Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Wynton Marsalis & the LCJO at the Schnitz
The lobby of the Schnitzer seemed more casual for sure than it does during many other Oregon Symphony sponsored events. There certainly more middle aged and elder men who looked like they had all spent significant amounts on vinyl phonograph records back when they were the medium of the groove.
It would be unjustified and untrue to downplay the roll that Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln play in maintaining and being a standard bearer for a very important part of this country's musical and cultural history. I get damned tired of Stanley Crouch but whatever Falstaffian or Socratic impact he had on WM during the first transition of doing so-called "serious" works of jazz. If I recall this all started to change when the album with the Matisse cover, The Majesty of the Blues came out.
A fourth of the July 2 concert at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland Ore. was devoted to the originals from Wynton and saxophonist Ted Nash that were a part of big commissions with sounds gospel, Brazilian, Spanish and experimental thrash that still swings. The latter a good way to describe Nash's portrait of Salvador Dali with angular contrasting horn battles and odd rhythms (Marsalis: "I think its in 13/8, how do you count that? You don't. You feel it.") I wasn't necessarily overwhelmed with the composition, but my reaction was not the high creased nose wrinkle that was on my mother's face when the house lights came on. "I didn't like tht one."
JLCO enshrines all kinds of American jazz and world music, but it seems to always have taken a special charge with the music of Duke Ellington. Weds. saw two excursions to Dukeville. One was Braggin' in Brass, an Ellington chart recorded in the late thirties and basically not played again. In the intro, Marsalis commented how difficult the triple tonguing parts were for trombone and trumpet. Afterwards, he said he thought that was the best trombone playing he had ever heard on that tune. The other major Ellington work was a feature for the bass clarinet playing of 78 year old Joe Temperley who dueted with pianist Dan Nimmer. A Rose with a Single Thorn from the Queen Elizabeth Suite is a performance I don't think my mother or I are likely to forget, nor would any of the rest of that audience. It talked to the listener with a saunter with the rolling brook motion of a deep wind instrument. In his introduction Wynton gave very high props to Temperley and his contribution to jazz. He even played with Ellington's band.
Besides Duke and the Wynton commissions, this orchestra played a variety arrangers and styles, from the fifties and sixties. The evening began with Appointment in Ghana by sixties Mingus contemporary and sometimes partner Jackie McLean. It opener that was able to introduce a lot of what the audience is in for, swing, a ferocious rhythm section and, of course, some of the most intense brass work you can imagine. Oliver Nelson was also evident with his swinging hard arrangement of Down By the Riverside. This and to some degree the C-Jam Blues that featured some local musicians were the closest the band came to a mor Basie-like swing. Trombonist Chris Crenshaw's chart of Wayne Shorter's House of Jade had such a feeling of Shorter although the tune was unfamiliar to me. The highlight of these tunes for me LCJO drummer Ali Jackson's arrangement of Gigi Gryce's Hymn of the Earth and the encore of Horace Silver's Cape Verdun Blues.
McLean, Nelson, Shorter, Gryce and Silver as well as Ellington! Wynton and his men are both spreading class and holding it. I had seen the orchestra back in 1999, the year of the Ellington centennial. Even though they had two full sets, I felt both concerts went by too darned fast. Wouldn't be great if the Orchestra could park itself a few days and pull a bunch more extraordinary tunes from their book of the greatest music America produced.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:59 PM
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