Jazz is a social music. The musicians on stage are communicating with each other while improvising, accompanying, and interacting. From duo to sextet, this musician communicates social causes and traditions across his music. You're listening to Off The Record, with Stephen Philip Harvey, where we sit down and talk to a variety of musicians on today's music scene.
Today we're sitting down with Dominick Farinacci. He's a trumpet player and composer who blends storytelling with his music, highlighting the personal journeys of others.
I'm really interested in different kinds of collaboration; especially where music intersects important ocial causes. Over the past few years have been kind of focused on creating, uh, it's called Modern Warrior Live, which brings together the story of a, a veteran, his journey of fighting in Afghanistan and coming back home. Modern Warrior, which in a large part was supported early on by so many friends and supporters in the Easton and Oxford area. The new chapter of this is a brand new production we created that we're gonna be touring nationally in 2026, and it brings together two stories.
The story of Bill Spade, who is an FDNY, uh, world Trade Center, uh, firefighter who survived the collapse of both the Twin Towers and the story of James Polling, who's a US military veteran who fought in the subsequent war that that followed after the September 11th. So I wrote a whole musical score and created a whole theatrical integration around that.
That's been my main focus over the past few years of how can we can, you know, really use the power of music and the power of storytelling to create something that's really bigger than ourselves.
While his Modern Warrior project comments on a modern American story, his reflection series takes on American musical history and classic songs
For My Reflections EP, which is only released digitally and I think we're in the fifth or sixth volume, I really wanted to focus on songs that I grew up playing, um, songs that have, you know, have had the most impact on me, like from an early age, and most of them are just these really beautiful, kind of timeless standards. And you mentioned My Shining Hour, it's usually performed in a kind of a bright, uptempo song, but I really love to like, dig into the lyrics and the meaning, the original intent of each song.
And when you listen to the lyrics, it's not really a happy song. I mean, it's kind of a somber and, and bittersweet song, um, around it. And, you know, that was written, um, with the backdrop of World War II. So I wanted to approach it... I try to approach every song in a way that really kind of brings out the original meaning and intent of the ly, uh, of the song itself.
Dominick Farinacci comes to the Eastern Shore on Friday, December 5th at the Oxford Community Center, playing a duo concert with Aaron Diehl. When asked about the upcoming performance, here's what he had to say.
So Aaron is, in my estimation, one of the great musical voices of our lifetime. His approach is, is just, it resonates with like every aspect of what I love about music.
You know, for me, I always wanna surround myself with musicians who really push me outside of my comfort zone, and Aaron certainly does that in every aspect of his artistry. Specifically for this, it's, it's really special for, for me and Aaron to do a duo concert there. 'cause actually the first time I came to Easton was with a, uh, with Aaron, the two of us playing together, um, in the early years of Monty Alexander Jazz Festival.
This was Off the Record, hosted by me, Stephen Philip Harvey, a Delmarva Public Media production. Thanks for listening to our interview with Dominick Farinacci. To find more information on his show at the Oxford Community Center this Friday, December 5th, visit oxfordcc.org. To hear more Off the Record interviews or to listen to other original segments like this, visit delmarvapublicmedia.org.
