[Dixielandjazz] Preserving The Music

[Steve Barbone]

See paragraph 5. Stuck in the past????????

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



Beloved Styles, Crossing and Colliding

NY TIMES - By ANTHONY TOMMASINI - November 18, 2006

For months the American Composers Orchestra has been touting an adventurous
collaborative program with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. But as the
concert on Thursday night at the Rose Theater showed, bold collaborations
are sometimes easier to plan than to pull off.

The linchpin was still George Gershwin, a pioneer in bridging the worlds of
the jazz club, the musical theater house and the concert hall. And the major
offering took place as planned: the premiere of ³The Migration Series,² an
ambitious 30-minute work by the composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel, who,
in the spirit of Gershwin, has moved among the worlds of jazz, rock and
classical contemporary music. The premiere was conducted by Steven Sloane,
who presided effectively over the entire program.

But a spokeswoman for the American Composers Orchestra said that Mr.
Bermel¹s piece had proved so time-consuming to rehearse that three heralded
works had been dropped at the last minute, including Charles Mingus¹s
³Revelations² and John Lewis¹s ³Milano,² both seldom-heard scores by jazz
giants. 

Instead the combined ensembles added several Gershwin songs to an announced
group, mostly in arrangements by Nelson Riddle. Patti Austin was the
alluring vocalist in ³By Strauss,² ³Embraceable You² and ³Lady Be Good.²

Still, despite the brilliance of the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, music
director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and of the other virtuosic
musicians in this ensemble, there was something smug about the playing of
the instrumental selections. It seems unfair to knock staid symphony
orchestras for preserving the classics when the Jazz at Lincoln Center
Orchestra sometimes seems comparably stuck in the past. Moreover, for 45
minutes the members of the American Composers Orchestra were reduced to
adding some string parts to band arrangements.

Mr. Bermel¹s ³Migration Series² was inspired by the set of paintings by
Jacob Lawrence depicting the migration from the South to the North by
African-Americans in the early 20th century. The work opens with a moody
episode built atop a repetitive descending bass riff, with plaintive
harmonies and sinewy solo lines. When he scores bluesy brass chords, Mr.
Bermel spikes them effectively with gnarly modernist dissonance. There were
riveting passages that combined choralelike harmonies with unhinged rhythms;
a bleakly comic episode in which the brass players from the Jazz at Lincoln
Center Orchestra evoked a wondrous gaggle of squawking, whining and pleading
human voices. 

The program ended with Gershwin¹s ³Rhapsody in Blue² in what the program
misleadingly called the ³original version.² The version presented did hew to
the original 1924 scoring for Paul Whiteman¹s jazz band with supplemental
strings. But the soloist, the pianist Marcus Roberts, presented a very free
take on the work, with plenty of opportunities for him and the other members
of his trio (the bassist Roland Guerin and the drummer Jason Marsalis) to
improvise. 

Mr. Roberts is an arresting artist. Blindness has not hindered his ability
to leap fearlessly about the keyboard. Still, this was more accurately a
riff on Gershwin¹s rhapsody and, for what it¹s worth, not what had been
advertised.

The Gershwin program ends tonight at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln
Center, Broadway at 60th Street; (212) 721-6500; jalc.org.