Saxophilia Celebrates Canadian Composers

STRIDE: Metamorphosis. ARCHER: Divertimento. FERREIRA: Nightmare Fragments. SHARMAN: Homage to Robert Schumann. BRANTER: Four Stories / Saxophilia Saxophone Qrt: Julia Nolan, s-sax; Kris Covlin, a-sax; David Branter, t-sax; Colin MacDonald, bar-sax / Redshift Records, limited edition, no number

The Saxophilia Saxophone Quartet was founded in Vancouver in 1996, and here they are presenting a program that consists entirely of works by modern Canadian composers: Fred Stride, Violet Archer, Beatrice Ferreira, Rodney Sharman and David Branter. Aside from the generally fine quality of the music, what impressed me most about Saxophilia is that each member of the group has a GREAT tone, rich and full. I have no idea if any of them ever played jazz, but whether they played it or not I suspect that they listened to some of the best jazz sax players. At the very least, I’ve not heard a single professional European classical alto, tenor or baritone saxist who have such opulent timbres, so my hat’s off to them. In addition, they play with great fluidity, meaning that the music “moves” in a slithery, almost insinuating way, as well as gusto, something else that most classical saxists simply do not (or at least will not) do.

Stride’s Metamorphosis, in four movements, is largely dependent on its rhythmic figures, including changes of meter and asymmetric patterns, to make its effect. The second movement in particular is a classical tango, and I can assure you that Stride’s music is far more interesting and diverse in both rhythm and harmony than those by the vastly overrated Astor Piazzola. By and large, each movement of Metamorphosis is a “fun” piece, a great way to start off the album.

In Canada, at least, the late Violet Archer (1913-2000) is such an icon that even an indie Toronto rock band named themselves after her. She gained her education across the border, here in the U.S.A., studying at Yale University as well as with Paul Hindemith and Bela Bartók, expatriates from their home countries thanks to the Nazis. In this piece, at least, Archer’s music is surprisingly tame for someone who had that educational background. The rhythms are more regular than Stride’s and the harmonies fairly conventional, harking back more to Frederick Delius than Bartók or Hindemith. It’s a very nice, happy piece, but not all that complex.

Beatrice Ferreira (1992 – ) is a young composer who also writes in a contrapuntal style. Her music takes more chances than in the Archer work, particularly with its shifting rhythmic accents, but although it is also quite charming it seemed to me more concerned with effect than in the Stride work, the second movement being the most interesting. This opens with a few sporadic notes played by different members of the quartet before moving into an ostinato figure played on one note by the alto while the other three weave asymmetric figures around it. The third movement plays around with rhythm rather freely, but its different sections struck me as somewhat disconnected from each other. I did, however, really like the succeeding movement, in which Ferreira has fun playing with her disconnected figures in a way that consistently holds the listener’s attention. So parts of it are quite good and some parts not so much.

I was, however, completely captivated by Sharman’s Homage to Robert Schumann, which uses the older composer’s “Auf einer Berg” as the basis for an extraordinarily creative piece of his own invention. One might say, honestly, that Sharman captures the spirit of Schumann without being too literal to the letter of the older score.

According to the publicity sheet for this album, Branter’s Four Stories “purposely” pulls together various elements of all the works that preceded it, but it doesn’t say whether or not these pieces were composed expressly for this album. Whether they were or not, however, Branter reveals a very clever musical mind that can interweave various strands of melodic material and different rhythms and accents into a comprehensible whole. In addition, there is a surprisingly jazzy “break.” immediately followed by some microtonal passages. A very eclectic, fun piece.

In short, none of this is profound music (although the Sharman comes close), but all of it is interesting and well worth hearing.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Aho’s Latest Concerto Recordings

AHO: Concerto for Recorder & Chamber Orch.¹ Concerto for Tenor Saxophone & Small Orch.² Sonata Concertante for Accordion & Strings³ / ¹Eero Saunamäki, rec; ²Esa Pietelä, t-sax; ³Janne Valkeajoki, acc; Saimaa Sinfonietta; Erkki Lasonpalo, cond / Bis SACD-2646

Here is the latest installment in the Bis series of albums devoted to the music of Finnish composer Kalevi Aho. The label’s owner, Robert von Bahr, and I agree that Aho is a major composer. In my view, he is not only that but more, in fact the greatest living composer because he is inventive, does not get stuck in the same style for every work, and is also prolific. But Bis is the only label issuing recordings of his works, and to be honest I don’t see many concert venues—particularly not those who post videos on YouTube—scheduling live performances of his works.

But what is a great but underplayed modern composer to do? Aho is scarcely alone, as we all know, but the fact that one can only turn to recordings in order to hear his music is indeed a problem. I’m sure that Aho gets a hearing in Scandinavia, but it’s still sad. Nonetheless, both he and von Bahr soldier on. Of the three works on this disc, none are brand-new, although the recorder concerto is the most recent, having been completed in 2020.

It would simplify things to say that Aho takes a similar approach to every concerto he writes, but that is not his way. Indeed, the recorder concerto is in six movements instead of four, and the tenor saxophone concerto is in eight. In recent years, it seems to be a “thing” among Eastern European and Scandinavian composers to write works for the accordion, which is why we also have this Sonata Concertante on this disc, but although they seem to get a good deal out of the instrument I wish they wouldn’t. There are just too many negative connotations regarding this instrument—polkas, French musette and South American bandoneon music—none of which is attractive to the ear of most non-Eastern Europeans or Scandinavians, yet once again Aho is able to transcend the solo instrument chosen to write challenging music.

A good example is the slow, moody opening of the recorder concerto, played sotto voce by a bass recorder in F, the most unusual opening for a concerto in my entire experience. The player then switches to what sounds like a piccolo recorder, playing fast passages against other winds. As I’ve noted in the past, although Aho’s music is primarily atonal it is not dodecaphonic or really so outré that an average listener cannot “get” it, and even here there are lyrical passages for the soloist, who apparently has an entire box full of different recorders to play. Some of these melodic statements are actually quite attractive to the ear although they are not memorable tunes. Aho seldom engages in the knife-like, staccato guillotine chops of edgy brass and winds so much in vogue by other modern composers nowadays. He is far more concerned with a progressing and developing musical statement, His music “goes somewhere” and does not remain static. His slow passages are not maudlin or soothing to millennials with jangles nerves; everything he writes has a meaning and an emotion as well as a purpose within the overall framework of each piece. The different movements of this concerto are connected, played without a break in between, and thus provide one with a continuously evolving musical experience. Any composer can tell you that it is not easy to relate the different movements or segments of a concerto to one another; Aho has accomplished this by essentially throwing the accepted pattern of a concerto out the window.

This work almost comes across like a continuous but multi-movement symphony that just happens to have a prominent solo part for a recorder virtuoso. Many decades ago, when I was first getting into classical piano and violin concerti, I told a friend of mine that the solo parts always seemed to me like an “extra added distraction,” showcasing the work of a virtuoso against big-boned, ecstatic and quite Romantic statements by the orchestra. Aho always conceives his concerti as evolving music in which the soloist plays a prominent part but also seems to “feed” ideas to the orchestra or, in some cases, pick up on what the orchestra is playing and develop it him or herself within their solo moments.

Aho is also a master of orchestration, and this, too feeds into his virtuosity as a composer. These works use a chamber orchestra, but even in those concerti that use a full-sized symphony orchestra he rarely has the full group of musicians play together for more that 16 or 24 bars, if that much. Listen to the soft, weird-sounding timbral blends he achieves behind the soloist in the “Coda:” to this concerto for an idea of what I mean. No other living composer, in my experience, can do with an orchestra what Aho achieves. His musical acumen is set at a very high level, and I have yet to hear him wear out his welcome or rely on anything like a composing “formula” as so many other modern composers do.

There is a certain resemblance, in the soft harp and string opening of the tenor saxophone concerto, to Debussy’s La Mer, but the similarity ends within a few bars. If anything, the opening movement of this concerto is gentler and more subdued, considering the nature of the instrument he is writing for, than the recorder concerto. I did, however, wonder about the solo part, played here with a strictly classical tone and timbre. Although I realize that this is “how it is done,” I would have given anything to have heard soloist Esa Pietelä play with some of the warmth of a Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster. The music seems to me to cry out for this kind of approach; note the soloist’s use of a reed “buzz” in the Interludio I. This in itself is a small but significant nod to the kind of innovations that jazz musicians contributed to the instrument.

Perhaps because the tenor sax is a richer, generally louder instrument than the recorder, Aho pushes it more than he did the recorder, and there are more frequent passages using full section work, sometimes with the tympani, and in the third-movement “Vivacissimo leggiero.” This movement, in itself, is an object-lesson in how to write for tenor saxophone and orchestra. One of the neat things about Aho’s music is that it is always different, always unexpected in the way it develops, and never overstays its welcome, and this is even true of this mostly leisurely concerto. It strolls rather than runs through your mind, yet you continually pay attention because you just don’t want to miss anything.

The Sonata Concertante begins in the orchestra with an impressive statement, and as I mentioned earlier, it treats the accordion with respect as a serious instrument. It’s just that I can’t get the other connotations out of my mind, since I was forced to learn the accordion when I was young so that I could play polkas at family gatherings. There’s a certain Bartók-like vibe to the orchestral framework here—I wonder if Bartók was one of the composers who influenced Aho in his early years?—and there is no doubt that Janne Valkeajoki is a true virtuoso on his instrument, having studied it at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. I admit that it’s a good piece, and hopefully you can enjoy it without Miała Baba Koguta or the Pennsylvania Polka going through your head. There are certainly some incredible virtuoso passages here (particularly in the first-movement “Passacaglia”) that will boggle your mind, not to mention the minds of polka and tango players the world over.

I wonder how many other reviews, let alone positive ones, this SACD will receive from the classical media. I know for a fact that there is at least one American classical music periodical that will ignore it, because its editor is convinced that Aho and his music will be forgotten 20 years from now. This is what passes for musical criticism nowadays, but if this makes you feel despondent, please don’t be. Back in the mid-1960s, Stereo Review published a fairly lengthy article trashing Olivier Messiaen’s out put as depressing, pointless and ugly, doomed to disappear not long after his death. They were wrong, and so too is that influential but no longer relevant classical record magazine, which is published less than ten miles from where I live. Within my range of experience, the only modern composer of recent vintage whose music and name were forgotten after his death was Alfred Schnittke, and I could have told them that back in the late 1980s-early ‘90s when he was so much in vogue. Otherwise, as Edgard Varèse once famously said, “The modern-day composer refuses to die!”

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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First Recording of Ethel Smyth’s “Der Wald”

SMYTH: Der Wald (sung in English) / Natalya Rominiw, sop (Röschen); Claire Barnett-Jones, mezzo (Iolanthe); Robert Murray, ten (Heinrich); Andrew Shore, bar (Peddler); Morgan Pearse, bar (Rudolf); Matthew Brook, bass (Peter); Rebecca Lea, sop (A Youth); Andrew Rupp, bar (A Huntsman); BBC Singers; BBC Symphony Orch.; John Andrews, cond / Resonus Classics RES10324

Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) still occupies a somewhat strange position in classical music. An icon for women composers and particularly for feminists, she was a good composer of original and quite personal music in the established German style of the late 19th century, combining elements of Wagner and Bruckner with an overall conception borrowed from Brahms. The problems many have with her work, however, are that her major career fell between that of two other supserb women composers, Emilie Luise Mayer (1812-1883) and Lili Boulanger (1893-1918); the fact that although her music was very good and somewhat eclectic, it sometimes misses the feeling of real drama; and the sad realization that, by the late 1910s, she was considered out-of-date, her music out of step with the innovations wrought by the French Impressionists or the schools headed by Schoenberg, Stravinsky or Bartók.

Yet, as I say, the quality of her work is very high and much of it, though resolutely melodic and tonal, does not resort to cheap melodies or uninteresting harmonic patterns as in the case of Any Beach or Liza Lehmann, thus much of her output still holds up very well in comparison to such contemporary male British composers as Edward Elgar. Her best works, in my opinion, are her superb Mass in D, her opera The Wreckers, the Double Concerto for Horn and Violin and her piano Variations on a Theme of Dismal Nature, yet, stubbornly, the one piece most closely associated with her is the little tune she wrote as a rallying cry for British suffragettes, The March of the Women. It’s no more fair to hold up this tune as typical of her work than to hold up Für Elise as the most popular tune by Beethoven, but this was her fate.

Smyth’s greatest asset was a dogged stick-to-it-iveness. Opposed to a career in music by her father, demeaned by Brahms and prejudiced against in public performances of her music because she was a woman, Smyth didn’t much care. She was a born fighter and rebel, traits she adopted from her tough military family. Her father, John Hall Smyth, was a Major General in the Royal Artillery, and one of her brothers, Bob Napier Smyth, rose to become an Army Brigadier General. Unfortunately for Dad, his personality rubbed off on Ethel, who one day told him to shove it, packer her bags, and went to Germany to study composition. And that was that!!

If Brahms was to praise her music in private (which he did) yet refuse to believe that a woman wrote it, she apparently had no such problems with Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and the famed conductors Hermann Levi and Karl Muck, each of whom supporter her at various times. It was Levi, in fact, who told her to study orchestration more thoroughly, which she did by attending performances of Wagner’s operas and taking notes. By the time she started composing Der Wald in the late 1890s, she was in her early 40s and confident in her musical abilities.

But circumstances other than her gender suddenly arose to scotch things for her premiere of the opera, particularly the Boer War. This, in itself, created political and personal tensions between Smyth and her German musical supporters, but when the Kaiser pinned a medal on a member of the British military in the hopes of salving the wounds between their two nations, all hell broke loose and the German people took a strong stance against anything and everyone British. Not too surprisingly, then, Der Wald’s premiere in Berlin on April 2, 1902 received a “lukewarm” reception, but it was quite successful at its London premiere at the Royal Opera House. Bolstered by this success, Smyth was determined to see it performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. Hearing that the Met’s general manager, Maurice Grau, was in Paris. she caught the red-eye overnight English Channel crossing, arriving in Paris at 7 a.m. She called Grau’s hotel at 8, told him that she had urgent business with him but absolutely had to conclude it before 11 a.m. when her return ticket, in inexpensive one, would expire if she didn’t return, persuaded him to stage her opera and left with contract in hand. Typical Ethel: direct, pushy and persuasive! Der Wald was indeed premiered at the Met on March 11, 1903 as a curtain-raiser to the ever-popular Il trovatore with an all-star cast which included soprano Johanna Gadski, mezzo Luise Reuss-Belce and baritones David Bispham and Eugène Dufriche. The music critics were cool, but according to the CD booklet, the public loved it. In fact, after the first performance was over, she went out on stage—dressed, at her sister’s insistence, in a beautiful black dress with roses in her hair instead of her usual male-cut tweeds, she received an ovation lasting more than 10 minutes. Der Wald was then repeated as an opener to a performance of Pagliacci, also quite successfully; the following year it was given twice as a curtain-raiser to La fille du Regiment starring Marcella Sembrich, and if anything was even more popular than in the preceding year. But then it disappeared.

