For the past two years, composer and trumpeter Ryan Kerwin has been working on his EP “Colors” that released on Aug. 27. In the songs, he hopes to capture various colors of music and bring that to his audience.
“In jazz music, we talked a lot about how soloists and composers have a color for their compositional palette, and a really experienced jazz player or a musician would be able to listen to something for 30 seconds and be able to identify who it was and even what year it was, and all the musicians playing on it,” Kerwin said. “So I got really into the theme of what specific musical elements make up a color. And each of these compositions tries to explore a different color from my favorite composers.”
In addition to Kerwin’s trumpet, “Colors” features the work of Alton Wong on piano, Chris McGraw on bass and Greer Lambert on drums. Kerwin was very aware of the strengths of each of the other musicians in the ensemble, and chose them strategically.
“The first thing you have to do is you have to get a group together that has personalities that work together,” he said. “It takes a while to find musicians that you feel like you’re comfortable enough to play your best with, and Chris and Alton and Greer are all people that I’ve known by coming back to West Virginia.”
He went on to describe some of the ways they balanced one another out on the EP.
“I can be pretty reserved and thoughtful. So I try to choose musicians who are very assertive and have a voice that will contrast with mine,” he said. “I know I like to play in a lyrical style. And when I combine that with somebody like Alton, who’s playing the piano, he has lots of really busy ideas, which sets up a great contrast for what I do in my solos. We have a we have a group sound, because we all have such different ways of improvising.”
While “Colors” is primarily an instrumental EP, Kerwin does experiment by adding some poetry to the song “Close.” In it, he uses an excerpt from a poem by David White. When asked about his inspiration for this, he said, “I’ve always been inspired by the compositions of a jazz trumpet player named Marquis Hill. He’s from Chicago. He blends jazz and hip hop and often brings poets to rhyme over top of what he plays in his music. This was my first attempt to try to make something like he makes.”
“Colors” is available now on Spotify or wherever you find music. You can find out more about Ryan Kerwin at his website, www.ryankerwinmusic.com.
