Matthew Evan Taylor: Postcards to The Met
Postcard 8: October 2021
Postcard 8 was filmed in Middlebury, Vermont, May 7, 2021; and Prospect Park, October 15, 2021.
Composer and saxophonist Matthew Evan Taylor and composer and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill unite for the first time on Postcard 8, which weaves together the sound of fanfares and improvisation. The piece explores “the various ways we make sound and celebrate,” according to Taylor, using the trumpet’s regal sound as a jumping off point. Each of his Postcards center a different instrument and explore a different theme that’ll appear in the March 2022 premiere of his new work, Life Returns. As he composes, Taylor imagines each piece as a progression, a small capsule leading up to the big reveal.
Taylor and O’Farrill hadn’t met before working on Postcard 8, but their collaboration came naturally—Taylor also recalls that he was quite excited to get to work with O’Farrill. The two came together because O’Farrill is a member of RAJA, a group that’s collaborating with the Postcards series. O’Farrill has noticed that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he’s had far more opportunities to work with people he’s never met. Working on Postcard 8 was one of those opportunities, and it was also a chance to improvise in a digital setting. O’Farrill has presented many virtual and digital recordings throughout the COVID-19 pandemic—including a weekly big band series with his father, acclaimed jazz pianist Arturo O'Farrill—but few have been as improvisatory as Postcard 8, so playing the piece provided a new experience.
O’Farrill ventured to Well House Drive at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to record the piece with his regular collaborator, Luke Marantz, who’s a pianist and videographer. He’s lived in Brooklyn his whole life, so recording a Postcard piece in Prospect Park felt like a way of “flipping the script,” he said. A postcard is often thought to be an idyllic picture of a lovely place you’ve visited—not your hometown. But here, O’Farrill had the opportunity to share a postcard from a place he knows like no other, allowing passersby to mill by the camera as they pleased. He hoped to capture home as it is—imperfections and all.
(Vanessa Ague, October 2021)
