Dave Grusin: Not Enough Time

[AROIOS]

https://www.pbs.org/video/dave-grusin-not-enough-time-3jnyac

[CyberGene]

Thanks, he's been one of my favorite composers and pianists and many of my compositions and jazzy arrangements in the past were influenced by his harmonic progressions and voicings. 

[Chris Towns]

Hi,

Dave Grusin has been a firm favourite of mine (along with David Foster) for many years. Two very talented Composers. I managed to get a transcribed score of 'On Golden Pond' via Youtube. A beautiful Orchestral piece.                                                                                           

[Bobby Simons]

24 minutes ago, Chris Towns said:

Hi,

Dave Grusin has been a firm favourite of mine (along with David Foster) for many years. Two very talented Composers. I managed to get a transcribed score of 'On Golden Pond' via Youtube. A beautiful Orchestral piece.                                                                                           

I have a great transcription of that for solo piano by Thomas Mueller, an ELP specialist. I play it regularly, it puts me in a good mood.

 

[Tusker]

I love Dave Grusin also. Mountain Dance was used as the theme music for a BBC program. I heard it and was hooked. I had to track down the composer of this powerful earworm. 
 

I love his whole catalog but my favorite is the subtle and sensitive Playera…

 

 

 

[lightbg]

His collaborations with brother Don were just as remarkable. My favorite is “River Song”.

 

 

[Tusker]

I'd really like to hear about their collaborations. Don was using an Oberheim of some sort for most of them wasn't he? 

[jerrythek]

The whole album River Song was taken from is great: Sticks and Stones:

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k59gNKLRkwgVFpo3oSXCCRH9o8SdooQw0

 

[jerrythek]

I love his playing and arranging - a very versatile and talented musician. This piano piece from the movie The Firm is wonderful:

 

 

And he performs it great live as well:

 

 

[CyberGene]

2 hours ago, Chris Towns said:

I managed to get a transcribed score of 'On Golden Pond' via Youtube.

Have you by any chance downloaded my transcription? 🙂

 

I transcribed it in 2010 and published the PDF for free with an optional donation and I’ve been having a steady donation “income” of about $20-30 a year on average 😀

 

Here’s the YouTube video of me playing it with a link to the PDF in the video description:

 

[Reezekeys]

7 minutes ago, jerrythek said:

I love his playing and arranging - a very versatile and talented musician. This piano piece from the movie The Firm is wonderful:

 

Thanks Jerry, I was scrolling down this thread waiting for someone to mention the Firm! A very unique score in that it was almost all solo piano. Here's another example of Dave's great score writing from that movie:

 

 

[CyberGene]

When I first heard the soundtrack for The Firm, I was so obsessed with it I just couldn’t sleep without finding it both on audio and sheet music. Unfortunately my family was very poor at the time (must have been around 1997 when Bulgaria was in one of its deepest financial troubles ever. My mom lost her job and my father’s salary depreciated to the equivalent of 2 original imported CD-s). So, purchasing the original CD or cassette was entirely out of question. I managed to record it track by track from different radio broadcasts by basically just staying glued to the radio during the Tuesday’s Jazz evenings on the National Radio and hoping they may play it… It was even more difficult finding the sheet music. However around 2000, when I started using the Internet and some of the first forums appeared, I found someone on a Bulgarian forum who worked as a musician on cruise ships abroad and who happened to own it and he promised to give it to me (to xerox it of course) once he was back which happened after 6 months. That was one of my most valuable treasures at the time 😀 I learned to play Memphis Stomp of course, it is probably the catchiest track but also very tricky to play well. 

 

Sweet memories!

[jerrythek]

CyberGene: your story is very inspiring and moving. Coming from my position having grown up here in the US, and being spoiled by our state of living, we can barely imagine the difficulties others go through. Meaning we take so much for granted. Good for you for your perseverance in following your muse!

[CyberGene]

@jerrythek the irony is life has been so much better after we joined the EU in 2007, the living standards have consistently improved and I’ve been having a great career in IT and can afford many things now. And finding music has never been easier, it’s just a click away. With technology I can easily slow down music and transcribe it more easily myself and there’s even AI based piano transcription that is better than even the best human. Yet I had more fun in those poor days as a teenager with hard earned achievements. Go figure… but that’s for another thread. 
 

Here’s another of my Grusin favorites:

 

[Docbop]

I was guitar player back in the 70's and Jazz clubs in L.A. back then Tuesday was guitar night.  The music school I worked at was a few miles down the street from the Baked Potato so on Tuesday after I closed the school I would head down to the Baked Potato.   Lee Ritenour was pretty much the Tuesday night regular, Larry Carlton and other played too or over at Dontes.    Ritenour always had great musicians backing him up and Dave or Don Grusin played a lot of those Ritenour gigs.  I got to hear one of the Gursin's  many times live.      When one of the Grusin's couldn't do the gig Patrice Rushen usually played and everyone loved her playing just as much.   