But according to Ronald Crichton, who cobbled together The Memoirs of Ethel Smyth from three or four of her published books of memories, there were extenuating circumstances not mentioned in the booklet. One was that Grau suddenly died just before Ethel arrived in America to see her work performed, and his successor didn’t much like it and gave it a mediocre production. Another was that both Met performances were “lackluster” and the third, on tour in Boston, was so bad that Ethel’s sister Mary, to her combined chagrin and relief, treated her “like a poor relation.” Ethel’s later comment was that Der Wald was “as out of place in America as one of the Muses would be at a football match.” In her view, the only two ideal performances were the fourth and last one in Berlin and the one Covent Garden performance in London.

In this same book of memoirs (published by Viking Press in 1987), Smyth explained that Der Wald was primarily a paean to nature in which the action of the protagonists passes across that panorama but is not intended to be the focus of the opera. But now, at long last, we have a chance to actually hear it, although for reasons not explained in the booklet it is here given in English instead of its original German (although the English version was made by Smyth herself)..

The plot is fairly simple, juxtaposing a bit of peasant strife against the backdrop of Nature. The peasant girl Röschen is engaged to a woodcutter named Heinrich. While the other peasants celebrate this engagement, a peddler sells his wares, but then along comes Iolanthe,a cruel, overly-passionate woman of the upper class who through sorcery controls the lord of the county, Count Rudolf, whom she hates. Infatuated by the handsome Heinrich, she wants him for her own and forces him into her service in the castle. Count Rudolf is miffed, Iolanthe defiant, and Heinrich still deeply in love with Röschen. Unfortunately for him, the peddler claims that Heinrich killed and then hid a deer in the woods, which reinforces Iolanthe’s ability to control him. Heinrich still resists her, however, preferring death to a love he does not feel. Iolanthe kills him and thus the momentary strife of the humans is over and done. The last scene returns us to the woods where the Spirits of Nature are romping along their own merry way.

Most of the singers assembled here lack not only the glorious, ringing tones of the Metropolitan case, but also the dramatic thrust of their singing. With two exceptions, which we shall come to anon, these are lightweight voices, which has the effect of hearing Tristan und Isolde sung by a touring cast of Mozartians, but what is a poor record company to do? The modern school of British singing is, by and large, geared towards bright, pointed but lightweight voices. Gone forever are the days of Amy Shuard, Helen Watts, Charles Craig and Geraint Evans, and assembling a first-rate international cast today is a pricey affair. Better to have the opera on record than not at all.

Smyth immediately sets a pleasant mood in the orchestral introduction, which is resolutely tonal and gives no hint of the strife to come. Interestingly, some of the harmonies used here are much like those one would come to expect from Frederick Delius, four years her junior. The choral writing for the nature spirits is wonderfully interwoven; Smyth’s great skill in creating melodic lines that flow in a Wagnerian vein is also evident. Indeed, if you just listen carefully and let yourself go, you will find yourself caught up in her exquisite chord positions and the way everything blends together.

The scene marked “Transformation,” by contrast, sounds a bit like a more modern version of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is cantata-like rather than operatic in the dramatic sense of the word. Röschen makes her first appearance here, singing with the chorus; it is Natalya Romaniw, who has a rich voice but an overripe vibrato and not particularly clear diction. Both Matthew Brook, as Peter, and Andrew Shore, as the peddler, have poorly-supported and wobbly voices, but they do have crystal-clear diction. The peasant dance is pleasant but a tuneful and unnecessary time-killer; it is the one weak link in the opera. Our Heinrich, Robert Murray, has a sweet timbre and good diction but also an unsteady tone and a rather nasal high range.

By and large, Smyth’s writing for the solo voices is gracious, staying primarily in the middle of their ranges with occasional high-lying passages—again, like a British Wagner. It is not the kind of vocal writing that will thrill the lover of 19th-century Italian opera, however, as there are no arias in the classic sense. Röschen has a solo that is aria-like in structure, it is an evolving melodic line that builds to a climactic high C, but then comes back to the lower part of her range for the slower, quieter finish to the scene. Smyth continually changes mood, tempo and even meter as the music develops; she obviously learned a lot from Wagner without trying to copy him slavishly. Despite all the touches one can trace back to him, the music sounds like Ethel Smyth and no one else. In the ensuing duet, Smyth heightens the dramatic tension via the use of tympani as well as a quick 6/8 tempo. The music is thus effective but unconventional.

Perhaps ironically, the finest voice in this cast is mezzo-soprano Claire Barnett-Jones as the villainess Iolanthe. She sounded to me like a mezzo version of Joan Sutherland, but with clearer diction and a more straightforward singing style; her technique, even in the few fast passages she is called upon to sing, is faultless. Even better, Barnett-Jones also acts well with the voice and sings with a great deal of nuance. She is, truly, a first-class singer, so much so that her every vocal utterance dominates the scenes she is in. Curiously, Smyth’s music for the villainess is much more lyrical than one might think or like. This is, I feel, the one weakness in the score…unless, of course, her intention was to make Iolanthe sound like a reasonable woman so that she might hold sway over Heinrich. I must also praise baritone Morgan Pearse as Count Rudolf. He has a noticeable vibrato, but it is well controlled and gives his voice an almost Italianate ring. It is no exaggeration to say that the Iolanthe-Rudolf duet is, vocally and dramatically, the highlight of this recording, the one moment that briefly captures what the Met audiences of 1903-04 might have heard. (It was so good, in fact, that I played it over twice.)

In the confrontation scene between Iolanthe and Heinrich, Murray’s voice finally clicks into focus; his high note is hit spot-on. And yes, Smyth writes some pretty dramatic music for Iolanthe, Rudolf and (later) for Heinrich when he returns, just before he is killed and we return to the spirits of the forest. All in all, this is a decently good representation of Smyth’s opera despite my complaints about some of the singers. Conductor John Andrews leads a taut performance in which all the various strands of the music are pulled together into a cohesive whole. It makes a good effect and I for one am very happy to have it.

As a bonus feature, however, allow me to recommend that you listen to Smyth’s early (1888) secular cantata, The Song of Love. Despite great effort on her part, it was never performed or even published in her lifetime, but just given its world premiere at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford on May 23 of this year. The recorded performance available on YouTube comes from July 21 of this year, and is not (yet) available on CD.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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James P. Johnson’s “Jazz Operas”

JOHNSON: De Organizer / Darnell Ishmel, bar (De Organizer); Monique Spells, alto (“His Woman”). Kenneth Kellogg, bass (Old Man). Rabihah Davis Dunn, sop (A Woman). Olivia Duval, sop (Old Woman). Emery Stephens, ten (Brother Dosher). Lonel Woods, ten (Brother Bates). Branden C.S. Hood, bass (Overseer). The Dreamy Kid (excerpts, completed by James Dapogny) / Elizabeth Gray, mezzo (Mammy); Lori Celeste Hicks, sop (Ceely Ann); Olivia Duval, sop (Irene); Lonel Woods, ten (Dreamy) / U. of Michigan Opera Theater Chorus; Michigan Symphony Orch.; Kenneth Kiesler, cond / Naxos 8.669041

Early crossover music written by jazz composers is still very polarizing in the classical community. On the one hand, you still have music snobs who refuse to take these pieces seriously because of their strong jazz element (although they seem to have no problem accepting the inferior music of white guys like Gershwin or Leo Sowerby), while on the other hand you have their rabid partisans who, under the surface, always seem to be pushing it not because they believe in the validity of the music but solely because they were written by black jazz musicians.

I take a centrist view towards this kind of music. I simply review it as music and point out its strengths or weaknesses, in part because I was weaned on jazz and jazz-related music before I went into classical.

And there is another thing. After reading Alain Locke’s book on black music as well as other aesthetic treatises written by African-Americans during the period of the Harlem Renaissance, I take a somewhat more charitable view towards it all. These composers were trying to reach a mixed audience, putting enough elements of pop music and jazz into their scores to try to appeal across the board. It has been suggested that James P. Johnson wrote these operas, in part, because he wanted to connect with the same audience that had embraced Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a work that I happen to like as pop music but do NOT consider, as many do, to be an opera in the classical sense. In a way he was right, and in a way, he was wrong, but since I can put these works into historical perspective I understand his position.

To begin with, Johnson (1894-1955) was a major figure in jazz history. In the late 1910s, around the end of World War I, he invented an entirely new piano style which was eventually called “stride.” It was named this because of the action of the player’s left hand, in which the bass notes hit by the pinky and the following chords struck by two or three fingers were often separated by more than an octave, which gave the viewer the impression of the pianist’s hand “striding” on the keyboard. Although not terribly difficult when composer to some other keyboard maneuvers, it is not really as easy to play as it may seem on the surface, which is why the number of stride pianists was always rather limited, The two most famous were protégés of Johnson, Thomas “Fats” Waller and Willie “The Lion” Smith, although the field also included Luckey Roberts (who had the best piano technique of all of them) and Donald Lambert. The latter is almost completely forgotten today because of his quiet, shy personality: his nickname was “The Lamb,” and it wasn’t just a play on his last name. A few other pianists dabbled in stride, among them Joe Sullivan, but it was so hard to play that they mostly stayed away. Art Tatum, the greatest soloists in the history of jazz regardless of instrument, also played stride but embellished it with phenomenal digital dexterity (he often sounded like two pianists playing together) and a harmonic audacity that was light-years ahead of the others. When James P. first heard Tatum playing Tiger Rag in 1933, he said, “That’s the first time, I guess, that I ever really heard it played.” But Johnson was no slouch; his electrical recordings from the late 1920s into the early 1950s reveal a technique that was even more fluent than that of Waller or Smith. Duke Ellington was also initially inspired to go into jazz after listening to Johnson’s records, but never pretended to be half the technician that the others were and thus never really called himself a stride pianist although he used elements of stride in his own style.

The Harlem Renaissance helped encourage Ellington to begin expanding his compositional range with such extended works as the Creole Rhapsody, which was recorded in two different forms a year apart: a concise, more jazz-oriented version for Brunswick in 1931, which ran a little over six minutes, and an expanded, Gershwinesque version with slower,more melodic themes woven into it for Victor a year later, which ran a little over eight minutes. Music historians, even classical ones, have long marveled at Ellington’s intuitive grasp of French impressionistic music and his ability to translate that aesthetic to his tonally quirky big band in which he had several musicians with what we now call “freak” timbres, but it would take him another 25 years to reach a point where his crossover output, the tone poem Harlem, the tripartite piano concerto Night Creature, and his various suites would finally earn him respect for his ability to cross-pollinate musical genres.

Johnson was neither as lucky as Ellington was to live a long life and thus develop in his senior years—he was not even 60 years old when he died—nor as well grounded in classical principles. He was, to be perfectly honest, more of a dabbler than a serious student of classical form. Ironically, his protégé Waller knew a great deal more about classical music than James P. did, yet even when he played completely extempore improvisations at the keyboard they leaned heavily in the direction of pop music with only a few touches of classical form.

But Johnson was an outstanding composer of popular tunes, which many people either don’t know or have forgotten. In the jazz world, these included his first big hit, Carolina Shout, as well as Snowy Morning Blues and Keep Off the Grass, but even in the pop music world he wrote songs that are still remembered today, among them Old-Fashioned Love, If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight), Runnin’ Wild, A Porter’s Love Song to a Chambermaid, and the biggest hit of his entire career, Charleston. Around 1927 he wrote an extended tone poem symbolizing the life of poor, rural black people in the South called Yamakraw. It was actually produced as a short film (roughly 20 minutes long) with cartoon drawings used as backdrops to the music played by a small band of popular musicians. In that form it was not very impressive, but the full orchestration that has since emerged and been recorded reveals a competently written piece that has pretty good development.

Sadly, little of Johnson’s later compositions, including a truncated Piano Concerto, were anywhere near as good as Yamakraw except for one piece entitled Drums. That one works extremely well, revealing a musical mind that understood the task before it and met the challenge with imagination and good structure.

These two short operas were very much the products of their time. Johnson apparently wanted to capture some of Porgy and Bess’s audience, but at the same time the topics of the libretti were contemporary issues for African-Americans. Following the buoyant, almost effervescent feeling that blacks had during and immediately after the Harlem Renaissance, nothing much changed for them. Locke, along with other black intellectuals like Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer and Conutee Cullen, foresaw a much fuller integration of blacks into white society due to their far greater education which led them to capitalize on their intellectual capacities. Only Langston Hughes seemed to be more level-headed and realistic, realizing that a black man or woman could have a Ph.D., as Locke did, and still be called the “N” word in the South and locked up in jail if they dared to eat at a white restaurant or sleep in a white motel. And that’s exactly what happened. As a result, even Locke, the real Pollyanna of the group, was taking a somewhat more cautious stance by 1935, still hoping that full integration was just around the corner (he even wrote that year that Marian Anderson’s Metropolitan Opera debut couldn’t be very far off, but it was, it was!—by 20 years!) but now endorsing artwork by black artists that showed them as defiant, strong, and unwilling to take any crap from anyone. In this way, he hedged his bets against a future that would, stubbornly, still have grown black men referred to as “Boy” as well as Southern lynching of African-Americans.

