Welcome to my website, Bill Stevens Music. From the menu tab above you can find information about my music and the groups I perform with including my calendar, as well as checking out my current and past projects. You can read my blog, Fragile Beauty or check out my pedagogy page and much more. At the bottom of this page you can sign up to receive my newsletter and a button to follow me on Spotify, SoundCloud and Bandcamp. If you might be interested in more information including the booking of one of my groups you can reach out to me through my contacts page. Thanks for visiting and I hope to hear from you.
2023 Event Series...
When New York City was issued the shelter in place directive in March 2020 you couldn’t help but feel that this was going to be with us for quite some time. Much of what I started to compose during this time was dark, emotionally stark and I felt that I really needed to come up with a project that lightened the mood to give us some hope. I had the idea of doing a series of interpretations on the music of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Bjork.
Not being able to connect in person to play and record the music, I took the steps to do the project remotely and called upon another group of musicians to join me in this project. I looked to release this material in 2023 and the Events Series that would be released will be titled “A New Day, Yesterday”. It features a group of younger musicians I had been performing with, along with some long time friends dating back to my college days while at Fredonia.
I re-interpreted the songs Blackbird, Come Together and Tears in Heaven in a sort of unplugged manner featuring Richard Philbon (flute, bass clarinet & alto sax), Andy Berman (guitar), Luca Rosenfeld (acoustic & electric bass) and Gary Fogel (percussion). The remaining four songs were meant for a small group type fusion band - Beautiful Boy, All is Full of Love, Hunter and George Harrison’s Something. For these pieces I created settings on GarageBand while I brought in my long time friend Steve Anagnost to feature on guitar.
To learn more about my thoughts and inspiration concerning this project, you can read my program notes: A New Day, Yesterday. My plan in 2023 is to release one piece each month from March to September while the full album will be available to listen to as a playlist on Spotify here.
Listen on Soundcloud:
Blackbird, Paul McCartney, arr. by Bill Stevens, featuring Richard Philbon, flute; Andy Berman, guitar & Luca Rosenfeld, bass
Beautiful Boy, John Lennon, arr. by Bill Stevens, featuring Steve Anagnost, guitar
Come Together, The Beatles, arr. by Bill Stevens, featuring Bill Stevens, trumpet with effects; Richard Philbon, bass clarinet & Gary Fogel on percussion
All is Full of Love, Bjork, arr. by Bill Stevens, featuring Bill Stevens, trumpet with effects
Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton, arr. by Bill Stevens, featuring Richard Philbon, alto sax; Andy Berman, guitar & Luca Rosenfeld, bass
Hunter, Bjork, arr. by Bill Stevens, featuring Bill Stevens, flugelhorn and Steve Anagnost, guitar
I hope that you will take the time to check out these new arrangements that I refer to as interpretations throughout 2023. I look forward to sharing them with you and as always, I look forward to hearing from you as well.
