Together since 2000, Groove for Thought began as a group of friends who got together weekly in their living rooms to sing a style of music that went above and beyond what was possible in their college jazz choirs. For the past 10 years, this iteration of the group has tackled NBC's "The Sing-Off," four studio albums, and just released a new video for their arrangement of "I'll Fly Away."

"'I'll Fly Away' is a tune I've been in love with since I was a kid," Groove for Thought lead soprano Amanda Taylor told FloVoice. "There are some tunes you hold on to for years, knowing that you want to try something creative with them someday. Yet, they're so perfect in their original form that you can barely bring yourself to touch them.

"After a lot of (probably pointless) internal struggle and a heap of scrapped projects, I've come to the realization that I have two options: divorce myself completely from the tune and reimagine it as a new song of my own or leave it alone. Obviously, for 'I'll Fly Away,' I went with the first option!"

I'll Fly Away

Taylor wrote the arrangement and produced it with her father, Kelly Kunz, who is a founder and the musical director of Groove for Thought.
 
"The lyric of this tune is such a beautiful one -- it creates so much opportunity for mood (and therefore textural and harmonic) shifts throughout," Taylor said. 

The words paint two pictures -- 'A land where joy shall never end' and a prison. Life here on earth is portrayed as shadowy, wearisome, painful. I decided to explore that side of the story as the arrangement began -- trying to create an underlying feeling of slight distress, a hint of tension throughout the tune.

"Rather than choosing a really 'dark' chord progression to get this vibe, I wanted to try playing with some bitonality. For the first half of each verse, the progression is in Ab, and the melody is in Bb (though the melody has been modified at points, both to fit the chord progression AND to add more of that tension we've been talking about). This immediately added a degree of intensity that didn't seem too aggressive, or too sad -- all we wanted to add was a hint of uncertainty, of mystery.

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"From there, the skeleton of the arrangement was in place!" Taylor continued. "All that was left to do was craft parts around the new progression/melody. Personally, I prefer when the instrumental parts have a distinct, recognizable melodic element… fortunately, our rhythm section feels the same way!

'I'll Fly Away' is one of many new tunes we've added to our book this year and we're looking forward to performing it at our upcoming shows!

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