Decades after making it as the biggest rock band of the 20th century, most all musicians recognize The Beatles as not just great performers but for their supreme songcraft. What's remarkable about their songs is that they're malleable, and jazz musicians have been having fun with Beatle arrangements for years, from Count Basie and George Benson's big band recordings, to intimate settings like pianist Brad Mehldau's solo album "Your Mother Should Know."
Having found success at Jazz, TX with his "90s Rock Night," pianist Aaron Prado was looking for another challenge, and found it with a full-album interpretation of one of the most beloved Beatle classics, "Abbey Road."
In this set recorded live at Jazz, TX, Prado is joined by Jason Galbraith (sax), Andrew Bergman (bass), and Brandon Guerra (drums) for the full album, front to back. Enjoy the show by using the audio player at the top of this page! For an interview with Prado about the process behind "Abbey Road" and a preview of his upcoming projects, use the audio player below, or read on for an edited transcript of our chat.
Nathan Cone: So how did you decide to do "Abbey Road" versus “Beatles night” or something like that?
Aaron Prado: Well, we did the 90s Rock Night a couple years ago. Still, people love it. And that sort of opened some doors for ideas about doing things that are outside of either original music, which I like to do, or standard jazz repertoire, which, of course, is always going to be there. The ‘90s Rock Night sort of proved that we can take different harmony and form, besides just the standard Tin Pan Alley or jazz specific thing, and do something here. So what could we do? And then I kind of thought about Beatles, like, well, what Beatles would we play? For me, the Beatles equals first: “White Album.” So let's just do the album! But the “White Album” is just too big.
Nathan Cone: How would you do “Revolution No. 9?”
Aaron Prado: Exactly! How you going to do some of those sort of weird tape experiments… so… well.... What about “Abbey Road?” You know that one's just one disc, good tunes. So I started to look at the songs. I'm like, wait, these are great, great songs! This could really work. And so that's sort of how we arrived at “Abbey Road,” plus it being such an iconic record, and of course, it was immediately a sensation, as sensations go at JazzTX, and we've performed it maybe three or four times, and hope to do more.
Nathan Cone: So in terms of arranging the tunes, you talked about Tin Pan Alley, and there's a couple of Paul McCartney's Tin Panny things that are on there. But you're coming from a rock background with a lot of the other tunes, like, “I Want You (She's So Heavy),” or “Come Together.” How do you arrange those into the jazz mode?
Aaron Prado: Well, one thing is to realize what to leave alone and then where to expand. That's really the thing. I think we learned with doing some of the rock tunes in the other show, the 90s rock night, is to say, all right, look, this is the song. This is the core of the song, leave it alone. Over here, this is where we're gonna take a solo, expand, get bigger, what have you. And a lot of the songs we actually left pretty much intact as far as the melody goes, and the form, but arranging-wise, you know, with no guitars and no vocal, I have to do some assignments of who's going to do what. And so between the piano and the and the saxophone, that was the primary issue of saying, okay, saxophone, you play this, piano, you play this. Sometimes there's piano on the [original] record, and that's very obvious, like on “Golden Slumbers,” you know? But that was the main arranging feat, I would say. And then just deciding how to, get the improvising in there in a way that would be satisfying to a jazz sort of sensibility. That was kind of the challenge… build those moments in, and then keep the flow of the original. Because the flow of the original includes these medleys on side two, which I guess are like these throw away ideas that didn't make it onto other Beatles projects. But then here they are as these medleys. And they're like these little nuggets and those are wonderful little things, but, they're just these bite-sized melodies, And we play those actually pretty close to the original. And then save the big drum solo at the end for, you know, the big Ringo drum solo becomes an extended drum solo that Brandon Guerra can just go nuts and, and really, you know, stretch out a little bit.
Nathan Cone: But at the same time, I was gonna mention that drum solo, because even though he does kind of go nuts and stretch out a little bit, I still got the Ringo DNA in there, because I've got those drum hits ingrained in my memory. But I can hear both the both Brandon and Ringo in it!
