[Dixielandjazz] Do subs de-legitimize a band?

[Stephen G Barbone]

A while back, we had a thread about the use of subs in a band. Some  
musicians felt that by doing so, you could no longer use the band's  
name to accurately describe the band. That the use of subs some how  
made it a pick-up band. Some bands refuse gigs if one regular can't  
make it. They deride Barbone Street and other bands that occasionally   
books two gigs in the same time slot  and uses 3 regulars and 3 subs  
in each band, for somehow cheating the customer.

Other musicians and bands felt that if the subs are competent  
musicians, then the customers get good music which is what they  
bargained for. That individual musicians and bands think far too much  
of their ability compared to that of subs

Fans are also split on the issue.  Some say  it doesn't matter and  
others say the use of even one sub was disappointing to them.

What can happen when a sextet uses 4 subs? Below is an interesting  
example.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


For a Sextet’s Substitutes, a Chemistry Test

NY TIMES - By STEVE SMITH - May 10, 2011

The effect that substitute players can have on an ensemble’s character  
probably varies according to the size of the group in question.  
Orchestras use subs on a regular basis, sometimes for extended  
periods, with no great impact on corporate identity. But for full-time  
chamber groups, consistent chemistry is a key attribute. It would be  
hard to imagine a prominent string quartet, for instance, soldiering  
on for more than a few outings with a pinch-hitter.

With that in mind, you could quibble over whether a concert by the  
string sextet Concertante at Merkin Concert Hall on Monday evening was  
billed accurately. One member left the group last season and has yet  
to be replaced. Two others had scheduling conflicts. A fourth, the  
violist Rachel Shapiro, withdrew from the concert following the death  
on April 6 of her mother, Linda Shapiro Chemtob, Concertante’s  
founding executive director.

Instead, performing alongside two ensemble members, the violinist Xiao- 
Dong Wang and the cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, were four ringers: the  
violinist Lisa Shihoten, the violists Danielle Farina and Mark  
Holloway and the cellist Wendy Sutter.

As substitutes go, this was strong casting, a testament to the depth  
and breadth of New York’s teeming freelance pool. And any concerns  
about cohesion were dispelled by a rendition of Prokofiev’s Sonata for  
Two Violins that was not just polished and proficient but brimming  
with complementary nuance and brio. Prokofiev’s paradoxical balancing  
act — melancholy whimsy, distrustful jollity — is not mastered easily;  
Mr. Wang and Ms. Shihoten nailed it.

“Arcana,” by Kevin Puts, emerged during Concertante’s One Plus Five  
project in which, over three seasons, the sextet unveiled six  
commissioned works, each featuring one of its members. Inspired by a  
dreamy Hawaiian vista crowned by the volcano Haleakala, the concise,  
handsomely wrought piece was more evocative than picturesque; Ms.  
Gerlach, the star player, waxed effusive and contemplative, buoyed or  
buffeted by colleagues who sometimes snatched and mimicked her gestures.

The concert ended with a vibrant account of Tchaikovsky’s Sextet in D  
minor (“Souvenir de Florence”), a deceptively breezy work that  
improbably juggles all that we treasure about Tchaikovsky. The  
frolicsome initial Allegro merges bulk and bounce. The Allegretto  
smuggles presentiments of “Pathétique” gloom among vivacious dance  
moves: “Death in Florence,” let’s say. The finale’s lively fugue is  
leavened with slashing rhythms, then unseated by distant echoes of  
“1812”-style bombast.

But best of all was the scintillating Adagio, an operatic scene  
without words. Mr. Wang, playing the winsome soprano ingénue, crooned  
to and with Ms. Sutter, a suave baritone hero; snatching glimpses  
through a ballroom window, Mr. Holloway’s heartbroken mezzo-soprano  
maiden lamented privately. However much the cast may have deviated  
from what Concertante devotees expect, the players, as individuals and  
as a team, lived up to the marquee billing.