In this highly charged atmosphere, ironically enough, it was jazz—and particularly the development of swing—that held the greatest promise for full acceptance of blacks in American society, as beautifully described in Lewis A. Erenberg’s superb book, Swingin’ the Dream. Not only were both white and black listeners attracted to the jazz/swing bands, they were both attracted to black and white bands. White audiences went big for Ellington, Count Basie, Earl Hines and Chick Webb’s orchestras while blacks listened with interest to Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw and even Glenn Miller. Love of the music and its infectious beat which almost forced you to dance one way or another was a common bond. Of course, jazz musicians themselves were almost never racist; they admired the great black musicians too much for that to be an issue; but there were still problems integrating the orchestras. Artie Shaw had trouble in the South when Billie Holiday or Hot Lips Page were band members, as did Benny Goodman when he hired black musicians for his trio and quartet, but both were stubborn enough, and powerful enough in the music industry, to just tell Southern promoters to go pound salt and refuse to perform there. But then came World War II, the big bands struggled (in part because musicians kept getting drafted), and the Armed Forces were segregated, thanks to Woodrow Wilson who completely undid the integration that Theodore Roosevelt had accomplished earlier. It got so bad, in fact, that in 1943 there were violent race riots in major U.S. cities, and then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt, another Democrat, not only refused to integrate the Army and Navy units but sent Federal troops to the cities with the worst rioters to bash some heads in. So much for the tolerance of blacks by Democratic presidents.

With the swing era and racial strife continuing to coexist, by 1938 the American Communist and Socialist Parties finally decided to embrace jazz and the blues as a means of enticing African-Americans to join their ranks. It was a completely hypocritical stance. During the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s and early ‘30s, even during the period when the Casa Loma and Bennie Moten bands were inventing swing. the Communists and Socialists hated jazz, calling it a toy of the bourgeoisie that could not be taken seriously as much because it was cheap and vulgar. I’m sure that, to many Commies and Socialists of the time, swing was equally cheap and vulgar as music, but it didn’t matter as long as they could exploit the black population to create a wedge between it and the white majority. Both the CPA and SPA (Parties of America) sponsored both Union rallies and jazz-oriented concerts such as John Hammond’s Spirituals to Swing extravaganza in the fall of 1938. They also began running Communist and Socialist candidates for Congress in largely black districts. Since these candidates’ first and major issue was the full social and business integration of blacks, many jazz musicians who otherwise had no political skin in the game gave free benefit concerts for these candidates as well as in rallies promoting black membership in trade unions.

I rush to point out that I, like any right-thinking American, fully support and have long supported the goals espoused by these radical parties without supporting the means by which they were to implement them. And that was the problem with this whole era. The Republican Party, which had freed the slaves, fought the Civil War to do so, and opposed both the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws—both of which were developed by Democrats—should have picked up the ball and taken it to a different level, the level of complete freedom from prejudice of all Americans, but they didn’t. In part this was because they were too heavily involved in fighting tooth and nail in Washington against FDR’s appointment of many Communists to government posts, among them, but scarcely limited to, such infamous names as Alger Hiss. Ironically, it was another Democrat, Harry Truman, who both expunged the Communists (as well as investigate them in Federal trials) and re-integrate the Armed Forces, but this was not to pass until well after World War II was over.

This may seem like a lot of information to give in a review of these two operas, but many Americans are completely ignorant of most of this information because it is not taught in schools, and it is vitally important to understanding De Organizer. It is not coincidental that the libretto was written by Langston Hughes who, as I noted above, was one of the Harlem Renaissance writers who was least hopeful that social integration would take care of itself. This is particularly reflected in the fact that Hughes set the opera in the South, where the problems were the worst. In Hughes’ story a group of black sharecroppers, who are essentially treated no differently from their enslaved ancestors, hold secret meetings to create a coalition of black and white workers who feel they are being overworked and underpaid. It is telling that Johnson points out that many of FDR’s “New Deal” programs excluded African-Americans, another historical fact that is often overlooked. Since the opera is quite short (a little over 32 minutes), the action is necessarily compressed, thus the time between their first meeting with “de organizer” and the success of their union-building is quite short. It is more an opera of gesture and symbolism than of engrossing action.

The Dreamy Kid, interestingly enough, is based on the play of the same name by white writer Eugene O’Neill, who had a lifelong fascination with the plight of black Americans. In addition to this work, he is also famous for his groundbreaking play The Emperor Jones (1920), made into a film in the 1930s starring Paul Robeson (as well as an opera with really bad music by Louis Gruenberg). Written a year earlier, The Dreamy Kid was inspired by the story of a black gangster named Dreamy that his “hell-hole” friend Joe Smith told him. Having killed a white man one night and gone into hiding, Dreamy risks arrest to visit his dying grandmother the next day. On her deathbed, Mammy Saunders asks her daughter, Ceely Ann, where Dreamy is; Ceely puts the word on the street, hoping someone will tell him to come. When Dreamy shows up, carrying a gun because he fears having been followed and traced, Mammy tell him that she isn’t scared any more. Ceely leaves to go home for a while, and in that interim Dreamy’s girlfriend Irene enters and tells him that she has seen men looking for him across the street. Yet when Dreamy tells Mammy he’s got to leave, she says, “Don’ you move one step out er yere or you’ll be sorry, Dreamy,” that he won’t have a bit of luck as long as she continues to live. Dreamy eventually persuades Irene to go and be his lookout. As he barricades himself in the room, Mammy tells him how he got his name when he was a baby, “always a’lookin—and a’thinkin’—to yo’se’f—an’ yer big eyes jest a-dreamin’ and a-dreamin.” All the while she’s taking, however, Dreamy is muttering to himself that they won’t take him alive, and how sure he is that they’re sneaking up the stairs at that moment. Mammy asks him to kneel down next to her and pray; he does so, but makes sure he takes the revolver with him. Dreamy hears the sounds of people suddenly walking in the hallway and says, “Dey don’t get the Dreamy! Not while he’s ‘live!” But Mammy thinks he’s still praying and praises him for it, slowly nodding off as the play (and opera) comes to an inconclusive end.

Drama critic Travis Bogard, who wrote a book on O’Neill’s plays, calls the language used in The Dreamy Kid “a crude experimentation” using the kind of broken words that most white Americans thought of in conjunction with blacks. O’Neill improved his knowledge of authentic black speech considerably by the time he wrote The Emperor Jones. But this stereotypical example of “ebonics” is undoubtedly the reason why the opera, like O’Neill’s play, is seldom performed.

Both operas were thought lost forever, but jazz musicologist James Dapogny accidentally ran across a score of De Organizer as well as sketches only of The Dreamy Kid. He received permission from Johnson’s estate to produce the first, then asked for permission to reconstruct the second. Both were performed in the early 200s, before Dapogny died. The music of De Organizer sounds a great deal like some of Johnson’s stride piano pieces, only orchestrated. There is no orchestral prelude; the music opens immediately with one of the women singing about waiting for “de Organizer” to come and help them, set to uptempo music, followed almost immediately by a slow, blues-like number scored for both male and female voices. The music is quite obviously jazz- and blues-influenced, but is skillfully scored and has, for me, a much stronger emotional appeal than anything in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. I must also congratulate conductor Kenneth Kiesler for catching the right rhythmic swagger for this music as well as for choosing a really first-rate cast of singers, none of whom I have ever heard of before. If anything, this recording shows us that there are quite a few good black classical singers out there who aren’t getting the breaks in conventional opera productions. Both in solo and ensemble passages, their diction is quite good if not always perfect.

Johnson develops his “blues theme” in an interesting manner, continuing it into what might otherwise be a parlando section but instead is a continuation and variation on the initial theme. One of the lines Hughes wrote that Johnson uses as a rhythmic motif goes, “We don’t have a thing to lose / except those doggone hungry blues.” After the opening theme, “Where is that man? He ought to be here now” repeats itself, however, one begins to sense Johnson’s dilemma in developing the music further. Either he had a limited knowledge of classical form, as Ellington did in the beginning, or he was unable to think of a way to develop the music except in terms of a jazz solo. The result is a strange hybrid in which we hear some very fine passages, such as the vocal polyphony around “He’s de organizer,” and filler passages. Perhaps the real problem is that the music seems to go out of its way to sound as much like popular music as Johnson could get away with; but then again, that’s exactly what Gershwin did in Porgy and Bess, where the music is actually less organic and flowing than in De Organizer. For the most part, jazz composers of the 1930s who tried to incorporate classical form were feeling their way along, trying to create a new type of music that really had no predecessors other than Darius Milhaud’s La Creation du Monde, Gershwin’s Rhapsody and An American in Paris, and Carpenter’s Skyscrapers. The only really innovative composers in this new genre were Reginald Foresythe and Eddie Sauter, and neither one were very popular with the larger swing-happy public of the time.

Taken as a jazz opera, however, De Organizer is very enjoyable as well as surprisingly sophisticated in places. His rhythmic verve never flags, and some of the melodic lines he came up with here are quite catchy. Set to more popular lyrics, some of these tunes might have been hit songs of the time. His feeling for orchestration had also grown since he first attempted Yamakraw; he blends saxophone passages skillfully into the orchestral fabric. Again, compare this not to a conventional opera of the time but to Porgy and Bess. Some of Gershwin’s tunes, like I Got Plenty of Nuttin; and It Ain’t Necessarily So, have more memorable melodies but are NOT as skillfully woven into the ongoing musical progression as skillfully as this. In Gershwin’s score, you just stop, sing those songs, and then pick up the opera plot from there. Johnson wrote a much more continuous, organic score. Even though it is only about 1/3 classical form, it is enough to hold the listener’s interest. Note, for instance, how skillfully he integrates “de organizer’s” aria and duet with his girlfriend into the continuity of the music. Gershwin never accomplished anything this subtle in Porgy; nor did he write anything in the orchestral accompaniment half as good as the passage Johnson uses to introduce the arrival of the overseer.

Perhaps the biggest drawback to De Organizer, other than its very dated plot, was Johnson’s unwillingness (or, perhaps at that time, inability) to use any advanced harmonies. Even the big band scores of such master musicians as Don Redman and Jimmy Mundy were rife with subtle but telling harmonic shifts within their scores. Johnson sticks so closely to conventional harmony that it becomes a bit monotonous—but it is the only thing in the score that I have any real reservations about (although, near the very end, he does introduce one, and just one, unusual chord position). The opera ends with the chorus singing about how they organized a union here tonight. It’s rather abrupt.

The melodic language of The Dreamy Kid is built along the same lines, but not as consistently quick in tempo, and in the orchestral prelude Johnson does bring a bit of harmonic variation into the score. Alas, the female singers in this performance do not have as clear diction as their counterparts in De Organizer, but the music is more classical in form, particularly in Irene’s opening scene which is really an arioso. Johnson also pulls back on the jazzy rhythms here, producing music with more of a classical feel to it. I won’t say anything about the orchestration since it is mostly Dapogny’s and not Johnson’s, but I think he chose his instrumentation well. The rhythm, too, is less insistent and more diverse. We must remember, however, that Johnson was pretty well set in his musical style by the early 1920s and never really felt a need to update it too much thereafter, thus any signs of melodic or harmonic subtlety in this music are to be considered a bonus.

What I particularly liked about The Dreamy Kid was that here Johnson chose to follow both the rhythm and the cadence of the words being sung rather than simply trying to write a “string of tunes” that were then knitted together. The drawback is that there’s a lot of text—Johnson set O’Neill’s play word-for-word, virtually complete—and it goes on too long for its meager story line. Just consider: De Organizer, complete, is over in 32:21, while these excerpts from The Dreamy Kid run 33:37. I have no way of knowing, but I’ll bet the whole opera runs about an hour, and that’s too much music for what is basically a static, one-scene opera. I felt that the weakest music presented here was the Irene-Dreamy duet, which is not only a banal tune but simply repeats itself and goes on far too long…but we don’t know if this was the final form Johnson really wanted, since he never quite finished the opera.

The problem with both works, in fact, is their dramatic form or lack of it. There isn’t really any action taking place on stage. The first is a long meeting of union organizers and the second is more of a character study than a drama in the conventional sense of the word. This makes them both problematic to stage. They are thus more in the form of secular cantatas or oratorios, pieces that would work in a concert setting without stage sets or costumes (although, knowing modern-day classical singers as I do, there will undoubtedly be a lot of arm-waving and hand-twirling as they sing).

Recommended, then, for what these works are, period hybrids that sound good on the record.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Exploring the Music of Nikodijevic

NIKODIJEVIC: Absolutio / Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt; Jonathan Stockhammer, cond. / Abgesang / Anna Sohn, sop; Berlin Radio Symphony Orch.; Stockhammer, cond / Da ispravitsja/Gebetsraum mit nachtwache (Prayer room with night vigil) / Jakub Sawicki, org; Berlin Radio Symphony Orch.; Vladimir Jurowski, cond / Wergo WER64422

Wergo has been one of the few bright spots in the otherwise faceless, mainstream promotion of classical music. It was founded in 1962 by German art historian and music publisher Werner Goldschmidt and musicologist Helmut Kirchmeyer. Their first release, which now seems pretty tame to us today, was a performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire conducted by Boulez, but they really put themselves on the map as an outlier when they recorded and released a complete performance of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s controversial modern opera Die Soldaten in 1968.

I bring all this up because the still relatively young (43 years old) Serbian composer Marko Nikodijevic is clearly one of those whose music is not going to find its way into most classical music “festivals” anywhere in the world. Not merely modern, his music is exceptionally challenging, forcing the listener to absorb what he or she is hearing and process it each in their own way. Don’t look for any of his works to be programmed on your local classical FM station.

With its “icy” instrumental mixtures, Nikodijevic’s music somewhat resembles that of Kalevi Aho, but he fuses Eastern European harmonies (think: Bartók) with modern and modal ones to produce a sort of sonic kaleidoscope that edges its way through your mind as you listen. Its forward progression is marked by a mixture of long-held tones and quick, edgy figures in the upper register of strings and winds; when a legato theme does make its appearance, it avoids conventional melody even though it sometimes comes close to it. Yet unlike much of the music written today in the academically approved “edgy” style created in the 1990s by Thomas Adès, this strange undercurrent of lyricism always seems to be present in Nikodijevic’s scores. In this, as in his manner of constructing his music, he is thus closer to Bartók than one might think at first listen.

Indeed, as the opening work, Absolutio, continues to evolve, it is this lyrical side that eventually emerges and captures one’s imagination. The best metaphor I can come up with is that it is like watching three or four huge, slow-moving snakes intertwine as they wriggle forward, almost inadvertently creating a pattern that the observer can almost but not quite identify. Although Nikodijevic’s orchestration has a bright, almost metallic quality, it owes nothing in construction to Stravinsky, it is more amorphic in structure than Bartók, somewhat lyric like the Richard Strauss of Elektra but equally strange to the ear…and all of it with that curious use of harmony that only the Eastern Europeans can use so naturally that it doesn’t sound forced or artificial.

