VOYAGE (2021)

General Information

Click here to listen to VOYAGE on the streaming platform of your choice!

Commissioner: Studio-recorded jazz fusion album project with saxophonist Roshan Nayar
Written: June 2020 – July 2021
Release Date: October 29th, 2021
Duration: ca. 41’
Instrumentation: core section of saxophone, piano, electric bass, and drums; auxiliary instruments include electric and acoustic guitars, string octet, French horn, reed quartet, vocals, synthesizers and electronic effects

Recording Personnel

Roshan Nayar (soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet), Benjamin Beckman (piano, guitars, French horn, vocals), Ethan Moffitt (electric bass, viola), Carter Boyle (drums), Tony Kukavica and Megan Chang (violins), Sarah Kave (cello), Maura Tuffy (vocals), Jack Riley (guitars, hand percussion, engineer)

Perusal Score

~ This score below is intended for perusal purposes only, and may not be used for performance. To obtain performance materials, please click here. Thank you! ~

Liner Notes

VOYAGE is a musical journey, an odyssey of creativity, exploration, and reflection. A concept album with a programmatic trajectory, its structure forms an arc that narrates the progression of an expedition. We begin with You Don’t Know You’re Lost – a piece that captures a feeling of wanderlust, an ambition or drive to set off into the unknown. Whether we recognize it or not, many of us with these feelings are already lost in our world. An ascending perfect fifth gesture, repeated throughout the album, heralds our time to set out: Departure is an exhilarating and intricate track that harmonizes its melody twice – initially, unstable and uncertain of what is to come; at the piece’s conclusion, in full force, ready and raring to go. We have left our home, our place of comfort, setting out on Pathway as the band navigates twists and turns of varying textures and rhythmic changes. This track marks the first instance of vocals on the album, a marker of our progress – a light to guide us travelers on our long and winding road. But our voyage is not only in the literal, as we see something Through the Haze – a vision of the beyond, of a destination, of a light at the end of the tunnel. A gentle and eventually uplifting ballad, the track reminds us of what we have lost as we continue on our way, a prayer that our memories are only blessings. But our vision is fleeting, and our voyage must continue, as we Traverse further onwards. At some points gentle and delicate, at others angsty and harsh, the track’s harmony meanders through a series of descending fifths. We are further and further lost in some spiral, reaching towards a destination but never making any progress at all. At last, we arrive at a bed of Mists, confused, disoriented, and perhaps wary: but soon they clear, revealing great peril. Harrower is a blindingly fast and intense track, propelled by the exhilaration of being on the edge, of being only this close to destruction. But through it all, we remain determined to continue. After the moment of danger recedes, we finally, and at long last, reach Zenith, the emotional summit of our journey and the musical climax of the album. An 8-minute-long voyage in itself, the in-unison djent climax of the piece is the apex of the album’s arc: our journey’s end is finally in sight. But within view of our terminus, we reach Disjunction, which confronts us with a question: is our true goal in our destination, or in the journey that we experience along the way? The concluding track, Beyond – a more contained but more mysterious semi-reprise of the album’s opening – serves to leave that question ambiguous. But in its depths, we do realize one thing: for all of the distance we have traveled, there is still so much more that lies beyond our horizons, waiting for the next voyage to come.

General Blurb

“The roots of VOYAGE began in the early summer of 2020. With COVID-19 causing the cancellation of live musical performances across the country, Ben and Roshan decided to take gap semesters from school and collaborate on a project. The result? A genre-bending instrumental concept album that pushes the boundaries of rhythm, harmony, technique, and orchestration.

VOYAGE is an explorative journey with a through-line from beginning to end. Drawing on influences from modern Classical, prog rock, pop, and traditional Indian and Jewish music, the album strives to venture far beyond the standard realm of jazz fusion. Ben’s writing and Roshan’s performance fuse into a thought-provoking, emotionally charged work of art, enjoyable for anyone from the casual listener to the professional musician.

