"Resolution" for trombone octet

Due to the covid-19 pandemic and the successive lockdowns, musicians and all other artists at that time were unemployed for over a year.
Concerts for an audience were not allowed in Belgium, so the Flemish government spent a considerable amount of money on possibilities to organize streaming concerts.
One of those concerts was "Bone Sounds" from The Bone Project.
Lots of great music written for and arranged for trombone ensemble (from four up to eight players) including my "Resolution" for trombone octet.

Resolution was commissioned by Sandor Hendriks, conductor and inspirer of the Limburg Trombone Ensemble. He asked me to write a piece as a tribute to a friend/colleague trombonist Frans Theeuwen, who unfortunately passed away much too early.
I never got to meet the man myself, but was able to form an image of him thanks to conversations with Sandor and some other colleagues who knew him well.
He turned out to be a very talented, classically trained trombonist. His heart, however, was with jazz music and the fact that he never took further steps in that area was something he himself experienced as a great loss.

I have expressed all the stories about Frans in a piece with several characters. After the initial fanfare I translated the main theme into several other forms. Gradually I let the beating heart for jazz music resound more and more strongly, until the moment that it cannot be stopped and the piece ends in a jazz-waltz (with improvisation), as a metaphor for the liberated freedom. From that moment on, only gratitude and joy speaks.
Unfortunately, an aggressive form of cancer snatched him from this life in a very short period of time.
You can literally hear this, the heart beats faster and faster, stops abruptly, after which the final words of gratitude end the piece.


Alto trombone:
Lode Smeets

Tenor trombones:
Tommy Verschoore
Jan Smets
Bram Fournier
Wim Lauryssen
Jan Nicolaers

Bass Trombones:
Geert De Vos
Wim Bex

Live recorded on 19/03/2021 at Leuven (B) by SoS-Recording