{"id":6323,"date":"2015-06-18T14:56:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T14:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6323"},"modified":"2015-06-26T13:37:18","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T13:37:18","slug":"is-it-jurassic-jazz-or-a-new-creature-with-a-very-big-sonic-footprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6323","title":{"rendered":"Is it Jurassic Jazz, or a new creature with a very big sonic footprint?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fb-Button\"\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>

\"ryanVerona native Ryan Truesdell, who began jazz study at Verona High School, now leads The Gil Evans Project during a recent live recording at The Jazz Standard in New York.<\/em><\/p>\n

All the brass horns gleam, whisper and shout. Tonal colors multiply, merge and melt, without digital trickery.\u00a0 Today\u2019s jazz orchestra composer-arranger\u2019s pen conjures sumptuous landscapes for the soloist\u2019s ramble.<\/p>\n

Impressive recordings of them proliferate lately, some winning best-of-the-year polls and wide acclaim. But aren\u2019t big bands a creaking dinosaur of the swing era? Something is afoot, a reborn beast with a huge sonic footprint.<\/p>\n

The creature may herald a new golden age of the jazz orchestra. Consider, the most expansive jazz form remains historically important and globally influential.<\/p>\n

Two of the best last two rock concerts I attended both included a horn section: Greg Allman’s band in Milwaukee, and the 11-piece Tedeschi-Trucks Band in Madison, a jazzy blues-rock group that many critics, including myself, consider the best band in popular music today.\u00a0Lyle Lovett\u2019s Large Band (essentially a Texas-swing jazz orchestra) has revitalized that country singer-songwriter\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

Then pop superstar Lady Gaga recorded with timeless Tony Bennett — their acclaimed, hit album\u00a0Cheek to Cheek<\/em>\u00a0impressed even picky jazz critics with repertoire from the first golden age of big bands. They recorded and are touring with a full jazz orchestra, with two dates at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park Friday and Saturday June 26-27.<\/p>\n

In Milwaukee, The All-Star Superband has played weekly almost steadily throughout the 21st century, performing a challenging and diverse repertoire. They will play a benefit concert at 5 p.m. Wednesday (ed.: June 24) at the Briggs & Stratton Big Backyard at the Zoo Terrace for Easter Seal of Southeastern Wisconsin, preceding the charity\u2019s annual Walk With Me<\/a>\u00a0fund-raiser at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Here\u2019s the big band\u2019s website: http:\/\/www.allstarsuperband.com\/home.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Led by bassist Gary Christensen, the orchestra highlights renowned saxophonist-flutist Warren Weigratz, widely-traveled alto saxist-clarinetist Tim Bell, trumpeter Kaye Berigan (whose uncle Bunny starred in the first golden age) and other top-flight area pros who relish the band\u2019s power and palette. The Superband\u2019s cover charge every week goes to charitable benefits. This is high-calorie music played for the love of it, and shouldn\u2019t be missed.<\/p>\n

To the west, The Madison Jazz Orchestra, formed in 1986, performs monthly and with comparable ambitious quality to Milwaukee\u2019s big band: http:\/\/www.madisonjazzorchestra.com\/The_Madison_Jazz_Orchestra\/Home.html<\/a><\/p>\n

A \u201cbattle of the bands\u201d between these Milwaukee and Madison orchestras would be epic.<\/p>\n

Also, The Large Unit, an avant-garde nonet of European musicians will perform Wednesday (ed.: June 24) at 8 p.m. in Milwaukee at Sugar Maple, 441 E. Lincoln Ave., as part of the annual Okka Fest.<\/p>\n

A critical measure of the golden age of any medium is the level and range of artistry at work among a wide array of serious practitioners, without obvious commercial hooks. Still, I\u2019m defining jazz orchestra broadly (see discography) to include rock- or blues-oriented groups with at least three horn players who improvise, to show the large form\u2019s ongoing influence.<\/p>\n

