film projectionist in post-World War II Italy, follows the blaze of “In Your Eyes.” The trombone opening is Wallarab’s clever recasting of the movie’s lesser-known love theme, with cycling triplets from the brass evoking the journey into memory that the film’s now-grown protagonist takes. Stryker sets the melody of legendary composer Ennio Morricone’s lovely, achingly melancholic title piece, and then plays a composed counterpoint against the strings’ rendition. Xavier Davis’ piano solo enters with a bossa groove that continues into Stryker’s solo excursion, guided by McClenty Hunter’s crisp time-keeping. Wallarab builds the orchestra to the brink of a swelling Hollywood moment that instead resolves as a question mark.
After opening with songs from two movies that put youth at the center of their stories, the album begins to move into a more mature theatrical realm. That’s Stryker… Dave Stryker, sporting another bossa groove as he jumps right into “You Only Live Twice,” John Barry’s theme for the 1967 James Bond film starring Sean Connery, the face of the Bond franchise in those years. You Only Live Twice, with its Cold War, space-race, Asian setting, may show its cultural age when viewed today, but Barry’s title composition, sung for the movie by Nancy Sinatra, has endured. Heard here in a newly-dressed arrangement by Wallarab, and powered by Barry’s catchy, readymade spiraling hook, it launches Stryker into one of his most melodically engaging solos. It’s also the beginning of a veritable Fender Rhodes trilogy on this album, with Xavier Davis’ tasty keyboard runs contributing to the 1970s CTI vibe that informs this and the two tracks that follow. Here as elsewhere, Stryker and Wallarab are aiming to evoke the pop-jazz sound of the era from which these films emerged. Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece with Robert DeNiro at the center as the troubled loner Travis Bickle traversing late-night New York City in his cab, was also the final score of renowned film composer Bernard Herrmann, who died just hours after completing his recording work for the movie. It’s easy to hear why Scorsese insisted on Herrmann, who delivered the kind of dramatic, broodingly romantic neo-1940s mood that the director wanted for the soundtrack.
The deftly-wandering, lonely-street noir of Stryker’s guitar lines, Greg Ward’s saxophone solo swirling around like the steam coming off the pavement in the movie, and Xavier Davis’ final single-note flurries invoking the snare drums of the original score all stand out against the darkly lustrous backdrop and contours of Wallarab’s chart for the brass and strings, which retains the spirit of Herrmann’s original score even as the arranger takes it in a different orchestral direction. It’s one of this project’s many strengths, that the melodies Stryker and Wallarab and so many others loved are honored and at the same time become vehicles for both compositional and performative improvisation. Now it’s time for some swagger. If Gordon Parks’ 1971 film Shaft, starring Richard Roundtree as a street-suave Black detective, helped spark the blaxploitation boom of the early 1970s, then Isaac Hayes’ accompanying score surely helped influence the sound of ‘70s urban TV cop shows. An iconic theme worthy of its protagonist, here it serves as the key ingredient in any Stryker project. “I’ve always got to have one burner on my records,” he says. When it came to movie themes, “Theme from Shaft” was a no-brainer for this requirement, given the guitarist’s deep love of both 1970s film and music (the latter exemplified by his multi-volume Eight Track series). The tune switches from funk to samba to swing, Stryker stretches out harmonically on his slick solo, and it all glides with a hip confidence worthy of the title character himself, punctuated by Xavier Davis’ extended keyboard work near the end and McClenty Hunter’s cascading drums.
Robert DeNiro’s superlative mid-1970s run of roles continued in 1978 with his star turn in The Deer Hunter, director Michael Cimino’s Oscar-sweeping portrait of steel-country Americans going off to fight in the Vietnam War. “Cavatina” was written by British composer Stanley Myers, and Cimino’s use of its haunting, sweetly mournful melody was perfect for the loss and emotions at the heart of his story—“suggestive of the innocence that’s about to be shattered,” as Wallarab describes it. The warm, airy sound of Stryker’s nylon-string acoustic guitar, the earthy textures of the trombone swells, the unexpected turn into a jazz waltz, and the interplay between Stryker and Davis at the end amid musically unresolved ambiguity that matches the uncertain fate of the movie’s characters as the film concludes, all contribute to making this one of the record’s standout moments. The coda of “Cavatina” also serves as a transition to the jazzed-up final act of this album movie, with Duke Ellington’s music entering for a two-part cameo.