 

Those Tuesdays with Rit' got to hear Anthony Jackson and first six-string bass I ever saw or heard.  Harvey Mason always on drums.  Jerry Steinholtz on perc, sometimes the Seawind horns or Ernie Watts on sax.   So much music going on in L.A. and many of the studio guys or members of Tonight Show and Merv Griffin Show play because they would usually be done filming and could just drive to one of the clubs and play.   These days I don't get out much especially with a 90 minute drive to get into outskirts of L.A., but from what I see and hear there is quite revival of the music scene.  Even some East Coast people relocating West. 

 

Not being a piano player then I didn't pay a lot of attention to the details, but I'd hear piano player talk about Dave Grusin's pianos both his Rhodes and his grand piano.   That Grusin liked super light action and had weights in the keys so they would respond to a feather light touch.   

[PianoMan51]

Milagro Beanfield War

 

[jazzpiano88]

The Firm is also one of my favorite film scores of his.   Here is an interview of Dave discussing how it came to be with Sydney Pollack's vision of it being blues solo piano (it's all piano but with some overdubbing):

 

 

[tfort]

12 hours ago, AROIOS said:

https://www.pbs.org/video/dave-grusin-not-enough-time-3jnyac

The documentary Not Enough Time was produced by Santa Fe jazz pianist John Rangel and directed by his wife Barbara Bentree. We had a screening here in Albuquerque with Grusin and Ritenour at the Outpost Performance Space. 

[jazzpiano88]

4 hours ago, tfort said:

The documentary Not Enough Time was produced by Santa Fe jazz pianist John Rangel and directed by his wife Barbara Bentree. We had a screening here in Albuquerque with Grusin and Ritenour at the Outpost Performance Space. 

 

Very well done!!!   A classic case of talent meets opportunity.  

 

Being dropped into the arranger pool at the perfect confluence of broadcast network staff orchestras and staff arrangers seemed to be the spark that ignited his fire.  He commented that under those conditions, he received daily immediate feedback on his work as to what worked and what didn't from the performances by the orchestra and critiques from the best arrangers in the world of that day.

 

That and Andy Williams.

 

His focus on Latin American music was fascinating and explains a lot about mainstreaming of the music in jazz, esp. smooth jazz with Ritenour and associates like Djavan in the GRP.

 

I'll take Mountain Dance any day of the week against Morning Dance :):)

[AROIOS]

21 hours ago, CyberGene said:

Thanks, he's been one of my favorite composers and pianists and many of my compositions and jazzy arrangements in the past were influenced by his harmonic progressions and voicings. 

It's my pleasure, CyberGene.

[AROIOS]

I can only image the musical fun the Grusin family could have with two master musicians in the house. Here's one of my favorite samba tunes featuring them both:
 

 

[AROIOS]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Grusin's Three Days of The Condor score yet, such a cool tune:

Or this genre-defining Smooth Jazz classic :
 

 

[yannis D]

Just saw it, Thanx.

This guy's has it all, impressive talent in all fields

 

 

[Sundown]

My first piano teacher turned me onto Dave Grusin through “Mountain Dance”. I was a young teenager at the time and I didn’t realize he also did “On Golden Pond”, which was a family favorite and something I’ve probably seen 100+ times. I would say that “On Golden Pond” is single-handedly the best piano soundtrack ever made … The incredible melodies and delicate harmonies, the amazing way that he captured nature-like sounds on the piano, and just the amazing performance overall … I’ve never heard anything close.

 

Then I found out about many of the other soundtracks and material he’s done, and very clearly he is a musician and composer with enormous depth.

 

Todd

 

 

[Chris Towns]

Hi,

@CyberGene Yes it was your Transcription I downloaded. Please send me a PM with your donation page and I'll definitely make a Contribution. It's an absolutely beautiful tune.

Have a listen to this, the Guy absolutely nails the Dave/Don Grusin style of playing.  You don't fancy Transcribing this do you ? LOL.

Chris

 

 

[CyberGene]

15 minutes ago, Chris Towns said:

Yes it was your Transcription I downloaded. Please send me a PM with your donation page and I'll definitely make a Contribution.

 

Glad you downloaded it and please, don't donate me 😀 I really don't need that anymore, I'm not even sure why I put the donation link in the first place, I did the transcription for fun and to learn scoring software (MuseScore). That was so long ago, have't made any other transcriptions, it's too exhausting...

[jazzpiano88]

On 4/9/2023 at 1:03 AM, AROIOS said:

Or this genre-defining Smooth Jazz classic :
 

 

Ahh yes!   With Carlos Vega, virtuoso drummer and one man wrecking crew in his own right.   Very sad that he left us too soon!

[AROIOS]

23 hours ago, JazzPiano88 said:

 

Ahh yes!   With Carlos Vega, virtuoso drummer and one man wrecking crew in his own right.   Very sad that he left us too soon!

Carlos and Warren Wiebe are two shiny stars that graced our little planet, I'm grateful for the beauty they brought us and sad for the struggle they had to go through.

[bill5]

On 4/8/2023 at 10:31 AM, jerrythek said:

I love his playing and arranging - a very versatile and talented musician. This piano piece from the movie The Firm is wonderful:

 

Love that song and him generally. 

 

(Side note: and there you see the diff between American audiences and the Swiss. Notice how during his entire performance, the audience understands the concept of shutting up until he's done?)