Technical Notes on "Origin Story"
Artwork by Sharif Anthony for "Origin Story" I composed "Origin Story" in early February 2018 while deep in the throes of my Lester Young immersion period, which lasted for several years as I found myself magnetically drawn to the playing of Pres. Originally, I envisioned writing an album's worth of music inspired by Lester Young (similar to what I ended up doing with <3 Bird during the pandemic), but of the few pieces I did manage to write at that time (including "Bad Lady" and "Facsimilate"), I think "Origin Story" was perhaps the most literal and compositionally straightforward of those. With an unstoppable conviction in the power of Lester Young's rhythmic line and casually elegant melodic sense, I figured: what would happen if I tried playing the solo backwards? Not literally backwards, but keeping the integrity of the original rhythmic phrasing (i.e. the melodic rhythms) and just reversing the sequence of pitches? I