As one half of the Le Boeuf Brothers, Remy Le Boeuf has helped liven up jazz by infusing it with indie rock and electronic sensibilities. But there are some more exciting things on the horizon for the Santa Cruz native, including a debut solo album. “We’ve talked about this a bit, about branching off and doing our own thing,” Le Boeuf says of his and his brother Pascal’s musical partnership.
“That’s healthy for our relationship as collaborators. I’ve lived in L.A. for the last year and written so much music here; I’m excited to put it out into the world under my own name.” In addition to this upcoming work, which he will start recording in 2014, Le Boeuf has been exploring some intriguing musical territory. In 2011, he was commissioned by Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works program to create a work inspired by a Franz Kafka short story. The result was “A Dream: The Musical Imagination of Frank Kafka,” which premiered in 2012. “[That was] one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever done, creatively,” says Le Boeuf. “It was a long, hard project, a big undertaking, but I’m very proud of it.” The toughest part of the task for him was taking jazz, which tends to be loose and improvisational, and turning it into something meaningful. “I intentionally took the structure of the story and wrote music based on that structure, the emotions, how the story develops,” he says. “Jazz is very abstract for a lot of people, so this was an effort to make it very clearly about something, about a story, and for it to unfold and develop with the story and to communicate within that.” In the spring of 2014, the Le Boeuf Brothers will team up with The Jack String Quartet to officially record “A Dream” as their next album. “We’re very excited about that because they are a very big deal,” says Le Boeuf.
INFO: 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 29. Don Quixote’s, 6275 Hwy 9, Felton. $12/adv, $15/door. 603-2294.