Otto Preminger’s 1959 courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder starred Jimmy Stewart and included a small part for Ellington himself. Preminger, already an established and well-respected director, sought out Ellington to do the score because he knew Ellington’s cultural stature would attract further attention to his new project. Anatomy of a Murder was a provocative movie for its time. Actress Lee Remick played Laura, the sensually alluring wife of a soldier being tried for murder, and was the inspiration for one of Ellington’s themes for the movie, titled “Flirtbird.” The bluesy saunter of “Flirtbird” is a sound that’s “right up my alley,” says Stryker, who was raised right by his musical forefathers McDuff and Turrentine. It’s a greasy blues showcase for the guitarist when he takes a chorus-length solo worthy of B.B. King. Mark Buselli plays lead flugelhorn over the brass, Wallarab works in a nod to Woody Herman’s “Blue Flame” theme for former Herman band member Jim Pugh’s trombone part, and Greg Ward contributes some appropriately slinky saxophone lines. The dreamier side of the Ellington sound is invoked with “Low Key Lightly,” a piece penned by Ellington’s writing partner Billy Strayhorn, also woven into Anatomy of a Murder in variant forms. Here as elsewhere, the musical dialogue between Stryker and Caswell takes on its own cinematic intensity, with Caswell more than up to the task of bowing in the footsteps of Ellington violinist Ray Nance. What a joy to hear this little-known piece from the Ellington-Strayhorn songbook (the riches of which remain plentiful) brought to life in such full-bodied fashion.
Picnic is the other 1950s film represented on this album and boasts a golden-age Hollywood cast, headed by William Holden as a charismatic drifter and Kim Novak as a town beauty queen. “Moonglow,” a song that dates back to the dawn of the Swing Era, plays during Picnic’s pivotal scene, a simmering, sultry nighttime dance between Holden and Novak that incarnates their strong mutual attraction. As with the music from Cinema Paradiso that we heard earlier, Wallarab weaves another melodic motif from the movie at hand into the opening of the arrangement—in this instance, the actual love theme from Picnic. It eases seamlessly into the song’s familiar melody which becomes a summer night stroll in the hands of Stryker and Wallarab, with Stryker flourishing Wes Montgomery-style octaves, and an overall effect of “lush strings and hard bop guitar meeting Count Basie,” as Wallarab puts it. Consider it the album’s singular nod to the age of Old Hollywood and the big bands.
Henry Mancini’s “Dreamsville” was originally written for director Blake Edwards’ hit late-1950s TV show Peter Gunn, starring Craig Stevens (once described as “the poor man’s Cary Grant”) as a jazz-digging, smooth-talking, impeccably-dressed PI. Edwards revived the character for the 1967 film Gunn along with the song “Dreamsville,” enabling it to fit within the cinema-only parameters of this project. Wallarab retained the brass writing of Mancini’s version and added strings, trying to arrange them the way he imagined Mancini might have done it, while throwing in an ending inspired by the Gil Evans / Claude Thornhill band recording of the bebop staple “Robbins’ Nest.” Stryker’s solo here divines what Wallarab cites as “Dave’s underappreciated ballad-playing prowess.” In addition, “Dreamsville” is a fitting penultimate selection for the record; remember that it was this Wallarab arrangement, originally done for the Wes Montgomery centennial tribute, that sparked the inspiration for this project.
And so this Dreamsville album of a movie comes to an end. The brass and strings retreat, leaving only the quartet of Stryker, Davis, Allen, and Hunter to romp through Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Edelweiss” which also serves as a worthy conclusion because of its cinematic source, the film adaptation of The Sound of Music. John Coltrane’s recording of another song from that musical, “My Favorite Things,” was a signal event for the young Dave Stryker when he first encountered it as a rock-loving teenager in early-1970s Omaha. “My mind was completely blown,” he says. Think of “Edelweiss'' as music for our closing credits, starring Dave Stryker, written and directed by Brent Wallarab, with a supporting cast of Mark Buselli, Sara Caswell, Xavier Davis, Jim Pugh, Greg Ward, and many others with a special shout out to engineer Jake Belser for his great recording skills. Like any good film or album that functions with such beautiful aesthetic ease, Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies is the product of days, weeks, and months of creative sweat and toil, of hard work leavened by the jocular, familial atmosphere that informed the making of this record, as this witness can attest. It’s also the sound of a new artistic partnership forged between guitarist Stryker and arranger-composer Wallarab. “He made it cinematic,” says Stryker of Wallarab’s writing throughout the album. “It’s just gorgeous. He’s such a great arranger and musician. Because of him, we came up with something really special.” Wallarab is quick to return praise for the star and leading man of this production: “Dave’s reputation as one of the most swinging guitarists alive is accurate and well-deserved. But it’s his innate understanding of how to serve, through subtle nuance, each individual tune that is equally amazing. Every melody statement and improvised solo is perfectly shaped for the song and for the arrangement. His solos start, arc and conclude as a perfect part of the composition, and he gets it right every single time.”
The lights have come up now, but I’m not ready to head for the aisles quite yet, still leaning back in my seat with an empty popcorn bucket, taking in and savoring what I’ve just experienced. And like any film that I fall in love with, I want to spend time with it again.
Hoping for a sequel,
David Brent Johnson WFIU-Bloomington, IN