When the music suddenly increases in volume as well as tempo, around the halfway mark, Nikodijevic abandons some of his lyricism to create a quite menacing sound-serpent—perhaps graduating from snake to dragon. This is not an entirely fanciful simile. Listen to it, and judge for yourself. At one point, he uses those curious open harmonies that were a hallmark of Britten’s music, but not for long. He has other things to say, and after this point the music, if anything, sounds even more ominous and menacing. We have thus moved on from the strange but attractive lyricism of the first half into a sound-world of controlled chaos. I can imagine that, if one were to hear this music in person, it would simulate “surround sound” without having to place the musicians in different corners of the auditorium. There is indeed a touch of Zimmermann in this later section, yet Nikodijevic does not fully abandon himself to musical chaos. There is always something structural going on that binds the different parts together.

Abgesang, set to a poem by Hungarian-Serbian writer Mátyás Molcer, who also painted, composed and played the piano in addition to writing both prose and poetry. The text from his collection Glimpses of Eternity reads as follows in English:

the grass turns yellow
on unmarked
graves
if one day
they plough
the bones together
they begin again

In constructing the music to this fatalistic poem, Nikodijevic does not use anything like a melodic line in the conventional sense. On the contrary, the soprano soloist sings mostly in her middle and lower registers, often repeating single notes as she almost mutters the text. At no point does she “sing out.” Not even Stravinsky went this far in his vocal settings. Curiously, there is a certain kinship, in mood rather than musical structure, to the sung movement of Henryk Górecki’s famous Third Symphony. There is a solo harp passage in the middle that reminded me of the “rippling wave” music from Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. Despite this unusual construction, the music is somewhat harmonically stable, sticking to one chord for long stretches of time which make the rare changes sound more impressive. At 11:15 into the piece, Nikodijevic suddenly gives us a lyrical tune, but again, one that repeats itself and does not develop. This piece, like the poem itself, seems to represent moments of finality strung together rather than any sort of “beginning,” yet its length (nearly 20 minutes) suggests a protracted end to life. In the second half, the soprano suddenly opens up her voice, singing lines that soar into her upper range:

for see always,
they begin again
the bones are
ploughed together
on graves
imperceptibly
the grass turns yellow

Nikodijevic follows the pattern he established in Ahsolutio in this work as well: the quiet, almost pensive first half, followed by a louder, faster, more menacing second half. Whether this pattern was intentionally repeated or not, it does reveal a weakness on his part to recycle musical patterns. Our soprano soloists does not have a particularly glamorous-sounding voice, but it is firm and she sings with great expression.

The CD ends with Gebetsraum mit nachtwache (Prayer room with night vigil) for organ and orchestra, and here, indeed, Nikodijevic begins with louder, edgier music, setting an ominous tone from the outset. The liner notes indicate that this piece uses “the music and liturgy of the Serbian Orthodox church,” which is supposed to impress us because of this music’s “system of eight melodic modes into which it divides and classifies those chants,” so I guess that in this case it is germane to the composer’s musical expression. In many places, however, it is much more harmonically monotonous than even in Abgesang, although much of the musical material and Nikodijevic’s manipulation of it seemed more original to me.

A word of warning. Although this music is indeed original and striking, it should not be listened to if you are feeling depressed. It will deepen your depression. Indeed, the almost nihilistic aspects of these scores leave little room for even a small ray of joy or optimism. It is dark music produced by a creative but dark mind, so caveat emptor. As usual for Wergo, both the performance quality and the sonics are superb. One may note that the excellent conductor Vladimir Jurowski is leading the last piece on this disc.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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The JATP Concerts: A Trip Through Jazz History

CD 1: Concert 1, July 2, 1944 at Philharmonic Auditorium, Los Angeles. Set 1: Lester Leaps In (Basie-Young). Tea for Two (Youmans-Caesar). Blues (trad. Bb blues). Body and Soul (Green-Heyman-Sour-Eyton) / Illinois Jacquet, Jack McVea, t-sax; J.J. Johnson, tb; Nat “King” Cole, pno; Les Paul, el-gt; Johnny Miller, bs; Lee Young, dm. Set 2: Yancey Special (Meade “Lux” Lewis). Fast Boogie (Lewis). DuPree Blues (Lewis). Honky Tonk Train Blues (Lewis) / Meade “Lux” Lewis, pno. Set 3: C-Jam Blues (Duke Ellington) / Shorty Sherock, tp; Hubert “Bumps” Meyers, Joe Thomas, t-sax; Buddy Cole, pno; Red Callender, bs; Joe Marshall, dm. Sweet Lorraine (Burwell-Parish) / Nat Cole, pno/voc; Paul, el-gt; J. Miller, bs; L. Young, dm. The Man I Love (G. & I. Gershwin). I’ve Found a New Baby (S. Williams-Palmer) / Sherock, tp; Jacquet, McVea, t-sax; Cole, pno; Paul, el-gt; Miller, Callender, bs; Lee Young, dm; Carolyn Richards, voc.

CD 2: Rosetta (Hines-Woode). Bugle Call Rag (Pettis-Meyers-Schoebel) / Sherock, tp; Jacquet, McVea, t-sax; Cole, pno; Paul, el-gt; Miller, Callender, bs; Lee Young, dm / Concert 2, July 30, 1944 at Philharmonic Auditorium, Los Angeles: One O’Clock Jump (Count Basie). Oh, Lady Be Good (G. &. I. Gershwin) / Jacquet, t-sax; Cole, pno; Callender, bs; Lee Young, dm / Concert 3, February 12, 1945 at Philharmonic Auditorium, Los Angeles. Set 1: Spoken Introduction by Al Jarvis. Stompin’ At the Savoy (Sampson-Webb-Goodman). I’ve Found a New Baby (Palmer-Williams). Body and Soul (Green-Heyman-Sour-Eyton) / Sherock, Neal Hefti, tp; Coleman Hawkins, Corky Corcoran, t-sax; Milt Raskin, pno; Dave Barbour, el-gt; Charles Mingus, bs; Dave Coleman, dm. Set 2: Body and Soul (Green-Heyman-Sour-Eyton). Strange Fruit (Lewis Allen [Abel Meeropol]) / Billie Holiday, voc; Howard McGhee, tp; Charlie Ventura, Illinois Jacquet, Wardell Gray, t-sax; Willie Smith, a-sax; Raskin, pno; Barbour, gt; Mingus, bs; Coleman, dm. Set 3: (I Don’t Stand) A Ghost of a Chance (Young-Washington) / Hefti, Sherock, tp; Ventura, Jacquet, Corky Corcoran, t-sax; Raskin, Barbour, Mingus, Coleman. Oh, Lady Be Good (G. & I. Gershwin)/ How High the Moon (Hamilton-Lewis) / McGhee, Joe Guy, tp; Smith, Ventura, Jacquet, sxs; Garland Finney, pno; Ulysses Livingston, gt; Callender, bs; Gene Krupa, dm.

CD 3: Set 4: Introduction by Al Jarvis. Groove Juice Symphony [Opera in Vout] (Slim Gaillard) / Slim Gaillard, voc/pno/ gt/dm; Tiny “Bam” Brown, bs.voc / Concert 4, January 28, 1946 at Philharmonic Auditorium, Los Angeles. Set 1: Blues for Norman (Roy Eldridge). Oh, Lady Be Good (G. & I. Gershwin). I Can’t Get Started (Duke-I. Gershwin). After You’ve Gone (Layton-Creamer) / McGhee, Al Killian, tp; Charlie Parker, Willie Smith, a-sax; Lester Young, t-sax; Arnold Ross, pno; Billy Hadnott, bs; Lee Young, dm. Set 2: Stompin’ At the Savoy (Sampson-Webb-Goodman). Idaho (Jesse Stone) / Charlie Ventura, t-sax; Teddy Napoleon, pno; Gene Krupa, dm

CD 4: Set 3: The Man I Love (G. & I. Gershwin). Sweet Georgia Brown (Bernie-Pinkard-Casey) / Killian, Dizzy Gillespie, tp; Parker, Smith, a-sax; Ventura, Lester Young, t-sax; Mel Powell, pno; Hadnott, bs; Lee Young, dm / Concert 5, April 22, 1946 at Embassy Auditorium, Los Angeles. Set 1: Blues De Lux (Lewis). Encore announcement by Norman Granz. Honky Tonk Train Blues (Lewis) / Meade “Lux” Lewis, pno / Set 2: JATP Blues (head based on Bb blues). I Got Rhythm (G. & I. Gershwin). I Surrender, Dear (Barris-Clifford). I’ve Found a New Baby (Williams-Palmer) / Buck Clayton, tp; Parker, Smith, a-sax; Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, t-sax; Ken Kersey, pno; Irving Ashby, gt; Hadnott, bs; Buddy Rich, dm

CD 5: Bugle Call Rag (Pettis-Meyers-Schoebel) / Clayton, Ray Linn, tp; W. Smith, a-sax; Hawkins, Corcoran, Young, Babe Russin, t-sax; Kersey, Ashby, Hadnott, Rich / Concert 6, May 27, 1946 at Carnegie Hall, New York City. Set 1: Philharmonic Blues (head). Oh, Lady Be Good (G. & I. Gershwin). I Can’t Get Started (Duke-I. Gershwin). Sweet Georgia Brown (Bernie-Pinkard-Casey) / Clayton, tp; Hawkins, Jacquet, Young, t-sax; Kersey, pno; Curly Russell, bs; J.C. Heard, dm. Set 2: The Man I Love (G. & I. Gershwin) / Ventura, t-sax; T. Napoleon, pno; Krupa, dm. Set 3: Slow Drag (head) / same as previous group but Jacquet out / Concert 7, June 3, 1946 at Carnegie Hall, New York City. Set 1: The Man I Love (G. & I. Gershwin). Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You? (Redman-Razaf). All of Me (Marks-Simons). Billie’s Blues (B. Holiday) / Billie Holiday, voc; Joe Guy, tp; George Auld, Jacquet, Young, t-sax; Kersey, pno; Lloyd “Tiny” Grimes, gt; Al McKibbon, bs; J.C. Heard, dm. Intermission commentary

CD 6: Set 2: Opening announcement by radio host. Set 2: Tea for Two (Youmans-Caesar) / Guy, Young, Kersey, McKibbon, Heard. Intermission announcement. Set 3: It’s the Talk of the Town (Livingston-Neiburg-Symes) / Hawkins repl. Young, t-sax. My Honey’s Lovin’ Arms (Meyer-Ruby) / Hawkins out; Clayton, tp repl Guy. Boogie Woogie Cocktail (Ken Kersey) / Kersey, McKibbon & Heard only. Set 4: D.B. Blues (Lester Young). Saxobebop (Sonny Stitt). Lester Blows Again (Lester Young) / Young, t-saxl Kersey, pno; Rodney Richardson, bs; Harold “Doc” West, dm. Set 5: I Cried for You (Arnheim-Lyman-Freed). Fine and Mellow (B. Holiday). He’s Funny That Way (Whiting-Daniels) / Billie Holiday, voc; Clayton, tp; Hawkins, Jacquet, Young, t-sax; Kersey, pno; John Collins, gt; Russell, bs; Heard, dm / Concert 8, June 17, 1946 at Carnegie Hall, New York City. Set 1: Blues (trad) / Gillespie, tp; J.J. Johnson, tb; Allen Eager, Jacquet, t-sax; Kersey, pno; Collins, gt; Chubby Jackson, bs; Heard, dm / Pres Blues (Young). Just You, Just Me (Greer-Klages). I Got Rhythm (G. & I. Gershwin) / Clayton, tp & Trummy Young, tb repl Gillespie & Johnson; Russell & Richardson, bs repl Jackson. Set 2: My Blue Heaven (Donaldson-Whiting). Play, Fiddle, Play (Lawrence-Altman-Deutsch) / Sla, Stewart, bs/voc. Flying Home (Hampton-Goodman) / Jacquet, Kersey, Collins, Russell, Richardson, Heard / Concert 9, October 7, 1946 at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles: Trav’lin Light (Mundy-Young-Mercer). He’s Funny That Way (Whiting-Daniels) / Holiday, voc; Howard McGhee, tp; Trummy Young, tb; Jacquet, t-sax; Kersey, pno; Barney Kessel, gt; Charlie Drayton, bs; Jackie Mills, dm / Concert 10. March 5, 1947 at Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh: How High the Moon (Hamilton-Lewis) / Clayton, T. Young, Flip Phillips, Kersey; Benny Fonville, bs; Buddy Rich, dm.

CD 7: Bell Boy Blues (trad.) / Clayton, T. Young, Flip Phillips, Kersey; Benny Fonville, bs; Buddy Rich, dm / Boogie Woogie Cocktail (Kersey). Sweet Lorraine (Burwell-Parish) / Trio: Kersey, Fonville, Rich / Concert 11, May 24, 1947 at Carnegie Hall, New York City. Set 1: Blues (trad. Bb blues) / Roy Eldridge, tp; Pete Brown, Willie Smith, a-sax; Flip Phillips, t-sax; Hank Jones, pno; Les Paul, el-gt; Benny Fonville, bs; Alvin Stoller, dm. Set 2: Norman Granz announcement. You’d Better Go Now (Graham-Reichner). You’re Driving Me Crazy (Donaldson). There Is No Greater Love (I. Jones-Symes). I Cover the Waterfront (Green-Heyman) / Billie Holiday, voc; Bobby Tucker, pno. Norman Granz Announcement / Concert 12, September 18, 1949 at Carnegie Hall, New York City. Set 1: Perdido (Juan Tizol). Mordido (Norman Shrdlu – head).

CD 8: I Surrender, Dear (Barris-Clifford). Endido (Etaoin Shrdlu – head) / McGhee, tp; Bill Harris, tb; Phillips, Jacquet, t-sax; Hank Jones, pno; Ray Brown, bs; Jo Jones, dm. Concert 13: September 18, 1949 at Carnegie Hall, New York City. Set 1: Norman Granz Introduction. The Opener (head). Lester Leaps In (Young-Basie). Embraceable You (G. & I. Gershwin). The Closer (head) / Eldridge, Parker, Phillips, L. Young, H. Jones, Brown, Rich; Tommy Turk, tb. Set 2: Granz introduces Ella Fitzgerald. Robbins’ Nest (Jacquet-Sir Charles Thompson). A New Shade of Blues (A. Ackers-J. Farrow-R. Poll) / Ella Fitzgerald, voc; Hank Jones, pno; Brown, bs; Rich, dm.

