Teach Me Tonight by Thomas Gunther Trio + Deborah Powell (Orchestrated)

Teach Me Tonight, performed live by Deborah Powell & The Thomas Gunther Trio in Chicago
(Liner Notes by Producer Thomas Gunther)
Teach Me Tonight is one of my favorite pop-jazz ballads.
We like to perform it more as a jazz ballade.
Deborah delivers it beautifully with her phenomenally expressive voice. Stylistically she moves feely between jazz, gospel and r&b, which creates this powerful and unique interpretation.
I'm a big fan of what some call schmaltzy jazz. I love for example those sentimental Nath King Cole recordings he sings with a full string orchestra behind him.
In this spirit, this recording was made from the heart for the heart. And sometimes that’s all we human beings need to feel alive, in a good way. Don’t you agree? And Deborah’s performances always makes her audiences feel alive and well.
How this recording came about.
The other day I asked Siri to play songs in my iTunes library that I either composed, arranged, or performed. Something I rarely do. But I am glad i did. One of the songs that came up was Teach Me Tonight. It completely took me by surprise. I first couldn't even remember how the recording came about. A few minutes into the song I remembered that It was my trio plus Deborah performing live at the Chicago Summer Dance open air festival downtown Chicago, where I performed several times with Deborah and my trio over the years. Unfortunately I can't remember who recorded it.
Anyway, listening to this recording inspired me to create an orchestration for it. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Do you remember those Beatles songs like the Long And Winding Road? You may or may not know that they recorded it only with the band and then later overdubbed the BBC Symphonic Orchestra. That’s what I thought I should do with this recording, and you can listen to the result in this video.
Spoiler alert: Of course I didn’t hire a symphony orchestra, although I asked my wife if it would be ok to sell the house and hire the Chicago Symphony for playing it. Unfortunately she didn’t think this was such a great idea.
Thankfully, today's computer based music production software does a really good job imitating real instruments. I use Logic Pro to record and mix everything, as well as for simulating acoustic instruments like a tenor saxophone, acoustic and electric guitars, organ, and vibraphone. However, for simulating the strings I use the EastWest Symphonic orchestra library.
How I orchestrated it
I simply improvised the strings in from start to finish by playing along with the recording of the live performance. I prefer this sometimes over arranging it step by step. It took me several takes until I had something to work with.
I used this as the bases for my orchestration. Of course, the end result sounds a lot different after I added in other instruments, and started thinking about distributing the string part to the different string sections like cellos, violas, and violins.
One problem you will encounter when you try to add instruments to a finished recording is that the balance might be negatively affected, most significantly the vocals might not be loud enough anymore. Thankfully I have a plug-in for that by iZotope called Rebalance. It did a truly magical job.
To learn more about the band visit
ThomasGunther.com/Deborah
You can hire Thomas Gunther to arrange and produce music for you at
ThomasGunther.com/contact
To set up private lessons with Thomas Gunther over zoom visit
ThomasGunther.com/lessons