An Emmy Award-winning vocalist and composer and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) affiliated composer and orchestrator who, seven weeks ago, released an album that was recorded live at Abbey Road Studio 2. This new project is up for GRAMMY consideration for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. They have written more than a thousand works together for an enviable client list including BBC, HBO, Audio Network, ITV and Samuel Goldwin, among others. They have scored and composed for documentaries for film and TV, and their music has been used on every major network and streaming company around the globe. They most recently co-authored and mixed the score for Daughter Of The Bride with Academy award winner Marcia Gaye Harden and Aiden Quinn.
(David) “Jeff wrote, he sang something… He developed a demo of voice and drums to send me, but because there's a six-hour differential between us, he's done all of this and I'm not awake. And then I get it and like, ‘This is cool, I'll work on this’!”
(Jeff) “Always with these songs, I hum things into my phone and then I'll come into the studio, and I'll hash out a melody and lyrics and try and get, in some cases, a full song to David.”
(David) “We have an affinity with New Orleans and having recorded there for many years.”
(Jeff) “When I get the idea for (a) song, just singing it into my phone is enough to get me to put a placeholder, if you will. And then when I know I'm going to have some time to sit down and actually hash things out, work through things, that's when I sit and really put things together, lyrically and melodically.
… I don't feel the need to rush down to the studio when I have an idea. As long as I can get something … recorded, then I can come back to it later.”
(David) “We have been recording at Abbey Road now for 15 years… I can't tell you how many we've done. I'm going to guess 35, 40 recordings at Abbey Road?”
(David) “I would still say that every single time – and I can't think of a time when this is not the case – that I've walked in through the front door (of Abbey Road), this iconic area, there's always fans outside, people looking, taking photos, walking across the crossing. You walk through the door and the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms stand up. And I feel it after 15 years. It hasn't changed at all. I still get that, ‘Wow, where am I’ kind of feeling. And then you walk into studio two; good Lord, I mean, it's just the history of it.”
(David) “You also don't know who you're going to meet walking down the hall (in Abbey Road). I mean, we came out one day, we were doing a recording, and Ed Sheeran walks out of the next room.”
(David) “We started talking about how we felt and how we recorded. And we were both agreed that we get nervous beforehand, no matter how many times we've done this, you get nervous. And I think that is a reflection on how much you care about that specific project.”
(Jeff) “David's kind enough to let me put my ideas down and essentially get a pretty good fully fledged song that I send his way. And then he makes it just a hell of a lot better.”
(David) “After 15 years, generally we finish each other’s sentences quite often.”
(David) “Having a collaboration with somebody that does exactly what I do would be a bit of a waste of time… a collaboration where you don't have the same strengths, but they fit together, you fit each other's gaps. I think that's really important, and we allow ourselves the latitude of saying do what you do.”
(Jeff) “To me it has to be, it's all about the song, right? It doesn't matter who it's for or where it's going to be heard, I think we just try and write the best damn piece of music we can.”
(Jeff) “I don't work FOR The Young and the Restless but I write a lot of music that ends up ON The Young and the Restless.”
“Who’d Have Believed”
“Keep On Movin”