VOYAGE will be recorded live in a premier Los Angeles studio in January 2021 with hopes of releasing in June.” – Kickstarter Webpage

Awards

ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Jazz Composer Award (2022)
New York Youth Symphony First Music Commissioning Award (2023)

Press

Benjamin Beckman ’24 embarks on a musical odyssey new album “VOYAGE”

"On Friday, listeners are invited to embark on an odyssey led by Benjamin Beckman ’24, an undergraduate student composer with a passion for innovative musical storytelling. 
In June 2020, Beckman was contacted by his high school friend Roshan Nayar to produce an instrumental jazz fusion album. Beckman had taken a leave of absence due to COVID-19 restrictions canceling music events on campus. 
“I think stylistically this album is very odd, there’s not much out there that’s like this — instrumental jazz rock, new classical fusion,” Beckman said. 
Although he has composed contemporary classical music in the past, this was his first foray into jazz. Throughout the creation process, Beckman drew inspiration from Armenian jazz pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan, guitarist and composer Shubh Saran, the progressive rock band Thank You Scientist and T.R.A.M., a jazz metal fusion band led by guitarist Tosin Abasi. According to Beckman, it’s unusual to combine such different musical styles. 
In composing the music for this album, Beckman sought to occupy a niche that reflected the mantra “Write the music you want to listen to” — a quote used by his former mentor Sean Shepherd. 
“‘VOYAGE’ fits this weird niche,” Beckman said. “‘VOYAGE’ is filled with a lot of metrical play and really interesting polyrhythms and time signature shifts, as well as a tonal harmony that’s informed by the genre conventions of contemporary classical music. Especially the tracks ‘Through the Haze,’ ‘You Don’t Know You’re Lost’ and ‘Zenyth,’ have large string parts and really orchestrated-out texture that I think I only could have done because of my classical background.” 
Beckman also incorporated jazz elements such as textured vocals. “There are no lyrics. It’s ‘doo’s and ‘da’s and ‘ooo’s,” Beckman said.
In the album, Beckman sought to push the bounds of musical convention and genre, while exploring various textures and emotions. The first track, “You Don’t Know You’re Lost,” reflects a feeling of wanderlust which prompts the listener to begin a journey upon hearing the next track, “Departure.” 
“This is a concept album in that all of the tracks string together, and it’s a semi-programmatic narrative of some sort of voyage, some sort of journey,” Beckman said.
According to the liner notes written to accompany the album, “VOYAGE” is an odyssey of creativity, exploration and reflection. From the first track “You Don’t Know You’re Lost” to the last track “Beyond,” listeners may realize that “for all of the distance we have traveled, there is still so much more that lies beyond our horizons, waiting for the next voyage to come,” he said.
Beckman utilized a number of continuous transitions between songs to further embrace the concept album approach. “You Don’t Know You’re Lost” leads straight into “Departure,” “Mists” goes straight into “Harrower” and “Disjunction” goes straight into “Beyond.”
“Continuously, the material from one passes over to the next,” Beckman explained. “This is an album that should be a rewarding experience to listen to from top to bottom. So when you have tracks that feed into each other nicely, it keeps the energy going across the whole album.”
Beckman described the tracks as ranging from being “incredibly winding and rhythmically complicated” to “ambient.” The album takes advantage of its role as a concept album to feature multiple different themes and emotions. “Through the Haze” is a slow ballad, while the end of “Zenith” borders on metal music. 
The process of creating this album has caused Beckman to rethink the direction of his career and consider embarking on a new voyage of his own. 
“This album process has been such a blast and I really love this music, so I am definitely going to make another progressive jazz album within the next couple years,” Beckman said.
Now, Beckman hopes to freelance as a composer and performer in the future. 
In January, Beckman recorded the album’s core instrumentation — saxophone, piano, bass and drums — in a studio in Los Angeles. In May, the strings and the string quartet were recorded. A month later, Beckman recorded textural vocals with Maura Tuffy MUS ’21. The editing and production phase followed. 
“There is a lot of work that needs to be done to audio in order to make it a really fully-produced studio recording — tuning any slightly out-of-tune note, shifting a slightly offbeat rhythm so that everything flows super well and then adding synths and electronic effects,” Beckman said. “There are tons of stuff like little delays here and there, little reverb shifts here and there, sub bass boosts just to keep the energy going through the whole album and give everything its own unique texture.” 
Jack Riley, a high school friend, was in charge of mixing the album. Riley’s and Beckman’s friend Sannivas Reddy then mastered the album in September. Beckman chose a late October release date in order to build up anticipation for the album. 
Prior to the album’s release, Beckman sent pre-release codes to the people who supported the album financially on Kickstarter. David Ewing ’23 had received special early access to “VOYAGE.” 
According to Ewing, “Balancing unbridled excitement with virtuosic orchestration, “VOYAGE” takes the listener on an expedition through the mind of Benjamin Beckman — a place in which only the brave and wild-of-heart have dared to step forth.”
More information on “VOYAGE” may be found on the Bandcamp website linked above and Beckman’s Instagram. “VOYAGE” is available to stream on Spotify and for sale on Bandcamp. – Kayla Yup, Yale Daily News

