Description
One has come to expect the unexpected from multi-talented artist Dan Dean. In the midst of a successful forty year career as a bassist, composer, producer and recording engineer, Dean has in recent years delved into classical vocal works. What began as a project for electric bass and orchestra, 2017’s “Songs Without Words” evolved into a multi-layered, highly ambitious choral work, with Dean himself supplying vocals on arrangements of pieces by Bach, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky. Shortly after its release, he began arranging more classics that inspired him and returned to the studio for this second volume. The result is Fanfare For the Common Man, featuring much loved works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Elgar, and Debussy. From Bach’s Baroque masterpiece, “Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G Major,” to Holst’s broadly cinematic “Mars: The Bringer of War.”
TRACK LISTING:
Elgar: The Enigma Variations: IX. “Nimrod” 4:08
J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G major, “Allegro” BWV 1048 3:10
Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man 3:34
Debussy: Prelude 8, La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin (“The Girl with Flaxen Hair”) 2:33
Holst: The Planets – Mars, The Bringer of War 6:49
J.S. Bach: Cantata “Wachet Auf Ruft Uns Die Stimme”, BWV 140 5:07
J.S. Bach: French Suite #1 in D minor, “Sarabande”, BWV 812 2:50
W.A. Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525 8:04
J.S. Bach: Cantata, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, BWV 147 2:41
Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Scherzo, Opus 21 4:35
Khachaturian: Gayane’s Adagio 4:53
PERFORMANCE:
Dan Dean – Vocals, Whistle
PRODUCTION INFO:
Produced by Dan Dean
Recorded & mixed by Dan Dean at DDP Studios, Mercer Island, WA
September 11, 2017 – September 17, 2018
Mastered by Friedemann Tischmeyer, Hamburg, Germany
Cover photo by Donatas
Photograph of Dan Dean by Steve Korn
Cover Design & Layout: John Bishop
RON SCHEPPER, TEXTURA
Having distinguished himself in a career spanning decades as a bassist, composer, producer, and recording engineer, Dan Dean turned his attention four years ago to the creation of classical pieces using purely vocal means. The artistic success of Songs Without Words encouraged him to fashion a successor, which brings us to the glorious Fanfare for the Common Man. It couldn’t be any more of a solo project: using overdubbing to assemble his voice into choir-like ensembles, the eleven pieces were recorded one painstaking vocal part at a time over the course of a full year at DDP Studios in Mercer Island, WA.
The selections generally approximate a classical music ‘Greatest Hits’ package, featuring as it does material by J. S. Bach, Aaron Copland, Gustav Holst, and others, but in Dean’s hands, the pieces are reborn, so much so it feels like hearing them anew. Technically, the feat is remarkable, of course, but the album is ultimately more commendable for the extraordinary musicality Dean achieves. One is dazzled by the skill with which he’s arranged vocal parts into multi-tiered constructions (the treatment of Holst’s “Mars: The Bringer of War” totals fifty-eight tracks) and replicated the originals’ multiple orchestral parts but even more engrossed by the magnificence of the musical effect. Had The Beach Boys decided after recording “Our Prayer” to create a full album of classical material using the same a cappella approach, something like Fanfare for the Common Man might well have been the stirring result.
The album opens on a magnificent high with the reverential hush of Elgar’s “Nimrod” from The Enigma Variations. That the piece unfolds slowly enables one to appreciate all the better the artistry of Dean’s approach and how expertly he weaves his vocal overdubs into a towering tapestry. Boldly contrasting with it in tempo is the high velocity “Allegro” from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G major. Whereas three other works by the composer appear, including enrapturing renditions of “Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme” (aka “Sleepers Awake”) and “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” Mozart’s represented by a stunning eight-minute treatment of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Never is the finesse Dean achieves on the recording more evident than here.
Certain pieces posed particular challenges. For Copland’s title work, for example, Dean had to figure out how to translate the original’s percussion elements into vocal form, Debussy’s “La fille aux cheveux de lin” (“The Girl with Flaxen Hair”) likewise challenged him in being so rich in tonal colour, and Mendelssohn’s “Scherzo” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream presented a different hurdle in being strongly rooted in sixteenth notes.
