Snakes! – Jack Walrath

Striking and unique, Snakes! is an advanced piece that is simultaneously precisely written and open-ended. Snakes! is well-named with its very slithery melodic and harmonic shapes. It is definitely a quintet piece; the two melody parts are essential for the extreme tension created by their tight harmonies. There is no obvious key center, and we show no meter as well: most of the head is played freely without a set tempo. In these free sections, the rhythm section improvises together around the melody phrases. These are contrasted with two sections at a slow tempo, in which the horns repeat rapidly winding lines in contrary motion over half-note open fifths in the rhythm section. The sections of the head are indicated with numbers rather than letters for easy cueing. Solos are entirely free, out of tempo; the out melody is only the last section of the head again to a final melody note.

There is some harmonic motion, but the rhythm section plays quite loosely. In the rubato parts of the head, "pedals" are indicated; however, neither the piano nor bass are holding these pedals down but rather improvising around the roots as a tonal center. The first and last sections of the head end with more obvious chords, but the coda returns to rhythm section improvisation under the last melody note.

For a piece like this, there is no substitute for listening to the recording as a reference to learn how these players, especially the rhythm section, handle such open-ended music.