Lovely Passage in David Raksin's Laura

[Teasing the Korean]

There is a lovely passage that appears a few times in David Raksin's Laura score.  He also uses a variation of it on the 6-minute suite he recorded for RCA.

In this version, the passage in question appears from 0:55 to 1:35.  Years ago, I wrote an arrangement of "Laura," and used this as the introduction.  I wonder if any other versions of "Laura" have used this passage.  

 

[sgcim]

Wow! Thanks for posting that. Wayne Shorter raved about that passage in an interview he did once. I had the "Laura and Other Scores" LP by Raksin, and searched for the passage Wayne was talking about, but I didn't hear it. Wayne must have listened to this OST recording and heard it.

Raksin's scores are chock full of short songs that have nothing to do with the main theme.  You have to watch the entire film to find them. I would hear them, and tape them with my VCR to transcribe them. I thought about making an album of just Raksin's music, but they don't really lend themselves to jazz improvisation, unless you do something drastic to them, like change the tempos, change the time signatures, etc...They tried to do that on Getz' recording the B&TB theme with the Boston Pops, and it was a complete disaster, IMHO.

During the pandemic's worst phase, I wrote jazz big band arr. of two of his pieces that worked out nicely, using MuseScore, but the jazz big bands I play in still seem hesitant about starting up again. The best one had planned to start playing again in January, but that never took place. I spoke with the leader a few days ago, and he seemed very worried about the delta variant, so the planned Sept. re-start might be in question, too.

What type of an ensemble did you write your arr. of Laura for, or was it just for piano? The pianist I played with regularly pre-pandemic, worked up an arr. of B&TB I posted here, and has been working on one for "Forever Amber", which is really odd, considering that the film was a historical drama, featuring Raksin's neo-baroque bag!

[Teasing the Korean]

1 hour ago, sgcim said:

Wow! Thanks for posting that. Wayne Shorter raved about that passage in an interview he did once. I had the "Laura and Other Scores" LP by Raksin, and searched for the passage Wayne was talking about, but I didn't hear it. Wayne must have listened to this OST recording and heard it.

Raksin's scores are chock full of short songs that have nothing to do with the main theme.  You have to watch the entire film to find them. I would hear them, and tape them with my VCR to transcribe them. I thought about making an album of just Raksin's music, but they don't really lend themselves to jazz improvisation, unless you do something drastic to them, like change the tempos, change the time signatures, etc...They tried to do that on Getz' recording the B&TB theme with the Boston Pops, and it was a complete disaster, IMHO.

During the pandemic's worst phase, I wrote jazz big band arr. of two of his pieces that worked out nicely, using MuseScore, but the jazz big bands I play in still seem hesitant about starting up again. The best one had planned to start playing again in January, but that never took place. I spoke with the leader a few days ago, and he seemed very worried about the delta variant, so the planned Sept. re-start might be in question, too.

What type of an ensemble did you write your arr. of Laura for, or was it just for piano? The pianist I played with regularly pre-pandemic, worked up an arr. of B&TB I posted here, and has been working on one for "Forever Amber", which is really odd, considering that the film was a historical drama, featuring Raksin's neo-baroque bag!

Wow, Wayne Shorter noticed that passage also!

The Laura arrangement I wrote was for solo piano, written during a time when I was doing lots of arrangements.  I kept tweaking it, and added that intro a while after I'd written the rest of it.  

I was working semi-regularly with a group for about 10 years, and wrote all the arrangements.  I always wanted to adapt my piano arrangement of "Laura" for that group, but it never happened.