Award-winning composer Tyler Sabbag celebrates his debut album this Saturday at White Label Vinyl
Emmy-winning composer Tyler Sabbag will be celebrating the release of his new EP “Novella” this Saturday June 6 at White Label Vinyl in Twentynine Palms from 3:00-5:00 p.m. Reporter Gabriel Hart spoke to Sabbag about his new record and takes a closer look at Saturday’s event.
“Luce Sull’Acqua” is the marimba-flavored track off Tyler Sabbag’s new EP “Novella,” his first proper solo record after years of composing for film and docuseries like Chef’s Table and Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones.
With six tracks clocking in at sixteen minutes, the orchestral jazz of “Novella” is described like “a half-remembered summer set against the Mediterranean coast, an enchanting dreamscape shaped more by longing than historical fact.” Yet for such languid atmospheres, Sabbag says some of the recording required him sneaking into a music school at the break of dawn to record undetected, like an orchestrated sound heist.
“That marimba part was recorded in San Francisco at the San Francisco Conservatory of music where my childhood drum teacher teaches, and he knew they had this incredible instrument there, a $25,000 grand marimba. Nobody has one unless you’re an institution for the most part. So he’s like, ‘If we go there at about 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday I think no one will be using it and we won’t be stopping a student from using it basically, so meet me there at 6:30 and we’ll just get in and out in an hour and get the part you need.’ And that’s what we did. We got some funny looks on the way in, but it was all above board. We got in, we got the part we needed, and got out of there,” said Sabbag.
The EP’s recording also went from Sabbat’s Joshua Tree studio to Los Angeles, New York, and Sweden, where he recorded with the full string section of the Stockholm Studio Orchestra. The album is lush and full of cinematic flourish, including harp, saxophones and woodwinds, brass, guitar, bass, keys, vibraphone, and drums and percussion by Sabbag himself.
Saturday’s event will feature a dedicated listening room and art installation with original oil paintings by artist Anne-Louise Ewen, created in response to the music. Vinyl copies of the EP will be available, signed on request, along with prints of Anne-Louise’s paintings.
The release party for Tyler Sabbag’s “Novella” EP is at White Vinyl in Twentynine Palms this Saturday from 3:00-5:00 p.m., free and open to the public.