Ben Beckman ’24 embarks on a voyage

“During his leave of absence, composer Ben Beckman ’24 is co-producing an album that he hopes will break the boundaries of typical jazz music.
The project began in June, when Beckman’s high school friend Roshan Nayar contacted him about producing an instrumental jazz fusion album together. Beckman, who had already opted to take a leave of absence due to the lack of music events on campus, was excited about the project. He and Nayar plan to record their album, titled “VOYAGE,” in January, before they return to college.
“[The album is] so stylistically blended between jazz and classical, harmony and prog rock, and instrumental metal and all these other genres,” Beckman said. “It’s not deadset jazz fusion and it’s not any of these other genres; it exists in a space that we’re not boxing in any way.”
For the album, Beckman said they wanted to unify the songs around a “concept element” rather than having a collection of distinct tracks. The two finally landed on the theme of growing, which also inspired the album’s title.
“The theme that we landed on was this idea of explorations, and what it means to explore,” Beckman said. “Exploration also becomes a journey.” 
Before this project, Beckman had never written jazz music for performance. To move beyond traditional jazz and jazz fusion styles in the album, Beckman both drew from his background in classical concert music composition and took inspiration from prog rock, instrumental metal and Indian classical music.
Beckman hopes to innovate with his music but also attract listeners. He tries to achieve this by experimenting with rhythm throughout the album.
During the writing process, he asked himself, “How insane rhythmically can we make these tracks and still keep them so that people can jam out to them?”
Songs on the album explore this theme in different ways. A track on the album called “Harrower” opens with complicated saxophone and piano runs, Beckman said, and frequently changes time signatures — a notation representing beats per measure — to replicate the sensation of being in a harrowing, “close call” situation. In one section of the piece, the time signature quickly switches from 2/4, or two quarter note beats, to 4/4, or four quarter note beats, and then to 10/16, or ten sixteenth note beats. Another song called “Through the Haze” builds on a ballad-like melody by combining acoustic guitar and piano with a bass typically used in trap, hip hop and EDM music.
Nayar is a jazz performance major specializing in saxophone at the Frost School of Music in Miami. Beckman and Nayar’s creative collaboration began when Beckman wrote a saxophone and piano piece for Nayar at the end of his senior year of high school. Beckman and Nayar also reached out to fellow musicians in college to serve as background musicians and sound engineers. According to Beckman, working with other college students “feeds his energy” and allows him and Nayar to steer artistic direction without an adult authority figure.
To raise funds for hiring musicians and renting a studio, Beckman and Nayar launched a Kickstarter page on Nov. 12. Two track demos released on SoundCloud are included on the page.
Even though Beckman’s composition background is in contemporary concert music, he found it thrilling to write music for non-classical instruments — including a drum kit and electric bass — and to learn about audio engineering and mixing.
“Going outside of [classical concert music] was a big step for me in terms of my artistic development and growth,” Beckman said. “I’ve definitely started to broaden my eyes, and I’m trying to think about ways I can work towards a lot more genre-ambiguous music. This project has really expanded my practice.”
Beckman and Nayar plan to release the album in June 2021.” – Marisol Carty, Yale Daily News

“This fall, I took a gap semester to work on an album with Roshan Nayar, a friend from high school studying saxophone at the Frost School of Music in Miami. Our goal was to create an album with a through-line from beginning to end that would venture far beyond any standard boundaries of jazz fusion.
Weaving together 7/16 headbangers and piano djent with smooth soprano sax ballades and drone-based soundscapes, VOYAGE is an explorative journey that draws on influences beyond jazz from modern classical, prog rock, pop, and metal, as well as traditional Indian and Jewish music. Beginning in June, we spent the summer brainstorming concepts and working out the overarching form of the album. I spent the fall on the score—the charts for the record’s 45 minutes of music total to 116 pages! With remotely produced demos of two tracks completed in November, we launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise a budget to record the album in a studio. With editing completed in December, we rehearsed and recorded the album’s core instrumentation of sax, piano, bass, and drums at Hideaway Sound in Los Angeles over two weeks in January.
This spring, I’ll be editing our raw material and finishing production for the record, which will include overdubbing synths, guitars, and strings on top of the sax and rhythm section. After it’s mixed and mastered, we plan to release the album this summer. If you told me a year ago that I’d take a gap semester from school to produce an album, I’d call you crazy. That said, I’m so grateful for the chance to have collaborated with so many incredible artists and musicians to bring this project to life. Come with us on a voyage with VOYAGE in Summer 2021!” – Ben Beckman, YUJC Turnaround