By Michael Roberts
Following a 20-year break, and a 30-year career as a teacher, Randolph Noel helms a large ensemble recording once more.
Pianist and composer Randolph Noel’s entrancing new album,
Elements and Orbits, has been a long time coming. The self-released recording is his first as a leader since 2003’s
Hands on the Plow by the Brooklyn Arts Ensemble, which he founded and directed, and contains material that dates back more than four decades. Between these benchmarks, Noel spent more than 30 years as a music teacher with the New York City Department of Education, where he nurtured the love of music and performance among pre-kindergarten-to-fifth grade students.
Noel admits that this path wasn’t the one he envisioned at the beginning of his career, which started in a 1973 tour with soul greats Sam and Dave and later found him working alongside bop legends Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach. “When I started out, it was something I swore I wouldn’t do,” he says. “A lot of musicians look down on being a music teacher, like, ‘I’m not doing that. That’s beneath me.’ And my ego almost caused me to miss the opportunity. But the children made me realize how wonderful it was.”
His work with kids paid other dividends, too. Noel directed the Barry Harris Children’s Chorus and collaborated with iconic artists such as vocalist Abbey Lincoln. “The second album I was doing with her [1992’s
Devil’s Got Your Tongue], she said, ‘Randolph, do you have any children who sing?’” he recalls. “I said, ‘I’ve got hundreds of them.’ She said, ‘Bring me 20,’ and they recorded with me and she took them to France.”
The lessons went both ways. “Children remind me personally of the purity and the joy that’s supposed to overwhelm everything. You have to go for that feeling.”
Upon his retirement as a teacher, Noel set out to capture emotions like these in the dream project that became
Elements and Orbits. “My own children were older — my youngest son is in his junior year in college — and I had the energy,” he says. “And I also had time, which is the most valuable thing we have. So I said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
Noel assembled a killer crew of players comprising distinguished veterans such as saxophonists David Glasser and Lance Bryant, bassist Kenny Davis and trombonist Clifton Anderson, plus a pride of young lions led by drummer Jarrett Walser and trumpeter James Haddad. The ensemble excels on the likes of “Big Daddy,” a buoyant swing session Noel penned as a tribute to his grandfather, and “Jitterbug Waltz,” a sophisticated rendering of the Fats Waller chestnut.
“They’re wonderful musicians and wonderful people, too,” Noel enthuses. “They came to the session with the intent of realizing the music and being humble. They would ask me, ‘How do you want this to feel?’ and they made sure they followed through and realized it.”
Even larger in scope are a pair of tracks that boast sparkling arrangements for bass clarinet, oboe, French horn and a 12-piece string section: the lush, swoon-inducing “A New Romance,” and “Grand Bay/Top Hill,” a sweeping mood piece that Randolph initially penned in 1982. “A lot of these pieces have been brewing for a while,” he concedes with a chuckle.
The complex, rewarding effort dubbed “Episode From a Coincidence” has an even longer backstory. “The theme I took from a notated piece for two pianists and two percussionists I wrote in 1979 at the University of Buffalo,” he says. “I started thinking about using it in the 1980s. I didn’t get to it then, but I got to it now.”
The wait for
Elements and Orbits was worth it, and if the job demands of a music teacher delayed its arrival, Noel doesn’t exhibit the slightest resentment. In his words, “I am very blessed and very fortunate.”
https://open.spotify.com/album/3i7splORCsSE8CBLDzt2oB?si=y32TangLS4263EwmzaHBHw
Featured photo by Andre Maier.
