In my teens, I often listened to CDs from my local library. One such CD, Black Diamonds from pianist Althea Waites, concluded with this incredible piece from 1987 – Sketches Set 7 by Ed Bland. It was one of the first times in my life that I heard music that so organically combines contemporary approaches to composition with popular rhythms rooted in traditional Black sonic expression. Later in life, Ed Bland’s music and philosophy grew to play a crucial role in my artistic and intellectual development, yet I unfortunately never had the chance to tell him before he died in 2013.
Ed Bland (1926 – 2013) was born in Chicago, and grew up in a household where Black intellectuals such as Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks regularly visited. A prodigy in clarinet and saxophone, Bland regularly performed growing up, and served as a musician in the Army during WWII. Through the GI Bill, Bland was able to study composition and theory at two institutions in Chicago, but always asked tough questions which made him the “black sheep” of the music department. While his formal compositions are stunning, he knew – similar to Ives – that he couldn’t support his family on this practice alone. Thusly, he also worked in music production and created tracks that have been later sampled by artists like Fat Boy Slim and Beyoncé.
Sketches Set #7 is a piece that is loosely 12-tone, highly contrapuntal, and solidly fits within Bland’s self-labeled style “urban classical funk”. The opening movement is basically the love-child of a fugue and a 3-part invention, and its manipulation of time is simply stunning. The second and fourth movements are lush and quartal, with references to pure jazz harmonies. The third movement is a quirky, hocket-like unfolding of the theme, and the finale is a toccata-like summation. Bland writes eloquently about how he was concerned with the prolongation of the eternal now in music. This idea along with his music and philosophical ideas continue to make me enthusiastic about my attempts at being a contemporary classical composer.
