homage to bach

In homage to bach, Reddy combines his love of J.S. Bach, of whom he was a great exponent on both harpsichord and piano, with his love of jazz. He wrote it for his band, Channel 18 at least as early as 1993, because the score was faxed to band member Bruce Cassidy on 24 March 1993 from Windhoek, Namibia, where Reddy was working as a guest lecturer at the time. The piece is in two parts: Reddy plays ‘Prelude No. 1’  from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1, then comes a sequence of chords for improvisation – the ‘tune’ – which still has a resemblance to the Bach. Written sources vary from sketchy lead sheets to fully written out pieces or keyboard introductions, and Reddy performed it as a solo as well as a jazz ensemble piece and as a keyboard duet. The piano solo recording, which can be heard below, is track 1 on the CD reddy, steady, go! (1994; track 2 is from bach to the beatles, track 3 a little mozart a lot of webber and track 4 suite freedom). Reddy recorded the music for this CD in one take and hence left no notated score of this solo version of homage to bach although it may be possible to transcribe it in the future. A more extensive, live recording by due keyboardists Reddy and Andreas Apitz can also be heard below and video recordings show further interpretations.

The ensemble score published here comprises seven pages of extant handwritten manuscript in a mixture of pen and pencil: three pages for the main jazz tune – on the first of which Reddy indicates that he would precede it with ‘Prelude No. 1 in C’ from Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues – and four others showing how Reddy adapted the Bach for sections that he might use at the beginning, middle, or end of a performance.