Metropole Orkest: What I Learned About Writing, Production, and Recording by Observing Vince Mendoza
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- 2 days ago
- 9 min read
For many years, the Metropole Orkest existed for me through recordings.
But more than simply admiring those albums, I carried a question I could never answer just by listening to the final result: what made that orchestra sound the way it did?
The quality of the musicians was part of the answer. So were the arrangements. But that did not seem to fully explain the fluency with which the Metropole moved between such different musical languages, or the naturalness with which those languages coexisted within the same institution.
By participating in the Metropole Orkest Arrangers Workshop, I had the opportunity to observe how that fluency was built in practice.
I knew the orchestra through albums, videos, and stories that circulated among musicians. I knew Vince Mendoza’s arrangements, the recordings of Bob Brookmeyer’s compositions, and especially Ivan Lins’s album with the group, a project that had always impressed me because of how naturally a European orchestra was able to engage with the language of Brazilian music.
As someone interested in composition, arranging, and writing for large instrumental ensembles, the Metropole occupied a special place in my musical imagination.
It seemed to represent a rare combination of artistic excellence, stylistic flexibility, and musical production. More than that, it created projects that seemed to exist in a territory of their own, between jazz, popular music, orchestral writing, and the world of recording.
I was also intrigued by the sound of the recordings. They had a balance that is difficult to find, between the acoustic dimension characteristic of a large orchestra and the clarity normally associated with the studio environment.
In 2014, while I was completing my doctorate at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, I was selected to participate in the Metropole Orkest Arrangers Workshop in the Netherlands. That was where I had the opportunity to observe these questions up close.
Despite its name, the program does not function exactly like a course. The institution itself holds an international selection process in which young composers and arrangers submit their work for evaluation. The selected participants spend a week working with the orchestra, attending rehearsals, writing new arrangements, and spending time with musicians, Vince Mendoza, and the professionals involved in the institution’s work.
That year, the project culminated in a concert with Gregory Porter, who was already emerging as one of the most important singers in contemporary jazz.
Even before traveling to the Netherlands, each participant had already received a song to arrange. In my case, I was responsible for writing a new arrangement of “Don’t Worry ’Bout a Thing,” which would be performed in the final concert with Gregory Porter. The work was developed before the trip and went through revisions during the workshop week until it reached the final version performed by the orchestra.
During that week, in addition to attending rehearsals and hearing my own work performed by the Metropole, I had the opportunity to observe the internal workings of the institution and spend time with other selected arrangers from different countries.
Much of that experience was also shaped by conversations with Vince Mendoza, who conducted the rehearsals, commented on the arrangements produced by the participants, and shared insights into how the orchestra functioned musically.
For the first time, the spaces I had known only through recordings and videos existed in front of me.
An Orchestra Built for Musical Versatility
Part of what makes the Metropole Orkest unique lies in its origins.
Founded in 1945, the institution was created to operate within the world of popular music. Unlike many orchestras whose roots are in the symphonic tradition and that later expanded their activity into other repertoires, the Metropole was conceived from the beginning to work in a territory that combines elements of popular music, jazz, orchestral writing, and studio production.
Its formation has always brought together characteristics that are uncommon within a single institution: instrumentation that combines elements of the symphony orchestra and the big band; musicians capable of moving between traditions connected to concert music and jazz; activity strongly connected to radio, recording, and studio production; and constant collaboration with guest artists from jazz, popular music, and different musical traditions.
Over the decades, this trajectory led to collaborations with artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock, Gregory Porter, Jacob Collier, and many others.
More interesting than the list of artists was perceiving how that history had shaped the musical culture of the orchestra itself.
A Shared Musical Vocabulary
One of the most memorable experiences of the week was hearing my arrangement played by the Metropole for the first time.
Anyone who writes for large ensembles knows well the distance that often exists between what we imagine while arranging and what we hear when the music finally reaches the musicians.
In many contexts, the first reading serves mainly to identify problems, adjust interpretations, and gradually build a shared language between the arrangement and the group.
At the Metropole, the feeling was different.
From the first reading, the music was already very close to what I had imagined when writing it. The feeling was that much of the language needed to interpret that arrangement was already part of the orchestra’s accumulated experience.
In a certain sense, it reminded me of what happens when a symphony orchestra rehearses a work by Mahler. The musicians are not playing that piece for the first time without references. They carry with them decades of interpretive tradition, accumulated repertoire, and familiarity with that musical language. At the Metropole, I had the impression of observing something similar in relation to jazz, popular music, and the different languages with which the orchestra lived on a daily basis.
From that point on, the work focused mainly on refinements, balance adjustments, and interpretive details, rather than on building the basic codes of language needed for the music to function.
That experience connected directly with something I had observed over the years while working on projects with symphony orchestras performing repertoires connected to jazz, Brazilian music, and other popular music traditions.
In those contexts, an important part of the rehearsal is often dedicated to questions of language. Articulation, timing, groove, interaction with the rhythm section, stylistic flexibility, and different ways of responding to conducting often require a period of adaptation when musicians specialized in different traditions come together in the same project.
A Recording Session That Explained a Lot About That Sound
In addition to the arrangement written for the concert with Gregory Porter, the workshop included a second activity that became one of the most revealing experiences of the entire week.
During our time in the Netherlands, each participant received a new task: to write a short original instrumental arrangement for the orchestra in just a few days.
