[Dixielandjazz] Jazz Meets the Symphony

[Bill Haesler]

Dear friends,
Here I am doing a Steve Barbone for a change.
Passing on information regarding current jazz events.
We here in Sydney, Australia can do the Mr W Marsalis thing too.
The following is from today's Sydney Morning Herald.
Although it isn't quite MKOM.
Erudite DJMLers will have heard (or heard of) our James Morrison.
Kind regards,
Bill. 

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Orchestral manoeuvres marry brass with class
May 6, 2006

Jazz Meets the Symphony
Lalo Schifrin, Sydney Symphony,
Opera House, May 4
Reviewed by Peter McCallum

THE program was called Jazz Meets the Symphony, though for the first number,
conductor Lalo Schifrin's arrangement of Battle Hymn of the Republic, it
looked as though they had known each other for years and were well into
comfortable retirement. Schifrin played a festive solo, full of Chopin-esque
arpeggios and hammered octaves. The amplified piano and orchestral sound was
bright but lacked depth.

The passion returned, however, when James Morrison hit the stage, playing a
Schifrin arrangement of Gil Evans's La Nevada, his trombone solo stalking
warily and angularly, like a caged leopard.

Schifrin's jazz-style completion of the final incomplete number from Bach's
Art of Fugue in Bach into Blues avoided the chromatic complications of
Bach's original (orchestrated here for brass, wind and strings) and it was
as though he had added another piece rather than follow through Bach's
thought.

Drummer Gordon Rytmeister propelled Schifrin's Brush Strokes with
brilliantly light, energised perpetual motion, while in Blues in the
Bassment bass player Christian McBride dominated the full forces of the
orchestral brass with an agile texture, with the mike so close you could
almost hear his finger calluses rasping on the strings.

In a softer ballad, Schifrin's Around the Day in 80 Worlds, Morrison
cultivated a lonely, uniquely coloured sound on the flugelhorn, only
occasionally warmed by vibrato. In the two tribute numbers to jazz greats
which closed the first half, Chano and Dizzy Gillespie Fireworks, Morrison
rent the sky with his signature high notes, torn from the air like ripped
canvas: fireworks, indeed, except no one could accuse Morrison of fizzing or
burning out.

In Miraculous Monk, in the second half, Schifrin's arrangements gave this
great innovator a somewhat mainstream sound that the great radical himself
might not have approved of, though in general Schifrin's orchestrations are
highly skilful.

Despite the variety and his expertise in a cinematic sound, and the
orchestra's well-balanced discipline, the orchestral role in Schifrin's Jazz
Meets the Symphony programs is basically that of a rhythm section writ large
and as a magnet for a big, crowd-pleasing event. In both roles the Sydney
Symphony excelled.

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