CD 9: Old Mother Hubbard (Babe Wallace-Ray Ellington). I’m Just a Lucky So-and So (D. Ellington-M. David). Somebody Loves Me (G. Gershwin-MacDonald-DeSylva). Basin Street Blues (S. Williams-G. Miller) / Fitzgerald, H. Jones, Brown, Rich. Ow! (D. Gillespie). Norman Granz announcement. Flying Home (Hampton-Goodman) / Eldridge, tp; Tommy Turk, tb; Parker, a-sax; Phillips, L. Young, t-sax; H. Jones, Brown, Rich. Set 3: N. Granz introduces Oscar Peterson. Fine and Dandy (Swift-James). I Only Have Eyes for You (Warren-Dubin). Norman Granz announcement. Carnegie Blues (Peterson) / Oscar Peterson, pno; R. Brown, bs. Set 4: Granz introduces Coleman Hawkins. Body and Soul (Green-Heyman-Sour-Eyton). Rifftide (Hawkins). The Big Head (Hawkins). Stuffy (Hawkins). Applause and chatter. Sophisticated Lady (Ellington-Mills) / Coleman Hawkins, t-sax; Hank Jones, pno; Brown, bs; Rich, dm. Granz introduces the rhythm section. Ol’ Man River (Kern-Hammerstein). Air Mail Special (Christian-Mundy-Goodman) / Jones, Brown & Rich only. Set 5: Granz re-introduces Fitzgerald. Oh, Lady Be Good (G. & I. Gershwin). Black Coffee (Burke-Webster) / Ella Fitzgerald, voc w/same rhythm section.

CD 10: A-Tisket-A-Tasket (Alexander-Fitzgerald) / Ella Fitzgerald, voc w/same rhythm section. Norman Granz announcement. How High the Moon (Hamilton-Lewis). Granz announcement. Perdido (Tizol) / Fitzgerald, voc w/Eldridge, T. Turk, Parker, Phillips, L. Young, Jones, Brown, Rich. Norman Granz announcement. Concert 14: March 1952, location unknown. Announcement. Stompin’ at the Savoy (Sampson-Webb-Goodman). Body and Soul (Green-Heyman-Sour-Eyton). Dark Eyes (trad.) / Charlie Ventura, t-sax; T. Napoleon, pno; Krupa, dm / Concert 15, April 5, 1947 at Carnegie Hall, New York City. Characteristically B.H. (Bill Harris) / Bill Harris, tb; Ventura, t-sax; Ralph Burns, pno; Bill De Arango, gt; Curly Russell, bs; Dave Tough, dm / Summertime (Gershwin-Heyward). Sid Flips His Lid (Charlie Shavers) / Charlie Shavers, tp; H. Jones, pno; Russell, bs; Sid Catlett, dm / Medley: Lover, Come Back to Me (Romberg-Hammerstein); (I Don’t Stand) A Ghost of a Chance (Young-Washington); Just You, Just Me (Greer-Klages) / Shavers, Harris, Ventura, Burns, De Arango, Russell, Catlett

Verve 314 523 893-2, also available for free streaming on YouTube starting HERE

I was strolling through the ‘Net one day
In the merry, merry month of August (OK, so it doesn’t rhyme)
When what to my surprise
Struck my tired, jaded eyes
Than this massive set which I began to play!

Having come to musical maturity from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s, of course I knew about Norman Granz’ Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts. How could you not? They were not only available as used copies in stores that carried vintage jazz LPs, but after Granz got back into the record business in 1974 he began regaining the rights to his original concerts and reissuing them himself. They were fairly easy to get, but I only bought one or two. I’ve never been a big fan of unstructured jam sessions, even though the Jazz Experts keep telling me that this is “real jazz” and that the jazz I love—structured solos in the context of interesting arrangements—is only “partially” jazz. Well, to each his or her own.

But the most puzzling thing to me, even back in the ‘70s, was when I learned that jazz critics of the 1940s and ‘50s hated these concerts, that they considered them nothing more than cheap theatrics using legitimate jazz musicians to please large crowds of musically ignorant listeners who, according to them, only came to hear how loud everyone could play and thus were only there to cheer excitement, not music. There were two reasons this baffled me. The first was that, even in the concerts and recordings that the critics approved of, most of the jazz presented therein was exciting. But I always felt that the second reason was actually more interesting and more important.

All through the years when jazz was conflated with popular music, which was essentially 1935 through 1950, real jazz lovers kept hearing about these legendary after-hours jam sessions when the musicians would get together after a gig and play into the wee hours of the morning, trying to “cut” one another by playing as well as they could for as long as they could. Up until Granz began producing these concerts, there was really no chance fo the average jazz lover to really hear how these things played out. Although RCA Victor, Columbia, Blue Note, Asch, Dial, Commodore, Savoy and sometimes Decca would stage studio-created jam sessions, they were not the real deal. they were recorded in the morning or early afternoon, before the musicians were even fully awake, let alone at their peak; and, more to the point, even the 12-inch records ran a maximum of four minutes ad 20 seconds, enough time to let them get wound up but not long enough to let them play unfettered for a few choruses apiece.

Norman Granz

Granz’ Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts were as close to the real deal as jazz lovers were going to get. You want to hear Charlie Parker battle Flip Phillips or Lester Young? You wanted to hear such “hot” players as Illinois Jacquet and Jack McVea go toe-to-toe? Hear Billie Holiday accompanied by a really hot band instead of the Decca Records studio musicians? Here they were! And although only the shortest performances could be issued on 78s during the ‘40s, you just knew, with LPs right around the corner, that sooner or later more would come out, among them the longer jams that went on for 12 to 18 minutes. And they did.

As you can see from the header to this review, only the first few concerts were actually presented at Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles, the venue that gave the entire series its name. Originally it was “The Philharmonic Auditorium Presents an Evening of Jazz,” but JATP was a catchier phrase and made a good acronym. According to Bob Porter in his review of the set for JazzTimes on January 1, 1999

Of the material included we have three separate categories: that previously issued on Verve CDs; music issued on LP but not on CD; and, lastly, previously unissued performances. In the first category we have The First Concert (July 2, 1944) with Illinois Jacquet, Les Paul, and Nat Cole. There are also the various JATP performances of Charlie Parker available individually or in the multi-disc Charlie Parker set. The Billie Holiday performances are all items that have been available. Slim Gaillard’s “Opera in Vout” was included in his Verve CD. Some of Ella Fitzgerald’s 1949 set was issued in the Parker box. The programming is chronological.

Of the material issued on LP: The Gene Krupa Trio at JATP. Pianist Teddy Napoleon and tenorman Charlie Ventura are featured in tightly arranged yet hard-swinging performances from 1946 and 1952. Krupa trios were a regular part of JATP and this was the best of them. There are two versions of “Stompin’ at the Savoy”: the earliest is previously unreleased. The material from 1952 is included here so that all the issued material could stay together, a good idea.

The Stinson material: The first issued JATP material from 2/12/45. Fans of this music should be very pleased to see “How High the Moon’ and “Lady Be Good’ here since they are two of the best of all JATP jams. In the notes, Granz relates how this music came to be released and then, how he lost the rights. Joe Guy, Howard McGhee, Willie Smith, Ventura, Illinois Jacquet and Krupa play with a functional LA rhythm section.

The Carnegie Hall concert from 9/27/47 with McGhee, Bill Harris, Jacquet, Flip Phillips, Hank Jones, Ray Brown, and Jo Jones. Only four songs but together for the first time. The irresistible force (Phillips) vs. the immovable object (Jacquet). “Perdido’ was the biggest JATP hit on record and it is surprising that this is not discussed in the notes. It is clear that Phillips and Jacquet added a little arrangement to “Perdido” that was genuinely effective and, in light of that, it is surprising that sort of touch was never utilized again.

Charlie Ventura’s Carnegie Hall Concert. Featured is the Bill Harris-Ventura group of the time along with a rather disorganized combo with Charlie Shavers, Hank Jones, and Big Sid Catlett from 4/5/47. This was not a Granz show and suffers by comparison. He bought the music from Leonard Feather and issued it on Norgran. My guess is that this concert was included in this package because there was time for it. It is extremely unlikely that this would ever have been reissued by itself.

The 1946 material with Hawk and Lester had been scattered hither and yon often with incorrect recording dates. It is nicely organized here.

The 1946 material with Hawk and Lester had been scattered hither and yon often with incorrect recording dates. It is nicely organized here.

The 9/18/1949 concert is now issued in its entirety and for the first time we see how Granz organized his shows. There is a rather democratic apportionment when it comes to utilizing all this talent. For someone who knew JATP only from records, it would be surprising to discover that the jam session portion of the show was now less than 50% of the evening. Effusive praise and accurate predictions from Granz serve to introduce an obviously nervous Oscar Peterson for his first American concert performance. Contrary to the notes, Hawkins” treatment of “Sophisticated Lady” had been out before.

This pretty much sums up at least one reason why this set is so valuable. It’s complete and correctly integrated. Nothing is missing or out of order. As you will undoubtedly have noted from the header, however, there are a couple of tracks by the Gene Krupa trio from March 1952 (no exact date or venue available), and these are not from the more famous Krupa-Buddy Rich “drum battle” session of September 13 in the same year.

The whole thing was first released in 1998, when Norman Granz was still alive. He wrote the liner notes, which I don’t have, apparently going over how he lost the rights to these recordings (as he did his massive Art Tatum set) and had to regain them. It was last reissued in 2018, but the main thing is that it’s still in print. You can buy it on CDs if you want –it’s selling on Amazon for $349.85 new or #299.95 used (if you can get your local post office to deliver it to you…where I live, the USPS has devolved into a “maybe-you’ll-get-mail-maybe-you-won’t” policy), but it’s also available for free streaming, and of course converting to MP3s for download, on YouTube. (Or, if you don’t want to download one track at a time, you can go to Presto Music and buy the MP3 downloads for $58.50.)

The first session shows Illinois Jacquet showing off with lots of R&B-style honking and high-register squeals. This I can understand the critics turning up their noses at, but that was Jacquet and he never really changed. It still seems to me that Nat “King” Cole is highly underrated as a jazz pianist, and it seems that only those of us who know his work from the 1940s well realize that he was a willing and able participant in many jam session events, sometimes on records under an assumed name (due to his exclusive contract with Capitol). On Tea for Two, Jacquet and McVea back off from their R&B honking (at least in the beginning) and play really well, showing that they did have good jazz instincts. J.J. Johnson is superb in the first two tracks, but in the fast blues even he seems to be caught up by the R&B bug. One thing that will strike the listener is the almost consistently outstanding sound quality; even here in 1944, these recordings sound like high fidelity…you can even hear the beads on Lee Young’s cymbals. Granz must have used what were then state-of-the-art tape recorders for these sessions; the infamous Presto disc recorders that Jack Towers and Dean Benedetti used had decent sound but nothing like this. As a sidelight, I’ve always wanted to know how a 25-year-old guy who came from a poor working class family (Granz), was able to raise the money to hire the musicians, rent the hall, put out enough publicity to pack it, and record them. We were not only at war in 1944, but still more or less in the Depression. Apparently, he befriended Nat Cole in the early ‘40s, who introduced him to the Young brothers and jazz population of L.A., and from there Granz started promoting jazz performances in nightclubs. After being drafted for a year at the end of 1942, he returned to the scene, but now had these much bigger plans in mind while still living his own life at a near-poverty level. He paid the musicians top dollar, $50 to $100 apiece per concert, yet at the end of the night didn’t even have enough spare change to take the bus back home. So who was behind this venture? Certainly not the Musicians’ Union. Perhaps he got some of the money from the Hammonds, who were rolling in it, perhaps from the Communist and/or Socialist Parties who suddenly began backing jazz concerts around 1938 as a way to entice black Americans into their ranks. (Granz later became a confirmed Communist himself.)

Much has been made of the fact that, from the very beginning, the JATP concerts were mixed-race affairs. Of course, Benny Goodman had been presenting a mixed-race band since 1936, and John Hammond’s concerts were also mixed race, but there were so many more JATP concerts that the whole series began to take on a mythic character, particularly when you add to that the fact that these groups didn’t just play in L.A. and New York but also toured, even in the South. And Granz always insisted on mixed-race audiences to see them, even to the point of canceling concerts at the last minute if he discovered that the audience was segregated in any way, which included seating blacks in the upper gallery only or roping off white and black attendees. He meant what he said and wasn’t going to stand for any crap from anyone. Even when compared to an ex-mobster like Joe Glaser, Norman Granz was, in popular parlance, a real “hard-ass.” H almost had to be in order to accomplish so much.

It’s wonderful to hear Meade “Lux” Lewis in a live concert setting—he was My second-favorite of the boogie-woogie specialists—but I’ve always wondered why no one ever seemed to want ,y #1 favorite, Jimmy Yancey, in live concerts. At least we do get Lewis’ tribute to Jimmy in the Yancey Special along with his own famous Honky Tonk Train Blues (played at a blistering tempo). Yet it’s in the slower DuPree Blues that one can savor what an excellent pianist, and improviser, Lewis really was. Following Lewis is the previously unissued  C-Jam Blues with trumpeter Shorty Sherock, a good and often underrated improviser, and two more R&B tenor saxists, Bump Meyers and Joe Thomas. This is as good an indication as any of what was happening within the jazz world in 1944. The swing musicians were getting restless begin hemmed into short solos with the big bands, and they wanted out, but the music was already starting to split off between the more progressive musicians who moved into bebop or an advanced form of swing, and the musicians, most of them black, who said to hell with that complicated stuff, we’re going to play loud and simple, thus creating R&B. For me, Sherock and pianist Buddy Cole are the stars of this jam, but if you like Meyers and Thomas, go for it. For better or worse, the recording is incomplete, cutting off in the middle of a good Red Callender solo. We then return to Nat Cole, this time in his more familiar role as trio performer, except that here he has Les Paul again on guitar instead of Oscar Moore, and Lee Young is added as drummer. Once again, it’s fascinating to hear Paul at his peak as an improviser, particularly the interesting licks he plays behind Cole’s vocal choruses. The last set is a massive jam combining Sherock and a pretty fair vocalist, Carolyn Richardson, with the initial group minus Johnson. Here, too, Callender joins Johnny Miller to give us double the bassists, but to be honest, neither one was going to erase one’s impressions of Jimmy Blanton or Charles Mingus (the latter having recently left Louis Armstrong to return to the West Coast around this time).