Two auspicious and related examples of full jazz orchestras with brand-new recordings are The Thompson Fields<\/em> by the Maria Schneider Orchestra and Lines of Color<\/em>\u00a0by The Gil Evans Project, formed and led by Verona WI native Ryan Truesdell. Truesdell also produced Sky Blue<\/em>, Schneider\u2019s previous double-Grammy-nominated orchestra album, and the orchestras share a handful of musicians. Last year\u2019s most conceptually ambitious, if not best, jazz recording was Identities are Changeable<\/em> by Miguel Zenon and his \u201cIdentities\u201d Big Band.<\/p>\n

But the Evans influence seems ascendant, in Schneider, Truesdell and the brilliant Canadian composer-orchestra leader Christine Jensen, among others. The primary influence of Schneider, the premiere orchestra leader in jazz today, is Evans, the impressionistic sorcerer who conjured palpably evocative backdrops for Miles Davis\u2019 classic albums, Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, <\/em>and Sketches of Spain.<\/em> Schneider served as Evans\u2019 musical assistant for three years before his 1988 death.<\/p>\n

\"41\u00ba<\/p>\n

“The Thompson Fields” reveals Maria Schneider as an uncommonly gifted composer and arranger whose poetic, nature-evoking Midwestern sensibility radiates though her orchestra.\u00a0Courtesy artisthouse.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Equally taken by Evans, Truesdell befriended the late bandleader\u2019s family who eventually allowed him to investigate Evans\u2019 unpublished, unrecorded scores. The first result was the sensational Gil Evans Project album Centennial: Newly Discovered Works by Gil Evans<\/em>, arguably the jazz event of 2012. Now comes Lines of Color,<\/em> a vibrant, witty, swinging live-at-the-Jazz Standard follow-up.<\/p>\n

Here The Gil Evans Project, live at the Jazz Standard, records a portion of Evans’ “The Time of the Barracudas”:\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AG_-ffjASIc<\/a><\/p>\n

Numerous recent orchestra recordings defy the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, and jazz\u2019s small presence in corporate-controlled, bottom-line radio and music industries. Try maintaining a 16-to-18 musician ensemble that requires extensive rehearsal, a collective response to one leader\u2019s creative whim and will, in an art dominated by the \u201crugged-individual\u201d instrumentalist.<\/p>\n

\u201cShocking\u201d is what Truesdell calls all the recording and activity (see below and discography). \u201cBut people are getting grant money and finding ways,\u201d he said in a phone interview. \u201cAnd it is so much cheaper to make a recording now. You can you record them on your own. Or they do live recordings which are so much easier to do. There is a cost-effective ways of making a big-band work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a new golden age, but people are trying to do something different. Everybody\u2019s got a quartet or trio, so people are searching for something kind of different and some musicians think their voice will be different if they go larger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gil Evans, extending Duke Ellington\u2019s innovations, actually opened the door in the late \u201850s for a modern jazz orchestra concept. That continued in ensembles led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Oliver Nelson, Gary McFarland, Gerald Wilson, Chico O\u2019 Farrell and Toshiko Akiyoshi. Composer-arranger Claus Ogerman\u2019s 1989 collaboration with Miles Davis Aura<\/em> reimagined the trumpeter\u2019s glory days with Evans. This all persisted despite the peaks and valleys of jazz popularity. However, jazz fusion spawned a period where big bands and brass-heavy rock bands embraced electricity and rock beats, including The Don Ellis Orchestra; The Buddy Rich Big Band; Woody Herman with star blues-rock guitarist Michael Bloomfield; Blood, Sweat, and Tears; Bloomfield\u2019s Electric Flag, and the most commercially successful, Chicago.<\/p>\n

The hard-swinging and rocking Don Ellis Orchestra with soloist John Klemmer performing “Indian Lady.” from Electric Bath<\/em>.\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tQk-jFjeACw&feature=em-subs_digest<\/a><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, today most jazz orchestras use the pure acoustic power, color and range inherent to a sonic palette that Gil Evans expanded by employing all the wind instruments of a classical music orchestra, in ingenious voicings and settings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a combination of people for whom the jazz orchestra is their voice, and of leaders in small ensembles finding their voices in larger ensembles,\u201d Truesdell says. \u201cAnd how they\u2019re doing it, I guess they don\u2019t pay people very much, just like everybody else,\u201d he laughs. He adds that all the recording groups aren\u2019t touring nearly as much as big bands did in the swing era.<\/p>\n

