YSU professor to unveil composition

The Vindicator

YOUNGSTOWN — David Morgan’s composition “The Way of the Sly Man” will get its world premiere at 8 p.m. Friday at Stambaugh Auditorium. Morgan, an assistant professor at Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University, will perform his work, along with guest artist Jack Schantz of The Jazz Unit. The concert is free and open to the public.

Morgan received a $15,000 grant from Chamber Music America’s The New Works: Creation and Presentation program to compose “Sly Man,” which is an 80-minute work for 10 musicians based on the esoteric ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff, a Greek-Armenian mystic. Gurdjieff, one of the first Westerners to explore Eastern philosophical, psychological and spiritual ideas and interpret them for Western sensibilities, is widely considered to be one of the first ethnomusicologists, documenting religious and ritualistic music that could easily be lost.

Additionally, a $3,000 grant from the Bascom Little Foundation of Cleveland was awarded to Morgan to record the composition.

“The leading musicians around the world are continually engaged in finding new sounds and new influences to assimilate into the tradition,” said Morgan. “The significance of this grant from Chamber Music America is that every cutting- edge musician in the country applied for this award. I’m happy that I can share these important cultural developments with YSU students, my colleagues and with the community as a whole.”

Morgan is in both the jazz and classical realms. He is a primary composer for The Jazz Unit and the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and stays busy fulfilling commissions for jazz ensembles, chamber ensembles, wind ensembles and symphony orchestras.

In 2008, Centaur Records released a recording of his “Three Vignettes for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra” by the Beethoven Academy Orchestra of Krakow. The American Wind Symphony Orchestra commissioned “Reflections and Meditations” and released it on the CD “Reflections.” Members of The Cleveland Orchestra recorded “The Secret of the Golden Flower” for their CD Panoramicos.

In 2005, Morgan was commissioned by the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra to compose and arrange an evening of music to feature the saxophonist Joe Lovano. He composed a 50-minute five-part suite of original music and arranged 10 Lovano pieces for this project. “The Surprise of Being — Live at Birdland” is a CD that documents this project as performed in New York City in July 2006.

Lovano has subsequently performed several of Morgan’s arrangements around the world, including with the BBC Jazz Orchestra.

The Jack Schantz Jazz Unit has been in existence for 20 years with the core musicians remaining constant. The group was awarded a Northern Ohio Live Award of Achievement for its concert of the music of Frank Zappa at the TriC JazzFest.