The pieces were selected by the organization and assigned to the participants by lottery. In my case, I received “Sponge,” a composition by Randy Brecker.
We worked individually from the hotel where we were staying. I had brought my computer and used a small workstation with a MIDI keyboard to develop the material. The proposal was to create a short arrangement, approximately two minutes long, that would be read and recorded by the orchestra before the end of the program.
The activity functioned both as a creative exercise and as a real-world professional scenario.
What can an arranger produce alone in a few days, knowing that the music will be placed immediately in front of one of the best orchestras in the world?
But the moment that stayed with me most came during the recordings.
On the day reserved to record the arrangements produced during the workshop, everything was already set up. The orchestra was in position, the microphones were mounted, and the technical team was ready to begin.
That was when I observed something I had rarely seen in other professional contexts.
The first reading was already the first take.
There was no separate stage of reading, followed by rehearsal and recording. The musicians received the parts, looked quickly through the material, and the recording began. Then came a few comments from Vince Mendoza, a new take, small adjustments, and another pass before moving on to the next arrangement.
There were seven or eight participants in total, and all the arrangements were read, adjusted, and recorded in that same period. Each piece probably occupied around fifteen or twenty minutes of the orchestra’s time.
The most impressive thing was the quality of the result achieved within that time. You can listen to the recording below.
The Invisible Work Behind Fluency
During conversations throughout the workshop, Vince Mendoza commented that one of the achievements he was most proud of in his work with the orchestra was precisely related to the development of that musical flexibility: the ability to move between different styles, understand the codes of each language, interact with rhythm sections, soloists, and guest artists, and respond quickly to very different musical demands.
Observing the rehearsals, it was clear that these abilities were the result of decades of accumulated work. Questions that often require long explanations in other contexts were frequently resolved in just a few minutes.
Another aspect that caught my attention was the attitude of the musicians themselves. There was a palpable energy in the rehearsals, a willingness to play, experiment, and engage with the music that went beyond simply executing the written parts.
In a conversation during a break, I mentioned this to the orchestra’s guitarist, a very experienced musician who nevertheless seemed to arrive at each rehearsal with the same enthusiasm as someone discovering that repertoire for the first time. I told him that I admired the energy he and his colleagues brought to the work. His answer was simple: how could it be otherwise? He felt privileged to play in that orchestra and to be part of that kind of project.
I have been in contexts where extremely qualified musicians seemed to be simply fulfilling a professional obligation. There, the impression was different. There was a genuine involvement with the music being made and a collective sense that the work was worthwhile.
I was also struck by the way Vince Mendoza conducted the rehearsals. His communication was relatively simple, direct, and objective.
Once again, the feeling was that I was observing an environment in which different parts of the process had evolved together over time.
When Production and Recording Are Part of the Musical Culture
That integration also appeared in the institution’s infrastructure.
The rehearsal room was part of a complex that brought together different spaces dedicated to the orchestra’s activities. In addition to the excellent acoustics, what caught my attention was the permanent presence of technical resources dedicated to recording and production.
Recording was part of that environment in the same way as the instruments and music stands. The technical resources seemed to have been conceived as part of the institution’s own structure, rather than something added later.
That infrastructure also helped me better understand the Metropole’s own history.
Because it emerged from the world of radio orchestras, the institution developed a deep relationship with recording, broadcasting, and musical production. The presence of audio engineers, producers, and technical teams did not appear as external support for the artistic work. These professionals were part of the organization’s identity.
That technical dimension became even more interesting to me because, at that time, I already had substantial contact with professional recording. During my master’s degree in Studio Jazz Writing at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, I had participated in several recording activities connected to the jazz department and regularly worked on sessions involving large instrumental ensembles.
Out of curiosity, I spoke with the orchestra’s technical team and asked whether it would be possible to receive a copy of the recording session files for my arrangement. I wanted to listen to the material carefully, analyze the miking, and experiment with my own mixes. Extremely generously, they made all the material available.
When I opened the files, I found around eighty independent channels. In addition to the traditional main microphones used in orchestral recordings, there was individual miking for much of the ensemble, including strings, winds, rhythm section, and several room microphones distributed throughout the space.
None of this was exactly new to me. Many of those concepts were already part of the work I knew and was doing at the university. What caught my attention was realizing how completely that system was integrated into the orchestra’s everyday functioning. It did not seem like a setup assembled for one specific recording, but a workflow refined over decades. The impression was that much of the sound I admired in those recordings emerged naturally from the combination of musicians, arrangements, room, equipment, and technical team, even before any significant mixing intervention.
What I Took From That Week
When I think about that week today, I do not remember only the rehearsals, the concert, or the opportunity to hear my work performed by the orchestra.
I remember above all the integration between different dimensions of music-making.
Few places have allowed me to observe so directly the interaction between writing, performance, production, and recording happening at the same time.
So many years later, that week remains one of the clearest references I have when I think about realizing large-scale musical projects.
Continue Exploring
The Work of the Arranger and Composer at Brasil Jazz Sinfônica
Another experience that allowed me to observe up close the challenges of writing, rehearsing, and realizing music with a large ensemble dedicated to popular music.
About the Author
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima is a composer, arranger, music director, and educator. A Latin Grammy-nominated composer and recipient of 13 DownBeat Awards, he teaches, mentors, and supports musicians in the areas of composition, arranging, musical creativity, and artistic development.
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