In the second concert, the original septet (later a nonet) is reduced to just a quartet, Jacquet with the piano trio. For those who love his screaming high notes, you’ll be thrilled. Personally, I’d have preferred McVea. Some of these performances are truncated; the tape (or disc) seems to have run out before the band finished playing. Among the announcers who were not Norman Granz, we get Al Jarvis who, after Ralph Berton, was one of the pioneer jazz disc jockeys of his time. He’s not as hip as listening to Berton, Symphony Sid Torin or Oscar Treadwell, but he’s a damn sight better than listening to that insufferable windbag, Ernie “Bubbles” Whitman, who ruined all of those great Armed Forces Radio jazz broadcasts. Corky Corcoran sounds OK on Stompin’ at the Savoy, but not terribly imaginative. The pitch fluctuates rather disconcertingly during Neal Hefti’s trumpet solo, apparently a glitch in the disc recorder (you can hear surface crackle in this set, so it wasn’t a tape recorder). I never did care much for Dave Barbour’s guitar playing, and he doesn’t impress all that much here, playing clichéd riffs that were old even in 1945, and Milt Raskin isn’t much better on piano. Listening to this specific concert, I can imagine some jazz critics coming away less than impressed by the whole thing. The only saving grace of these tracks is Coleman Hawkins, brilliant as usual, alternating between boppish figures (which he was getting into at the time) and a bit of R&B playing which was uncharacteristic for him. The whole performance wraps up with an R&B riff, but in the midst of this Raskin plays a really excellent solo. The whole band sounds tighter and more swinging on I’ve Found a New Baby. Both Corcoran and Hawkins are really in great form, as is Sherock (I hadn’t realized how good a trumpeter he was until I heard these concerts). Even Barbour sounds a bit better here, too. Hawk revisits his classic Body and Soul, playing some of the same improvisations here than he did on the record but varying it at times.

Following this, we hear Billie Holiday open her set with the exact same song. Her set is backed by an extremely interesting band which includes Howard McGhee (in my view, the most underrated of all the pioneer bop trumpeters), a quartet of saxists (Willie Smith, Jacquet, Charlie Ventura and Wardell Gray) plus rhythm section. Mingus plays some imaginative fills behind her on Body and Soul in particular. Honestly, I don’t think Billie ever did a better rendition of Body and Soul than the one here. Strange Fruit was always a moving song when she san it, even in the mid-1950s when her voice was shot. Her only accompanist on this one is Raskin. The next set has Ventura and Jacquet replacing Hawk (Corcoran remains) from the earlier group. but the lineup is different: McGhee and Joe Guy on trumpets, Garland Finney on piano and Gene Krupa on drums. Both Oh, Lady Be Good and How High the Moon feature an excellent guitar solos by Ulysses Livingston (who he??).

The next set is one of the most famous, one of the few released separately from all the other JATP performances, the nuttiest of all jazz musicians, Bulee “Slim” Gaillard and his duo (here with Tiny “Bam” Brown—who the hell was he?) on bass & vocals. R&B mixes with bop on the next set, featuring both McGhee and Al Killian on trumpets, Bird and Willie Smith on alto saxes, Lester Young on tenor, his brother Lee on drums, Arnold Ross on piano and Billy Hadnott on bass. I’ve never heard Parker play so high up in his range as he does here, but I’m used to Killian doing so, and he does. Next up is yet another Oh, Lady Be Good, this one taken at a surprisingly relaxed tempo. One should not be so surprised to see the same standards repeated over and over in these concerts; it gave the audiences a frame of reference that all could recognize and relate to as well as giving musicians of the swing abd bop camps, when playing together, mutual tunes that they all could jam on. Again, not the highest art, but a good mixture of art and entertainment.

In fact, that’s what you can say about most of this set. Only a few of the solos herein will blow you away. but everybody in each and every set is just having so much fun that it became contagious—first with the live audience in attendance, later with whoever listens to these recordings.

The main purpose of these concerts was to entertain, and that they did, but in order to do so Granz had to be sure to blur the lines between the three streams of 1940s jazz, progressive swing, rhythm ‘n’ blues and bop, with a bit less of the latter than the first two. The critics gritted their teeth and slammed him for doing this, yet he managed to do something none of their idols could do, and that was to unite huge audiences to enjoy what they were hearing and applaud, whether they understood it or not. By 1955 most jazz club owners would have cut off one of their arms to get anywhere near this kind of enthusiastic crowd to come see jazz performed—which is why George Wein started the Newport Jazz Festivals, as a one-location substitute for the old JATP concerts. The difference was that Wein let them pay whatever style they wanted, thus you had swingers and boppers bumping heads in alternating sets…but it worked, at least for a few years until the crowds became drunker, meaner and more violent, at which point he stopped it and then had to move it. Granz’ audiences had a great time, too, yet were self-controlled enough to not start riots or try to hurt other concertgoers.

I’ve always been somewhat ambivalent about the Krupa trio of the mid-‘40s. I liked Charlie Ventura, he was a tenor saxist who combined elements of bop in his essentially swing style, which eventually led him to create his late-‘4os small band called “Bop for the People,” yet I always felt that he sounded too “heavy” in a trio setting; and, during this period, Krupa’s playing became rather busy, not as direct or continually supportive as in his Goodman days, but here they are. It’s the third set of this concert that I find the most interesting: Killian and Dizzy Gillespie on trumpets, Ventura and Lester Young on tenor saxes, Mel Powell on piano (recently out of the Army Air Force), Hadnott on bass and Lee Young on drums. In the fifth concert preserved, after a set by Meade “Lux” Lewis (in which he plays a blue, and I always liked his blues playing), we get another interesting combo, Buck Clayton on trumpet, Parker and Smith on altos, Hawkins and Young on tenors, the great but oft-forgotten Irving Ashby on guitar, Hadnott on bass, Buddy Rich on drums and one of the most underrated pianists in jazz history, Ken Kersey. I’ve always heard Kersey as the true “bridge” between the swing and bop piano styles, and he does not disappoint either here or in his subsequent appearances. He wasn’t as flamboyant as Bud Powell or Al Haig, but in terms of harmonic audacity he was well ahead of most swing pianists of his time. And let me tell you, folks, Hadnott lays down some kind of beat in I Got Rhythm as Rich shows us why he was one of Bird’s favorite drummers.

After I’ve Found a New Baby, it just gets better as trumpeter Ray Linn and both Corky Corcoran and Babe Russin, the most underrated tenor saxist of the 1920s, ‘30s. ‘40s and ‘50s, are added to the band. By this time, I would hope, Illinois Jacquet’s over-the-top screaming fits have long been forgotten. This is real, meaty jazz, well played as each soloist tries to feed off the last one up. Lester’s playing on I Got Rhythm is just wonderful, combining elements of all three ‘40s jazz streams, swing, bop and R&B in one fully-integrated solo. Kersey’s rare blending of Teddy Wilson and bop is excellent as well. Yet perhaps it is Buck Clayton who surprises the most, sounding like Shorty Sherock, Charlie Shavers and himself all rolled up into one. Prez opens I Surrender, Dear, and well he should. He is magnificent on it, as is Hawk when it’s his turn. Kersey engages in double-time playing in his solo, completely transforming Harry Barris’ nice-but-simple tune into something quite remarkable. And just listen to the integrated swing of that powerhouse rhythm section in I’ve Found a New Baby, not to mention the astounding solos of Kersey and Willie Smith. By now it should be clear that, although surface excitement is still present, we’ve left the exhibitionist qualities of the first two concerts behind us. This is jazz of real substance.

Although we do get some flash in Bugle Call Rag, particularly from the trumpeters (Clayton and Ray Linn) and Young (who adds some R&B licks in his solo) while Rich bangs away in the background, we also get a brilliant couple of choruses from Kersey, Hawk is really interesting, and we get t hear some of the amazing things that Willie Smith could do when he wasn’t imitating Johnny Hodges. Even more interesting, considering his rather limited exposure on records, is Babe Russin’s sax solo. Unfortunately, this is one track that ran out of tape before it was over. The following concert featured a similar lineup except that Linn, Corcoran and Russin were gone and Jacquet was back, here alongside Hawk and Pres. Curly Russell (bass) and J.C. Heard (drums) replace Hadnott and Rich, and Heard’s looser, more bop-oriented beat sounds quite interesting in context with these largely swing-oriented pieces. Clayton fans will certainly love this set; I don’t think the trumpeter has ever had as much room to stretch out, at least on issued recordings, as much as he does in these concerts, and he is consistently interesting, not so much harmonically (although he clearly leans outside the basic tonality here and there) as simply in the amazing lines he was able to create. And, of course, let us not forget Kersey. This is the biggest amount of exposure he ever got on recordings. Note, particularly, the exquisite solos that Hawk and Clayton play on I Can’t Get Started. If these concerts were to be swing’s last stand, at least there were some truly eloquent moments like these to offset Jacquet’s screeching tenor. (You know, something just struck me. Although they were contemporaries, and occupied lofty heights in the jazz world on their respective instruments, I don’t think that Hawk and Satchmo ever played together. Food for thought.)

Sometimes these performances, particularly the previously unreleased ones, are clearly drawn from two different sources. Sweet Georgia Brown in the performance with Hawk, Pres and Jacquet,  starts out clear as a bell, but then the sound changes to a slightly muffled and distorted one, not enough to affect pitch or completely cover the sound of the instruments but obviously less clean and clear-sounding. But thank goodness, we at least have them complete. Ventura’s playing on The Man I Love, another Krupa Trio performance, is surprisingly imaginative and interesting. Teddy Napoleon, the group’s pianist, was the nephew of famed 1920s trumpeter Phil Napoleon. He was actually pretty good though he would never efface memories of Teddy Wilson or Mel Powell. His improvisations are good, but he used keyboard runs a little too often as filler material while he tried to think of something else to play. Contrast this with the next set, where Holiday is accompanied by Kersey—as well as by trumpeter Joe Guy, Georgie Auld, Jacuquet (behaving himself) and a rhythm section that includes Grimes, McKibbon and Heard. Then this same band, with Young replacing Jacquet, gives us a wonderful performance of Tea for Two, followed by It’s the Talk of the Town with Hawk replacing Pres. J.J. Johnson finally makes his long-awaited return in an improvised blues.

Ken Kersey

A special treat is Slam Stewart, a bass player who hummed along with his own improvisations.  In 1938 he had been teamed with Slim Gaillard, but by 1946 he had been playing for at least three years in Art Tatum’s trio.  On How High the Moon with Clayton and Trummy Young, Flip Philips plays with Jacquet’s grit in his tone but none of the extraneous screaming. Bell Boy Blues, on the other hand, is not much but R&B-style screaming by all concerned. The second performance of Kersey’s Boogie Woogie Cocktail, this time with bass and drums, is faster and even more exciting than his first version. Why isn’t he better remembered? He could do it all: swing, blues, boogie, and bop, every jazz style prevalent in his time, yet he’s little more than an asterisk in jazz history. But 1947 saw a heavy return to the kind of R&B-styled performances that kicked off the series, only with Flip Phillips on tenor sax instead of Jacquet. Their rather banal performances of fast blues numbers didn’t impress me much—but it’s all part of the bigger picture, the flaw in the diamond that makes the good parts of that diamond sparkle all the more, and at least Hank Jones’ outstanding piano solo saves Bb Blues, and Alvin Stoller does his best Buddy Rich imitation.

By contrast with this noisy set, the next Billie Holiday appearance is one of her quietest and most intimate, accompanied only by pianist Bobby Tucker and featuring a few songs she hadn’t sung in previous appearances (You’d Better Go Now, There Is No Greater Love) plus a surprisingly light, relaxed performance of You’re Driving Me Crazy. The following set contrasts the warmth and intelligence of Phillips’ playing with the R&B-oriented Jacquet, but we also get another highly underrated jazz master, Howard McGhee, who came up with the Andy Kirk band around the same time that Dizzy Gillespie was playing for Cab Calloway and Earl Hines, and he’s his usual outstanding self—plus you again get Hank Jones. The later set features Roy Eldridge with Tommy Turk, Bird, Phillips, Young and a good rhythm section with both Hank Jones and Ray Brown. Flip does his best to imitate Jacquet, but one thing you have to remember is that there was always a touch of R&B in early bebop. Remember Dizzy Gillespie’s composition Blues ‘n’ Boogie, which was used as the theme song for Billy Eckstine’s big bop band, or the fact that Charlie Parker’s Now’s the Time was later converted to an early R&B hit, The Hucklebuck. There was definitely some overlap going on. Here, Lester Young’s solo on The Opener sounds a lot like Bird, yet later on he plays some R&B licks. It was all part of a piece, the showy and the artistic, and then, after a brief rhythm section interlude, Parker himself comes in, adding a few quasi-R&B episodes of his own. The blues was still a strong undercurrent of the jazz mainstream in the late ‘40s, it was just changing its form like a chameleon. Yet good old Hank Jones points the way forward in his piano solo; very artistic and somewhat cerebral, with no suggestion of the blues at all. (Another question: why wasn’t Lennie Tristano ever a part of JATP? Possibly because his approach to bop was a bit too cerebral, even though Bird dug it.) Eldridge shows how to play in an exciting manner, even with a bit of R&B feel, without abandoning an intelligent musical design. In some ways, though he is still remembered, I think “Little Jazz” is not always appreciated for what he was able to accomplish. This version of Lester Leaps In is very uptempo and quite exciting, with Turk playing amazing staccato figures on the trombone and Flip contributing a really excellent solo which, again, sounds a bit like Bird on tenor, and Buddy Rich plays some amazingly good bop-style drums on this. Turk’s solo, with its staccato virtuosity, channels his inner J.J. Johnson. Quite a feat for a guy who got his start playing in polka bands! His solo is so good that it pushes Bird into playing one of his most completely developed solos of his own. Though not really a bopper, Eldridge does surprisingly well considering who he’s following. Lester is also magnificent, even more interesting than on the original recording, almost (but not quite) consistently boppish. Embraceable You, which opens with an exquisite Eldridge solo, provides a respite from the surrounding frenzy; it’s so good, in fact, that when he enters, Philips picks up from where Roy left off, eschewing his usual busy style to produce another absolute gem. The others do their best to hold up this high standard in their solos as well, and they do pretty well, but only Lester really hits the same tone that Roy and Flip did. Bird’s solo is extremely interesting, as usual, but in an entirely different style (he even tosses in a brief quote from Ferde Grofé’s On the Trail). Young and Parker are clearly the musical standouts in The Closer; Eldridge and Phillips are just screaming exhibitionists.

