Commissioned by: Carl "Doc" Severinsen
Premiere: 3 April 1992 by Doc Severinsen & the Phoenix Symphony, Phoenix, AZ
One of the blessings of my career has been working with Doc Severinsen, who is a tireless advocate of orchestral music. Besides doing some standard arrangements for him, he would allow me tremendous leeway to run with whatever he wanted me to do.
When he proposed an orchestral arrangement of the traditional spiritual "Swing Low Sweet Chariot", he let me turn that into this pops trumpet concerto, a set of variations in many familiar American musical styles, including broadly drawn homages to Copland, Gershwin, blues, Broadway, even spaghetti Westerns. It's a frothy champagne glass of a piece - a great opportunity to showcase a trumpet player who's a great jazz improviser but doesn't often get to demonstrate that on the subscription series.
Written: 1993
Instrumentation:
solo
tpt; 2,1 2,1 2,bcl 2; 4331; timp, 3 perc, pno, bs, drs, stgs
Performance Highlights:
Phoenix
Symphony (Severinsen), Houston Symphony (DeWitt)
Audio Samples: Clip
one, Clip
two 
Publisher: Subito Music Corporation