Aaron Prado: That's exactly what we were going for. And Brandon, you know, to his credit, wanted to be very specific about the Ringo parts, because each song has a different, you know, pattern. Each song has a different flavor, with the with the cymbals, versus the snare and the toms and so he really tried to get that. And then, of course, he adds his own thing.
Nathan Cone: What is your favorite song that you think maybe worked the best?
Aaron Prado: “Come Together” is a great tune to play. There’s nothing wrong with playing it like a jazz tune. It's got enough open space in it, that we can kind of feel comfortable just doing what we would normally do. And it's great to kind of have everybody take a solo, got a great groove, and you can be creative, you know, chromatically, sort of moving things around. And so that one, I think, was definitely a favorite.
Nathan Cone: What are some of the other projects that you have in mind for Jazz, TX?
Aaron Prado: Having done 90s Rock Night and Abbey Road, I feel like I need to get back some of my jazz capital, you know, so to speak, to kind of bring it back home. I'm working on a show that's Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, Monk, Duke and Mingus, which I hope to bring to Jazz, TX, and try to show some of the connections between those composers through the language of the blues and some of the voicings in a three horn arrangement. I would like to play some original music there. Recently I had the chance to do a sextet show at the Carver through KRTU you that was all original music, and also featured not only three horns, but a violin, with Dr Nicole Cherry. And that was all original music, and that turned out really well. And I'd like to bring that music to a wider audience, as far as projects that could sort of continue to explore the, you know, the possibilities of playing repertoire outside of jazz, you know, I think it'd be fun to do sort of an outlaw country kind of a show, you know, I've always been a Willie Nelson fan and, you know, Waylon Jennings. I think it would be fun to explore some of the other eras in rock. People said, “oh, when are you gonna do an ‘80s night?” You know, like, 80s rock night, or 80s pop even, I think that would be kind of fun.
Nathan Cone: Bananarama jazz...
Aaron Prado: Ooh, I like what you're saying. I mean, there are a lot of great tunes, you know, you got some George Michael in there, [sings] you gotta have faith, a-faith… that's a good tune! That's actually a really nice tune to play. And there are a whole bunch of others. And everyone would have their favorite tune that we wouldn't be playing, and they'd be disappointed. But there's other things I would like to come around to the “White Album” at some point. I really want to play [sings] “mother superior, jumped the gun…” You could come sing back up on that one. There are so many jazz musicians who have played the Beatles that there's a lot of precedent for that, including the Brad Meldau album that just came out.
Nathan Cone: It proves that [the Beatles were] good songwriters, because I think probably back in the 1960s and early 70s, there was this idea that the Beatles were [just] a rock group, but this is one of those things where 50, 60, years later, we've seen these guys have stood the test of time. They're songwriters, like the Gershwins, like Schubert.
Aaron Prado: yeah, I think that's right, you know, at the time, there's always, there's this tension between, you know, art music, folk music, and commercial music. And what we find is that… it can be popular and it can be art music.
Nathan Cone: Well, finally, in a different genre. You wrote a piece for the Gurwitz International Piano Competition. You were commissioned to do that… but do you have any Inklings in yourself to say, well, maybe I'll write some more classically oriented stuff again?
Aaron Prado: There's a project that I think I can mention, although it's not confirmed yet. But for Dreamweek next year, 2026, have a project in the pipeline to write for a chamber ensemble in honor of Dreamweek and in honor of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, a piece for string quartet plus piano, like a piano quintet, with a text to inform the music that would be taken from one of Dr King's speeches. So I'm excited about that, and with any luck, we will have the Marian Anderson String Quartet in San Antonio to debut. Maybe I'm saying too much, but hey, what are you going to do? It's out there! And I'm putting it out there into the ether. I'm speaking it into existence! Yeah, I love writing for chamber ensemble, and the Gurwitz piece was a really wonderful experience, to hear that come to life. This one will just be sort of, you know, whatever I decide to write, which will be a blending of jazz harmony, 20th Century serial music and something else. Latin rhythms, probably.
Nathan Cone: Well, cool. Aaron Prado, thank you so much, man.
Aaron Prado: Thank you. It's been a great, great hang. Thanks Nathan, and Texas Public Radio, for amplifying the sounds of jazz and San Antonio.