Following this set, Billie Holiday is replaced by Ella Fitzgerald. Ella, Bird, Dizzy and Tatum were Granz’ four favorite artists and the ones that his record labels were most centered around, thus it makes sense that she would be a centerpiece of these late-‘40s JATP concerts. Typically of Ella, who was always trying to reach down to the prurient tastes of the average listener, she came up with another dopey “fairy tale jazz” tune, Old Mother Hubbard. (Yes, she really liked these stupid kind of tunes.) But Ella was Ella; she, like Alice Babs, kept her voice intact almost forever, and by the time she reaches Flying Home she has the audience eating out of her hand. Next up is a purely jazz set featuring the American debut of Oscar Peterson. Although Oscar never quite hit the heights of Tatum, he was clearly a jazz giant, and it shows. I particularly liked his very clever Carnegie Blues, in which he incorporated quotes from Chopin, Ravel and other “longhair” composers. Hawkins, by contrast, sounds slightly sub-par on this set; this version of Body and Soul isn’t nearly as good as his other versions of his 1939 classic, but the rhythm section of Jones, Brown and Rich are so good that Granz gives them their own set. The crowd yells, “Go, Buddy, go!”, but except for a couple of explosions in Ol’ Man River and an extroverted solo in Air Mail Special he plays nicely subdued drums. which fits the trio’s mood.  Very subtle artistry in the context of a “blockbuster” concert.

Ella returns for another set, which ends on a How High the Moon jam with the full band—somehow it just seems weird to hear Charlie Parker immediately follow Ella as the first soloist up. I don’t think the two ever performed together again…yet, come to think of it, when did Lester Young and/or Roy Eldridge ever play behind Ella again? The whole gang them wrap things up on Perdido. I’m not sure why the 1952 Krupa trio set was inserted; it’s pretty good, another set by the Krupa Trio, and not exhibitionistic, but not really exceptional. It was probably included because it was formerly unissued and they had room, but it’s the last concert here, bought by Granz from Leonard Feather (see notes above), that is a real gem (although Bob Porter thought otherwise). This opens with an original piece by trombonist Bill Harris, then a star of Woody Herman’s First Herd, along with Ventura, Bill De Arango, and fellow Herd members Ralph Burns on piano and Dave Tough on drums. In the very next number, Tough is replaced by Sid Catlett and Harris is also gone for a while, but he along with De Arango and Burns return for the final number. For me, though, the standout of this mini-set is the incredible Charlie Shavers, originator of the bop trumpet style that Gillespie developed into an art form although Shavers himself only skirted bop during its heyday. Yet he always remained a fascinating interpreter and quite possibly had the greatest technique of any jazz trumpeter of his day. Not even Chet Baker or Clifford Brown were as rock-solid as Shavers; only Rafael Mendez, who did indeed play jazz with Harry James’ band before moving almost exclusively into classical music, was his equal or superior, as you can hear on Summertime. (And I’ve heard many a “phenomenal” classical trumpeter who couldn’t duplicate what Shavers does here if you put a gun to their head.) Shavers does lirt with bop figures a bit on Sid Flips his Lid, a duet between him and Catlett on drums, but it’s mostly a technical display in which he triple-tongues like crazy and even throws in a bit of the William Tell Overture for fun. In the finale, a medley of Lover Comes Back to Me, A Ghost of a Chance and Just You, Just Me, Ralph Burns swings as he’s never swung in his life in a sizzling piano trio performance. The End.

So that’s the full story of these recordings, the good, the bad and the ugly. Granz admitted that much of this jazz was just playing to the gallery, but he was on a mission to create new audiences for the music and, as a bonus, eventually make enough money to wrangle a deal with Mercury Records to issue several JATP sides on subsidiary labels as well as to put out discs on the main Mercury label of outstanding jazz recording she made in the studio. Perhaps his most ambitious project during this time was The Jazz Scene, a set of six 12-inxh 78s (also released as an LP) on which he assembled an astonishing array of jazz greats, including Duke Ellington, the Bud Powell Trio, Machito and his Orchestra, Neal Hefti’s Orchestra (one track with and one track without Charlie Parker), George Handy, a Lester Young trio with Nat Cole playing piano under a pseudonym (Aye Guy), Ralph Burns’ Orchestra and one side with Bird playing in a quartet. This, in turn. led to his four-year association with Parker in which he recorded him in a variety of settings of his own choosing (including the sessions with strings, which he opposed and were expensive, yet oddly these discs sold quite well in the crossover market), followed by the creation of his own Clef, Norgran and Verve labels and the massive Art Tatum series. Thus you can ascribe all the R&B-styled screamfests on the JATP sessions to simply an early form of marketing, branding and fund-raising to preserve even better jazz in the years to come.

If you can just put up with the “Illinois Jacquet Show” in all its vulgarity, you’ll find much to admire in this set. What it sometimes lacks in taste is more than made up for by the more artistic sessions and the excitement and exuberance of all the performances. One can argue, perhaps correctly, that George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festivals leaned more in the direction of jazz as art, but even they relied on surface excitement to whip the crown into a frenzy; Dizzy Gillespie’s rendition of School Days, Ellington’s Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue and, yes, even Jacquet, whose performance of Flying Home at an early-1960s Newport Festival blew the place up with screams and applause.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Bobby Kapp Plays Richard Sussman

SUSSMAN: Tweed Boulevard. Infinite Mobility. Inner Space. From the Heart. Synergy. Trance Dance. Whirling Dervish. Radioactive / Zach Brock, vln; Aaron Irwin, cl/bs-cl; Abraham Burton, t-sax; John Clark, Fr-hn; Richard Sussman, pno; Harvie S, bs; Bobby Kapp, dm; Scott Reeves, cond / Tweed Boulevard Records 1001

Richard Sussman, born in 1946, has a wealth of experience writing jazz charts for such luminaries as Lionel Hampton, Lee Konitz and Houston Person and is on the jazz faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. Bobby. Kapp, a free-form jazz drummer and singer who has played with Dave Burrell, Richard Wyands and Noah Howard, is 81 years old. Thus we have two long-time veterans in the winter of their lives collaborating on this excellent album.

That is the good news. The bad news, which I’ll get out of the way quickly, is the cover art. Putting it as delicately as possible, when you’ve got two “seasoned citizens” as stars of an album, DO NOT have some cartoonist draw your pictures for the cover art. Being as diplomatic as possible, they look like two old winos approaching you for a handout. (My own mental image was that they looked like two characters drawn by underground cartoonist Kim Dietch in the early 1970s, drunk on inexpensive wine and trying to tell young people how messed up they are). I say this because, as their actual photos prove. Kapp and Sussman look much better than in this drawing that exaggerates every line and sagging skin in their faces:

Yet the music itself is excellent, and I’m only sorry that I didn’t discover Sussman while writing my magnum opus o the intersection of jazz and classical music, From Baroque to Bop and Beyond. Unfortunately, that’s what happens when the composer is an academic. The only reason I ran across Charles Ruggiero and Laurie Altman was that I was fortunate enough to have reviewed some of their CDs; otherwise, I wouldn’t have had a clue who they were.

The band is a septet which includes a violinist and a French hornist in addition to tenor sax, piano (Sussman himself), bass (the estimable Harvie S, formerly known as Harvie Swartz, Sheila Jordan’s favorite bassist) and drums (Kapp). Checking out Sussman’s music on YouTube, I ran across the Evolution Suite for string quartet, jazz quintet and electronics which, to be honest, did nothing for me, but I very much liked the music on this CD.

Tweed Boulevard opens with a riff played in unison by tenor sax and French horn, after which the clarinet and violin play their own quirky little melody, the theme, before the music moves into the improvisations. In terms of actual structure, it is laid out very much like a standard jazz piece; it is the orchestration and the formal layout of the themes and connecting passages that have more structure, much like the “jazzical” pieces of George Russell or Charles Mingus. Interestingly, Abraham Burton plays his tenor sax with a pure, almost “tubular” sound, similar to that of John Coltrane but with higher tone placement and a slightly different approach to solo construction. John Clark’s French horn lacks the bright, open sound that John Graas, Gunther Schuller, David Amram and others got on their instruments (I think he has his hand too far in the bell, possibly to control the tone for slurs and the occasional microtone he plays), but his imagination as a soloist is superb, even better than Schuller. By and large, I would characterize Sussman’s style, at least in this first piece, and being very much in keeping with the cool school of the late 1950s. There’s a certain modal quality to this piece, and all of the solos tend towards the kind of music that was very much in the air during that fertile (yet, sadly, often overlooked) period of jazz. (Anyone out there remember Allyn Ferguson’s Chamber Jazz Sextet?)

Although a somewhat more uptempo piece, Infinite Mobility fits into the same basic mold. Since he was born in 1946, Sussman would have been only about 12 years old when the school of jazz I just mentioned was in full flower, but the recordings keep their achievements alive, thus I still lean towards his being strongly influenced by the jazz of that period. On this track, it suddenly hit me that although Burton’s tone reminds me more of Coltrane, his improvising pattern sounds like a cross between Coltrane and Sonny Rollins—certainly not a bad combination to draw inspiration from. Sussman’s piano solos are generally single-note affairs in the right hand and sound almost like a cross between Russ Freeman and Lennie Tristano. Harvie S’s bass is harmonically supportive yet typically understated, and Kapp is clearly an outstanding drummer who knows how to accent this type of music in ways that contribute to the overall rhythmic diversity without trying to overpower the band.

In a way, however, I questioned the need of a “conductor” (Scott Reeves) in this music. Were the musicians not able to hold it all together themselves? Ferguson’s music was equally complex (as was the Chico Hamilton quintet which included cellist Fred Katz), and neither of them needed a conductor (and let us not forget the Dave Brubeck Octet, one of the most far-out jazz groups ever committed to disc). Just curious. Whether a conductor was really needed or not, it was obvious by this track that Sussman really knows his stuff and, if one had any qualms about it, the rhythmic complexity of Inner Space, with its different sections being played in slightly variant tempi and sometimes meters, will be enough to convince you of his high quality as a jazzical composer (a tip of the hat to Mingus for coming up with that word). Indeed, in the middle section of this piece, with the violin playing extremely difficult, Stravinskian figures against the tenor sax before embarking on a rather freaky solo of its own, is when I realized that yes, perhaps a conductor was necessary for at least parts of this session. From this point on, Inner Space suddenly takes a far left turn and jumps off the cliff into the realm of free or “outside” jazz. Bobby Kapp is right in his element. HE clearly didn’t need a conductor to stay on track; decades of experience did that for him. His drum solo here, in which he is joined by Harvie S in top form with Zack Brock playing occasional interjections on the violin, is clearly one of the highlights of the album.

Thanks to Sussman’s creative imagination, even the “ballad” on this set, From the Heart, has an interesting form and content. In addition to being slower in pace, From the Heart is also simpler in construction while still retaining the contours and feeling of late-‘50s experimental cool, thanks in large part to the unusual harmonies as well as a frequent use of “rootless” chords. Such details are apparently so well ingrained into Sussman’s style that he uses them as a matter of second nature, thus they never sound “forced” or artificially grafted onto the piece, but an integral part of its natural flow and progression. Interestingly, I also found myself flashing on the highly unusual jazzical pieces that black British composer Reginald Foresythe wrote in the 1930s while listening to this piece. The title tune, Synergy, however, brings us forcefully back to the late 1950s-early ‘60s era of experimental cool once again. In listening to these tracks, I couldn’t quite decide whether Brock was using an electric violin or an acoustic violin with a microphone pick-up close to the bridge, which is not exactly the same thing.

Throughout the album, Sussman’s piano solos are clearly a triumph of substance over flash. He never knocks you out with his technique, but he doesn’t have to; he knows exactly what he’s playing and how it fits into the overall framework. I bring this up because, to me, this is often the bane of a great deal of free or “outside” jazz: the improvising soloists just do their thing, splatter notes up against a wall to see what sticks, and have absolutely no care for context or how their playing relates to that of the other musicians in the group. There are no such problems in this little band, and the more you listen to this album the more impressed you become. Trance Dance is clearly one of the most complex pieces in the entire set, using a sort of modified bossa nova rhythm, (with breaks in irregular meter) and scored with the bass clarinet playing a constant ground bass beneath the other top-line instruments while Harvie S keep on creating bass lines within the basic rhythm beneath the unusual, “broken” theme and its variations (the solos). Come to think of it, although he didn’t use a violin or French horn, you could also compare some of this music to the kind Coltrane played in the early ‘60s.

I debated as to whether I should break down each piece like this for you or not. On one hand, it serves as a verbal description of what is going on in these tracks, but on the other it really doesn’t do justice to the listening process and, as usual, words are sometimes a poor substitute for the music itself. Nonetheless, I think I’ve done enough to give you a pretty good idea of what this music sounds like, what its roots are, and why I found it so impressive.  My only disappointment was the band’s decision to use a fade-out ending for Trance Dance; I’ve always felt that fade-out endings were a cop-out. Other than that, this album is a delight from start to finish, at least to my ears. I was constantly engaged in listening to what the band was doing, and although I felt that Kapp’s drumming seemed to use similar or identical patterns in most of the tracks, he certainly kept things moving without being overly obtrusive , and at times was outstanding. Sussman’s piano also tended to use similar patterns in each piece, but heck, he’s the composer so he’s entitled to do what he wants. Everyone else was extraordinarily inventive in their solos and the pieces themselves are excellent. I will only add here that Radioactive, with its 8-to-the-bar beat broken up as 3-3-2 with metrically uneven breaks (until we reach the solo spots, when we switch to a straight 4) was one of my favorite pieces on this disc. (Kapp is also outstanding on this track; I think he was waiting for something this complex in order to show what he could do.)

