Michael Echaniz

School of Music, Jazz, MFA1

Seven Shades of Violet

This is an uptempo, 7/4 jazz fusion composition of mine, originally for piano, upright bass, drums, keyboards, and female voice. This piece was intended to be a modern reinterpretation of a minor blues with a riff-based head, long improvisatory section for all band members, a more textural section, and then abrupt metric modulation to a coda with a darker, more chaotic mood. This piece awarded me as a "semifinalist" in the 2019 International Songwriting Competition and the original recording will be the title track on my debut album of the same name to be recorded this summer and released on Ridgeway Records at a later date. I rearranged this composition to work with guitar, bass, piano, drums quartet for the Joe LaBarbera Ensemble in Fall 2020.

Collaborators: Joe LaBarbera, Zach Rosenstiehl, Zane Taylor