It’s been almost six years between composer, arranger and pianist Simon Lasky’s second album and his new release, For the Dreamers, which is out today on Ubuntu Music…
The six years between these albums have been busy for the London-raised pianist/composer, beginning with a move to Tampa Bay after being awarded a Fellowship to study for a Masters in Jazz Studies at the University of South Florida with Grammy-nominated composer and arranger Chuck Owen. “He’s one of my heroes, one of the world’s leading and most respected big band composers, So the opportunity to be under his wing, enter his universe, was incredibly valuable.”
Lasky moved to the USA for personal as well as educational reasons: “I always thought I’d live and work in America for a while. All my heroes are here, the music I fell in love with. I worked on American cruise ships in my twenties as a bandleader, sailing in and out of New York, Puerto Rico, Miami, so I got the bug. I’m lucky to have a tiny flat in Kensal Rise, which I could see myself outgrowing, but I was looking for a better quality of life, an opportunity to get my music known over here. Maybe when I was younger I could have gone to San Francisco or wherever and tried to build a network, but unless you’re incredibly well-known that would be very challenging. However, if you move to another country under the auspices of a university I think your journey to getting established in that city or state is a lot quicker. The Masters in Jazz Studies is highly regarded so it’s almost a fast track to getting local gigs. Within six months after relocating I was working four, five, six nights a week and I still am.”
Lasky arrived in Tampa Bay in 2018 and graduated during the pandemic. Although Florida shut down like almost everywhere else, the shutdown was relatively brief and work started to return after a couple of months, thanks in part to the climate which allows for plenty of outdoor gigs. A year later, Lasky applied for an Artist Visa and took up a Faculty teaching post. He leads an eight-piece band on the Tampa Bay concert circuit and has another lineup in the UK, which includes horn players Sam Mayne, Paul Booth and Shanti Jayasinha.
Tampa Bay bassist and producer Alejandro Arenas co-produced For the Dreamers with Lasky. Arenas “shares my musical dreams and visions,” he says. The pair have developed a strong working relationship which meant that Arenas “went above and beyond what was expected” in his role as co-producer. The album, which includes Lasky’s own compositions and a trio of arrangements of well-known songs, is his first album on the Ubuntu label, run by Martin Hummel. The pair met at Jazzahead seven or eight years ago: “We hit it off from the start,” Lasky says. They stayed in touch and Hummel was keen to have the album on his label. It’s the first of Lasky’s records to feature his own arrangements and the first to feature a vocalist, Ona K, who sings on his arrangements of “Human Nature,” “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “One Day I’ll Fly Away.” It’s also the first recording he’s made with British saxophonists Tim Garland — one of Lasky’s first jazz heroes — and Paul Booth, who both recorded their guest appearances in the UK.
Lasky has been composing since he was eleven and calls it “My first motivation for making a recording.” He wrote all of his tunes on For the Dreamers in Tampa over the last two or three years, specifically for this record. “Half a World Away” is dedicated to his nieces and nephews, all born since his move to the US; “Tampa Strut” — the title came from Martin Hummel — is probably the most straightahead of Lasky’s compositions. He describes all of them as “expressive and unfailingly optimistic.” The album is notable for its full and rich sound, often making it seem like there are far more than eight players: “I wrote a lot for big band as part of the Masters programme,” Lasky says, “and my background is orchestral. I played French horn for many years, although not well. I’m thinking orchestrally, symphonically, but a big band isn’t financially viable for me so I’m treating this lineup as a mini version, with all the drama and sophistication and structural nuance you’d expect.”
He also enjoys arranging the work of other writers and sees this as key to developing his reputation: “You want your music to reach as many people as possible. If I can get people into my music by presenting new arrangements of familiar songs, all of which I love, then hopefully they’ll stick around for something like ‘Closer to the Sky’.” Lasky calls this tune, which features Tim Garland, “one of the best things I’ve ever written. If you’ve got a strong voice as a writer then your arrangements can be almost as individual as your compositions and you can help the audience to understand your original writing by enabling them to hear what you do to other compositions. What I’ve tried to do on my arrangements is to begin with a concept for the whole piece and make it very personal to me. I spend as much time on arrangements as I do on composition.”
Lasky will be launching For the Dreamers in the UK with a special gig at the 606 Club, with an eight-piece band featuring Paul Booth. He’s also planning further ahead: “Here’s my secret big plan. I’ll be fifty in summer 2025 and I’d love to get a series of UK dates together as a fiftieth birthday celebration with a full eight-piece. That’d be cool.”
The Simon Lasky Group will be at the 606 Club on Wednesday 10 July 2024 at 8.00pm.