So yes, by all means, run, do not walk, to get a copy of this album. You’ll be glad you did. But you might want to substitute the photo I inserted above of Kapp and Sussman for the cover art provided.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Farrenc’s Themes-and-Variations

FARRENC: Variations Brillantes: on a Theme of Aristide; on an Air from Rossini’s “Cenerentola”; on the popular tune “O ma tendre Musette!”; on a Peddler’s Theme by G. Onslow. Grandes Variations on the air “Le premier pas.” Air Suisse varié. Adieux à la Suisse theme “De brugurière.” varié. Themes and variations: in F, in G / Maria Stratigou, pno / Grand Piano GP 934

Following her recording of Louise Farrenc’s piano études, Maria Stratigou now gives us an album full of her piano variations. This, of course, was a real hip “thing” in her day, thanks largely to that interesting but often irritating hybrid of great artist and circus acrobat, Ferenc Liszt. He was the one who initiated these long-winded and mostly vapid strings of variations on popular classical themes of the day, usually operatic excerpts, that his audiences in the French salons positively adored but which I, and (happily) many others nowadays find long-winded and boring. Not one of them is on the same level as Beethoven’s sets of variations, let alone the work of the best jazz pianists of the 20th century.

Thus I approached this album with some trepidation, despite my highly favorable impression of Farrenc from other releases. How bad would these variations be? Or how good, despite her obviously enormous skill and talent for composition? I had some idea of what I was in store for since I previously reviewed some of her variations issued on others’ CDs in my long Farrenc critique, of which I opined:

Personally, I feel that this work was a sop to those critics who thought her symphonies too brash and, dare we say it, masculine for their tastes. Yes, the music is nicely written, but here Farrenc shies away from the audacious harmonic changes that permeated the symphonies. This almost sounds like 90% of Franz Liszt’s similar pieces for piano…

Of course, a large part of the problem, for Liszt as well as Farrenc, was that the tunes chosen for variations were fairly simple melodies with regular strophes and harmonies, nothing really special, but then think of Diabelli’s clunky little waltz and what Beethoven made of it. The first piece up on this CD, the Variations Brillantes: on a Theme of Aristide, is typical of what she had to work with, yet after the first variation, which wasn’t really much, Farrenc became more inventive and interesting. Or was it Maria Stratigou who made this variations sound interesting? She is clearly a first-rate interpreter; so much was evident from her playing of the études, in which one noted the strong keyboard attack in the bolder passages and her ability to caress a line in the lyrical ones. By and large, however, I believe that my initial instincts were right. In these piano variations, Farrenc is less bold and imaginative than she was in her other works, although there is a slow variation here in the minor that is quite moving and completely transforms the banal theme into something almost noble. This you must credit to the composer as well as to the interpreter. Unlike Liszt, who would have created something bombastic at this point, Farrenc’s elegance and simplicity are quite moving. She also created, I feel, more interesting “moving bass lines” in the other variations where Liszt would have written some complex concoction designed to wow the rubes. In the faster final variation following the slow one, she handles her chore with good taste, at least.

This good taste is also evident in her Grandes Variations on the air “Le premier pas.” In her very first variation her completely rewrites the music in a way that I’m sure would have shocked its composer, using a neat counterpoint figure in the left hand that occasionally runs in a different direction from the variant played with the right, and in the second variation she rewrites the basic tune still further although she again avoids the harmonic daring heard in her symphonies and other piano works.

Indeed, Farrenc’s treatment of even the familiar mezzo-soprano aria “Non piú mesta” from Rossini’s Cenerentola ennobles what was pretty much an organ-grinder tune, the second variation being in the minor and including some very tricky keyboard passages, difficult without obviously sounding so, and even when she switches back to the major she transforms it with a cute little tongue-in-cheek waltz which then expands into something quite complex.

Whatever the “popular air” O ma tendre Musette! was, it is clearly a cut above the others used so far, a quite noble-sounding theme in the minor which Farrenc gets into quite deeply. There is far less flash and more substance here, thus I found this one of the most effective pieces on the CD. As I noted in my earlier review, the Air Suisse varié is pretty much a “nothing” piece, but once again Farrenc becomes deeper and more interesting in the following variations on a theme by George Onslow. The two short themes and variants that close out the program, though interesting, are not nearly as complex.

If you are as enamored of Farrenc as I am, you’ll probably want to add this CD to your collection since it shows a different side than her symphonies and more complex chamber works, but the call is yours. This will not be a Farrenc disc I will return to as often as the others, despite the fact that Stratigou’s playing makes a strong and convincing case for most of these pieces.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Arnold Cooke’s String Quartets, Vol. 1

COOKE: String Quartets Nos. 3, 5 & 1 / Bridge Quartet / Toccata Classics TOCC 0696

From the first time I heard Arnold Cooke’s music, in September 2019, I responded positively to it. As I mentioned in my review of his complete violin sonatas:

Despite his studies with Hindemith and his living through several changes in the shape and form of classical music, Cooke remained steadfast in his own style which was perched somewhere between late Romanticism and neo-Classicism. Moreover, it is wholly traditional in form and shape; Cooke’s themes are clearly defined, never ambiguous, and developed in a crystal-clear fashion along tried-and-true lines. You might think of him as a sort of 1930s-1960s version of Ethel Smyth or a more modern-sounding York Bowen.

The interest in Cooke’s music comes from his unfailing enthusiasm for his own work, which comes through in every page of his scores…Soaring melodies—but not cloying or sugary ones—alternate with edgy fast passages using harmonies that move either stepwise or chromatically, all of it sounding natural in a way that flows. There never seems anything precious or self-conscious about this music. It just moves along at its own pace, giving great pleasure while stimulating the mind.

The same attributes noted above also apply to these string quartets. My sole caveat was that there was something wrong with the Bridge Quartet’s intonation. It’s just a hair off—not by much—but they just don’t sound consistently in tune to me. And it’s not because this music is harmonically edgy, though it is. It’s within the chords they play that one notices the music sounding slightly off-kilter. The Bridge Quartet was probably chosen for this project because they were the first group in modern times to play Cooke quartets “live,” starting in 2022, but there’s no getting around it. Poor intonation is poor intonation. and that’s a shame because the music is very interesting but, for the moment, these are the only recordings of these works and you know the old line about how in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Thus any further comments from me in this review regarding pitch or tonality must be taken with a grain of salt…perhaps a whole salt shaker-full.

I admit, however, that it is within the realm of possibility that this is the effect Cooke was aiming at when he wrote this quartet and that the slightly out-of-tune playing is intentional. If so, however, I must say that I find the entire performance of the Third Quartet highly unpalatable because of this. Thus you can take it either way, but whatever the real reason, I must give this particular recording of it a thumbs-down.

In the Fifth Quartet, written in 1978, Cooke’s music moves along similar lines, although the first movement is more lyrical and less abrasive in its tonality. Whether it was because this quartet was easier to play or not, the Bridge Quartet sounds perfectly in tune here, which helps us appreciate what he is doing more, but whatever the reason, I found this quartet to be much more enjoyable. I simply got the impression in the Third Quartet that he was trying too hard to sound edgy and modern, which he succeeded in doing, but in the end he strayed a little too far from his essential style. The Fifth Quartet clearly has more lyrical lines in it which alternate with the edgier passages in what I’d describe as typical of Cooke’s style, thus it’s more consistent. And yet, somehow, this music sounds more formulaic, more pre-planned, less original than all of the previous Cooke pieces I’ve heard.

With the first movement of the early quartet from 1933, we’re back to intonation problems for the Bridge Quartet. And please, spare yourself telling me that I’m wrong. I played this for another modern music lover, and she agreed with me that their intonation was off. Also, to be honest, the Bridge Quartet players all have awful-sounding tones. Both violins, the viola and even the cello sound edgy and scrappy, like college students who haven’t quite mastered their instruments yet. I just checked my catalog of classical recordings and noted that I don’t own a single other recording by the Bridge Quartet, so I can’t say whether or not this is an anomaly for them, but there’s just no getting around their sour-lemon sound. It’s really third-rate.

Thus I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. With performances this bad, am I really hearing the music as Cooke envisioned it? Possibly not, thus I reserve judgment on the music until other recordings surface, though I’m not holding my breath. Most modern-day string quartets probably wouldn’t touch this music, not even for recordings, so we’re back to the one-eyed man analogy. Caveat emptor.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Groslot’s Symphony and Violin Concerto

GROSLOT: Violin Concerto No. 2.* Now, Voyager, sail [Symphony No. 1] / *Linus Roth, vln; Brussels Philharmonic Orch., Robert Groslot, cond / Antarctica AR 046

Belgian composer Robert Groslot, whose work I have raved about on this blog previously, presents here his second violin concerto and first symphony. I’m not sure if they were written sequentially or just published that way, but the concerto is Op. 129 and the symphony Op. 130. And on this recording, we have the benefit of the composer conducting his own works.

I realize that this is just a side issue, but Groslot is one of the very few composers, now or in the past, to have a trademark “look,” and that is because he wears a fedora in almost all the photos I’ve seen of him. Not a big deal, I know, but in a way it’s kind of nice. It puts him in a category with the late pop singer Leon Redbone, who always wore a white hat, black string tie and dark glasses. At least he’s found a way to “brand” himself without looking foolish.

Another interesting aspect of this fascinating man is that he has only recently arrived at being a composer over the last decade. Prior to that he was a professional pianist (he came in sixth at the 1978 Queen Elizabeth Competition), a graphic artist, educator, and conductor of light classical music. Because of this background, he insists on having his music sound primarily tonal and appealing to listeners, yet his musical mind is so complex that he simply cannot turn out a banal score. His music, I find, is related to late Nielsen but also to Neoclassic Stravinsky, Villa-Lobos and other composers who straddled the line between high art and a popular touch. You can tell that he’s Nordic (specifically Finnish) by the way he scores his music, using “biting” strings and winds to make his point, often set to open chords which italicize his point.

And absolutely nothing in Groslot’s music is perfunctory or excessive. He infuses his scores with great emotion, as did Jean Sibelius, using a variety of tempi and contrasting rhythms to make his points. Thus, as one listens in awe to his second Violin Concerto, one hears a perfect balance between the soloist’s part and the orchestral parts. This concerto is a true dialogue between them, not merely a virtuosic solo part “accompanied” by an orchestra. Many years ago I once said to a friend of mine who loved concerti that I thought they were, for the most part, hybrid works, neither solo pieces nor orchestral ones but an uncomfortable compromise—and this is even true of the Beethoven piano concerti, which are among the greatest of all. In Groslot’s skilled hands, however, there is no uneasy melding of forces. On the contrary, it is a situation where one is continually engrossed in what the violin is playing as long as it is on the scene, then engrossed in what the orchestra plays when it is their turn. Only in a few passages do they overlap; otherwise, this is a sophisticated version of “call and response” in which the solo violin has its say, then the orchestra reacts to what has been said with additional commentary of its own. In this way, the Groslot violin concerto becomes a fascinating dialogue that never seems to be resolved but, on the other hand, is always fascinating because both have so much to say.

Moreover, there is an extraordinary feeling of continuity as the concerto continues. The second movement seems to grow out of the first, to such an extent that the inattentive listener will have a hard time telling when the first ended and the second began. This is not a bad thing. The only real difference I hear in the second movement is that the violin part is somewhat more lyrical and “singing” in places while the orchestral part is more fragmented, being broken up into little gestures played in rapid succession by varying sections, eventually moving into a fast passage in the middle in which the violin almost seems to be asking the orchestra why it is doing this.

The third movement is very original, opening with a querulous bassoon solo which then leads to string gestures and tremolos; a celesta then ushers the solo violin back in, but he, too sounds uncertain and a bit querulous, attempting to establish another melodic line but getting distracted by soft but rapid wind and string passages. Indeed, the rhythmic and coloristic variety of this movement is simply astonishing; Groslot seems to have been engaged in a quiet but somewhat intense inner dialogue with himself when he wrote it, which in turn leads to a querulous and rather restless finale. Even in the solo violin’s a cappella passages, which seem to be searching for continuity and resolution, nothing is really definitely resolved. Some of the dialogue between the soloist and orchestra, in fact, as at the 8:15 mark, seems to be much more a clash of unresolved attitudes than a resolution. German violinist Linus Roth does an excellent job of catching the right mood at every turn in this score, but of course he has the composer conducting, thus he has a leg up on anyone else who may attempt this piece. (I wonder if anyone will. We have so few present-day classical musicians who are willing, even eager, to play contemporary scores.)

Groslot explains in the liner notes that although the latter piece on this CD is the first he has designated a symphony, it is not his first full-length orchestral work that could be construed as such, among them The Great Globe which runs 37 minutes. The reason he chose to call this piece a symphony was that “the initial idea was not tied to a literary premise,” despite the fact that it bears a title taken from a poem by Walt Whitman. It opens with sharply biting string and brass chords, very aggressive, with little pauses between them. Low string tremolos underscore a strange flute solo before moving into biting wind passages. Then, suddenly, we hear the strings attempt a lyrical melody, but this is cut off abruptly by further sturm und drang figures from the orchestra…then a strange little xylophone (or marimba) solo which leads into asymmetric and bitonal wind passages underscored by strongly rhythmic bass lines. Indeed, this music is almost consistently menacing, perhaps even a bit cynical. Typically of his music, it bears no stylistic resemblance to anyone else’s. It’s just Robert Groslot music. At 7:22 we hear a quirky little melody set in 3/4 time played by a few winds.

In the second movement, a scherzo marked “Giocoso,” Groslot cleverly works in a paraphrase (not really a quote) from the Beatles song Getting Better, albeit transformed. In the liner ntoes, Groslot refers to a Beatle named “Peter” who asked his wife to play the original song at his funeral, but since there was no Beatle named Peter except for Pete Best, who was long gone by the time this song was written, he is obviously referring to Paul, and it does sound like McCartney’s cynical but wacky sense of humor. Whimsically, this movement ends on an unresolved chord, followed by the subdued, mysterious-sounding third movement. Even when the tempo increases, the fragmented melodic line and unresolved harmony keep the music in a state of flux. Later on, there are high wind passages that almost sound like one of the “sea interludes” from Britten’s Peter Grimes. The unsteady musical progression is mirrored by the unsettled emotional feeling the music produces. And although the last movement is marked “Vivace,” the ominous mood continues to the end. A very strange work!

Excellent music, excellent performances and first-class sonics. This is clearly one of the best releases of the year to date.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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