Quinn Dymalski wants to share a dream come true.
The 2016 Park City High School graduate has released his debut big-band jazz album “Quinny D. Big Band I.”
The album features five songs composed by Dymalski, who is currently working on a master’s degree at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, and is available on all streaming platforms.
In addition to the audio, videos of the songs performed by the big band are available on YouTube.
“I have always thought about making an album, but writing music like this is sort of like making one step at a time,” he said. “The amount of time writing each piece varies, but they do take a long time to write.”
For example, Dymalski spent two-and-a-half months writing the lead-off track, “Buried,” winner of the 2022 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award.
“And I wasn’t constantly writing,” he said. “Sometimes the inspiration is really sudden and sometimes it’s more drawn out.”
Still, when inspiration does come, there are times when Dymalski, a saxophonist, woodwind-doubler, composer and arranger, will hammer out a song in a matter of days. That happened with the album’s closing track, “The Standoff.”
“I actually wrote that one a couple of weeks before the session,” he said. “It was really last-minute, and I finished right before we started rehearsing it.”
Dymalski doesn’t follow the same method while writing songs, because inspiration hits him from different angles.
“Sometimes it’s the melody, and other times it’s the harmonies,” he said. “Sometimes the songs start with a bass line or a drum pattern, and then I’ll build it up from there.”
“Buried” started with the bass.
“I built chords up from there and did the melody last,” he said. “Then with the song
‘Sleek,” I started with the melody, built chords underneath that and derived the bass notes.”
Different factors tell Dymalski when a song is good enough to record.
“Nothing is ever perfect, but there will be a time when I reach the point where I’m happy with how the music sounds,” he said. “Then there is the chore of music engraving, which makes the music readable notes on the page for people to look at. That’s pretty tedious, and if I have a deadline, I’ll have to start focusing on that so the musicians. And that can also be a big factor that tells me a song is done.”
Dymalski began organizing the music and recruiting musicians, a sound engineer and videographer, in January 2021.
“There were 17 musicians, and we had to do rehearsals,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of them here at USC. Many are students. Some were met through referrals who are not at USC.”
Engineer Evan Pruett helped set up and record the sessions, while videographer Marco Bizio filmed the performances.
“Editing was another part of the process,” Dymalski said. “I had one of my friends from Colorado, Kevin Cincotta, mix and master the album.”
The recording and filming were done in two sessions at the end of April.
“We reserved four hours each day, but setting up the microphones took an hour and then we had to tear them down after we were finished,” Dymalski said. “So, we were only able to record the actual music in two hours and 45 minutes each day. It took a lot of effort to get everybody there.”
The album was mixed and mastered in late July, and Dymalski had to bring in a video colorist, Ethan Denning, to equalize the video.
“We had shot the sessions with four separate cameras that all had different color grading,” Dymalski said.
Dymalski selected two more songs — “The Big YEET” and “Nothing Is Certain” — to complete the album’s tracklist.
“I’ve written 16 big band tracks, but I decided to do these five because it takes a lot of time and effort to record just one song,” he said. “Plus, doing a longer album would have taken more time and money.”
Throughout the whole project, including the tedious times, Dymalski kept his eye on completing the project, which strengthened his motivation.
“I knew that the people working on the project were going to do a great job, and I was looking forward to the end product,” he said.
Dymalski’s love of music comes from his musical family. His older brother Derrick plays saxophone and is a film composer. His father George plays electric bass, and his mother Stacy, is a stand-up comedian and scriptwriter, and plays piano.
“I grew up playing piano and being exposed to a lot of styles of music,” he said. “I loved film scores when I was younger, and later got into playing jazz. I love the sound of the large ensemble. As a younger person, I didn’t really know how to get into that.”
The Park City High School music program, led by Chris Taylor and Bret Hughes, remedied that dilemma, Dymalski said.
“I went along playing music there until it was finally time for me to decide what to do,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything other than playing music.”
Dymalski also credits Caleb Chapman, the leader of the award-winning Caleb Chapman Soundhouse music training program, as another major inspiration.
“I’m very lucky, because not every person grows up with a great music program or being exposed to good music at a young age,” he said.
Dymalski is currently studying with composer and arranger Vince Mendoza, who won a Grammy last month for Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals, for his work on “Songbird,” written by the late Christine McVie.
“Vince has influenced my recent work, and the whole faculty at USC has been a huge help,” he said. “Jason Goldman, head of USC’s jazz department, also helped me plan this project and see it through.”
Dymalski is happy he now has something for the world to hear.
“I’ve aspired to have a debut record come out, but up to this point I haven’t made something that I’ve been super compelled to release,” he said. “You may say the songs on the album are a culmination of the things I’ve listened to and the styles of music I have ingested throughout my life. But it’s also my collaboration with other people. It’s really joyous to me to write something and hear other people play it because they bring something to it that can only be done by having a live person playing it.”