Welcome to the first edition of Tunes on Tuesday! Every week, I’ll post a short note about an that I wrote or one that influenced or inspired me. I look forward to hearing your comments on the songs and what they might mean to you.
Why this tune?
It seems appropriate to start the series with the first tune I wrote, back in 2003. As I remember it, I was in a piano lesson with Frank Wilkins (a great Boston area pianist and bandleader), and mentioned in passing that I had never written any music. He responded by saying “So write something!” That challenge led to “Nine Miles Wide,” an instrumental theme with a bossa nova beat.
Dig this detail!
I decided at the last minute to record “Nine Miles Wide” for my album Making Up For Lost Time. We had time in the studio (waiting for another musician to arrive), and I took advantage of that to put the chart in front of the band: Herb Scott on alto, Percy White on bass, and Ele Reubenstein on drums. As you can hear, they sound like they had known the tune for years, and weren’t seeing it for the first time.
Check it out
Here’s the recording from Making Up For Lost Time
Oren Levine, jazz pianist and songwriter 