Big band to the bone

Unassuming, articulate alto saxophonist Levi Saelua (pronounced levee sigh-lou-ah) is a contemporary anomaly: a teenager who writes and arranges jazz compositions for big bands. Most teens now have no interest in what is known as “the big band sound.” And young jazz composers usually write for small combos. But Saelua, who is more quiet than shy, and half Samoan, and a mix of Japanese, Russian Jewish and Finnish, is totally aligned with the modernization and educational value of the sonic swing tsunami that once swept through the 1920s and into the 1940s.

“I tried to write for small groups but I’m pretty bad at it,” the Rio Americano High School junior says. “I hear all these different parts in my head that play off each other and different harmonies. And usually there’s going to be some part where it’s like a six-part harmony, and there are not six horns in a small group, so I usually end up doing a big band part.”

This year Saelua’s big-band fixation resulted in some very high-profile success. In June, Down Beat magazine’s 30th annual Student Music Awards bestowed national honors on his arrangement of Jay Beckenstein’s (of Spyro Gyra) “Monsoon.” The Monterey Jazz Festival also announced Saelua as the winner of the Next Generation Festival’s Big Band Composition Competition. The Next Generation Jazz Orchestra (featuring members from 17 high schools from 10 states) will perform his composition, “Spectrum,” September 23 at Monterey’s 50th anniversary festival. Saelua will also receive a $1,000 prize and new Sibelius music-writing software.

Saelua’s vividly cinematic “Spectrum” is especially amazing. The Monterey judges felt “the complexity of Levi’s work involving challenging and interesting meter changes displayed great maturity and stood out from the other entries.” And American River College professor and Capital Jazz Project pianist Joe Gilman, who heard the composition recently, says: “Levi’s piece shows a remarkable sense of compositional and orchestrational maturity. There are certainly traces of great composers and arrangers in the piece, most notably Pat Metheny, Maria Schnieder and Dave Holland. But Levi also demonstrates a youthful inventiveness that implies his own direction.”

That inventiveness struck Saelua during a lull in his Rio Americano English class. Music director Josh Murray had earlier suggested Saelua write something for Monterey. “I just theoried out a melody with the chords,” Saelua says, “and had no idea what it sounded like, and brought it back and played it.” Saelua wanted to emulate arranger Bob Curnow, who had adapted compositions by Metheny for his Stan Kenton-influenced big band, so he listened to Metheny for two weeks straight over winter vacation. After two more drafts and input from his private saxophone instructor, Mike McMullen (also of the Capital Jazz Project), Murray, and his musical school peers, Levi had himself a keeper. What originally was a straight-up bossa nova morphed into an experiment in rhythmic displacement.

Murray thinks the Sibelius software will both improve Saelua’s writing and make him more prolific. “It will make the process much quicker,” Murray says. “He can get the ideas out of his head and into the computer and on paper much faster. You play into the computer and it writes it down. It doesn’t actually think for you at all. It is nothing like Garage Band. It doesn’t have anything pre-made. You just play it in on an instrument or usually on a keyboard and it writes down whatever you play.”

Meanwhile Saelua’s bedroom in his family’s suburban home off Cottage Way doubles as both sanctuary and workspace. “Usually, when I am writing, I love performing,” Saelua says, “and when I’m performing …” He laughs, then starts over. “When I am writing, it’s like, ‘This is so frustrating, I wish I could just play it.’ And when I’m performing, I’m like, ‘OK. Lots of people here. I’d like to be in my room writing.” Somehow it all seems to work out just fine.