Dean begins Fanfare for the Common Man with simulations of orchestral cymbals before moving onto vocal recreations of the work’s majestic brass figures. Gentle by comparison is the Debussy rendering, which using vocal means only captures the original’s graceful lyricism. Meanwhile, the foreboding of Holst’s “Mars: The Bringer of War” as well as its attendant percussion and brass parts are all effectively realized. Word has it that Dean, emboldened by the success of the first two volumes, is already hard at work on a third. One expects that it’ll likely match the first two for quality and take its rightful place as the third component in this remarkable project. Of course, it also might well extend into additional volumes, given the massive amount of orchestral material available to him.
MARTY FRIEDMAN, WICN, WORCESTER
So, after a forty -year career as bassist, composer, producer and recording engineer, what do you do next? Why, you sing the parts to famous orchestral pieces, overdubbing to create alternative chorale-based works – of course!
We have two new CDs from Dan Dean, with a track from each during this show.
In the first hour you’ll hear a track from Mr. Dean’s Fanfare for the Common Man, taking its title from Aaron Copland’s popular work.
Featuring well-known and instantly recognizable pieces from Bach and Mozart, the CD also includes lesser-known works such as Katchaturian’s Gayane’s Adagio, used in the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
On today’s show we have a piece by Debussy for your Contemplative Hour.
Specifically, for each of the eleven pieces, Mr. Dean has taken all of the orchestral parts -on the order of twenty or so – and performed them with his voice instead. For each voicing, Mr. Dean needed to pick the appropriate vowel sound, since there were no actual lyrics. All the recorded voice parts were then dubbed together to create the chorale effect.
You’ll notice the superb sound on this CD, which is what you would expect from a recording engineer. Also, it is interesting how perfect the chorus sounds compared with an actual chorus. That’s what you can achieve when you have control of the entire process, including the singers!
DAN McCLENAGHAN, ALL ABOUT JAZZ
5-STARS Songs Without Words (Origin Classical, 2017) opened the door to Dan Dean’s giant step into “going vocal”— an innovative approach to his choir-like voice-layering presentations of classical music. Rain Painting (Origin Records, 2021), teaming Dean with guitarist John Stowell, proved a perfect digression into Stowell’s distinctive compositions, employing Dean’s vocal harmonies, bass playing and drum programming with Stowell’s guitars, before Dean’s return to the world of classical music with Fanfare For The Common Man.
To be clear here: these multiple voice sounds are created using one voice—Dan Dean’s, portraying the sounds of the timbres of brass and string instruments via the studio wizardry of layering and overdubs, laid down painstakingly one part at a time then assembled into a symphonic complexity and grandeur. Works from the pens of J.S. Bach, Debussy, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Holst, Copland and more unfold with reverence for the tradition combined with the audacity of a strikingly novel approach to presentation.
In his liner notes for Fanfare For The Common Man, Dean writes of drawing inspiration from his behind-the-wheel classical radio station listening sessions during his drive-to-the-studio commutes in Seattle, absorbing the sounds as a balm of sorts during the frustrating stop-and-start sludge of logjam traffic, timeless sounds serving up a soothing effect. That has transferred to this recording. A lights dimmed, late night kicked-back-in-the recliner spin of this music says Fanfare For The Common Man sounds like an inevitable work of art, centuries old (Mozart, Bach), summoning embedded-in-the-DNA Gregorian chant harmonics from a thousand years ago, radiating a calming sense of spirituality and wonder.
From Gustav Holst’s early twentieth century work, Planets, we hear “Mars: The Bringer of War,” with its dense brass approach, requiring Dean to generate the needed timbres via precise tongue placements on his palate—nearly sixty tracks of this layered into a majestic and brash massiveness. And Dean turns to J.S. Bach, as he did for two tracks on Songs Without Words. He visits the master four times here, including renditions of two of the man’s most recognizable works, “Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G major, Allegro” and “Cantata “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” proving you can’t get enough Bach. (What’s the old joke? Mozart dies and God greets him at the Pearly Gates and says, “Mozart, so good to see you. We need a concertmaster for our Heavenly Symphony Orchestra.” And Mozart asks: “But what about Bach? ” And God says: “I am Bach.”)
The title tune, Aaron Copland’s magnificent early twentieth century-penned “Fanfare for the Common Man” includes, again, a panoply of Dean-voiced brass sounds, and even Dean-voiced percussion parts (orchestral cymbals) in a layered sonic world shaped into a three and half minute masterpiece.
And Mozart, the current Heavenly concertmaster, is here with the ebullient and life-affirming “Eine Klein Nachtmusik, K. 525,” along with Mendelsson, Elgar, Debussy and Khachaturian, in a brilliantly conceived and executed vocal/orchestral work by an uncommon music-making man, Dan Dean.