However both his and\u00a0Schneider’s orchestra owe much of their financial viability to the highly sophisticated artists-run ArtistShare label, which draws on individual\u00a0“crowd-funding”\u00a0sponsors, facilitated by the\u00a0networking the Internet has provided DIY efforts. Formed in 2003, ArtistShare has produced nine\u00a0<\/b>Grammy awards\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>18 Grammy nominations with a roster\u00a0<\/b>including Pulitzer-prize and Oscar-nominated writers, Guggenheim fellowship recipients and NEA Jazz Masters. 1<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Among other important current recorded ensembles are The Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra, the Vanguard Orchestra, Darcy James Argue\u2019s Secret Society, The SFJazz Collective, The Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra, The John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Quiet Pride: Elizabeth Catlett Project<\/em> led by Rufus Reid, The Chris Potter Underground Orchestra, The Archie Shepp Attica Blues Orchestra, and 2015 Grammy album winners, Arturo O\u2019Farrell and the Latin Jazz Orchestra for The Offense of the Drum<\/em> and Gordon Goodwin\u2019s Big Phat Band, for Life in the Bubble.<\/em><\/p>\n

Composer-arrangers like Quincy Jones — best known for work with Michael Jackson and Miles Davis — and Vince Mendoza freelance with numerous jazz and symphony orchestras. Mendoza\u2019s widest exposure came with his sumptuously simpatico enhancements of Joni Mitchell on her double Grammy-winning \u201cstandards\u201d album Both Sides Now<\/em>, including a Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist.<\/p>\n

Another excellent recent recording was Fly!<\/em> By Mitch Shiner and the Blooming Tones Big Band, led by a graduate of Mequon High School. Last winter, Milwaukee saw The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra led by composer-trumpeter Wynton Marsalis in a superlative holiday concert featuring today\u2019s hottest jazz singer, Cecile McLorin Salvant.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the seeds for a new golden age of orchestra were sown in 1997 when Marsalis and his orchestra bested all \u201clegit\u201d composers for the Pulitzer for Best Musical Composition, for the soulfully solemn orchestral oratorio Blood on the Fields. <\/em>It has spurred other ambitious jazz orchestral inquiries into African-America history.<\/p>\n

Schneider strengthened the legitimacy of a new jazz composer era by winning three Grammy awards for classical music in 2014 including best Best Contemporary Composition for her first classical orchestral recording Winter Morning Walks<\/em>, two song cycles of poetry with soprano Dawn Upshaw and two chamber orchestras.<\/p>\n

Many classic big bands from the swing era still remain intact and tour under new leadership. Milwaukee just heard The Woody Herman Orchestra recently at UWM for Jazz Appreciation Month in April. Herman, famous for his always forward-thinking Thundering Herd, was a Milwaukee native.<\/p>\n

Another powerful\u00a0heartland ensemble is the 13-member\u00a0Chicago Yestet, which injects\u00a0political awareness into modern\u00a0big band\u00a0style with hip-hop,\u00a0R&B and pop strains. Led by Madison native Joel Adams — a Woody Herman band alumnus — the mini-big band features acclaimed Milwaukee trumpeter Russ Johnson, and Madison\u00a0rapper\/hip-hop historian Rob Dz (CD reviewed here recently. The\u00a0Chicago Yestet will play at the Brink Lounge in Madison Sept. 5, amid a spate of Chicago and Wisconsin dates: http:\/\/www.chicagoyestet.com\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

And speaking of universities, speaking of universities, the persistence of the jazz orchestra goes back to education. Despite the ever-present lure of small-combo guitar rock-pop, countless young musicians dedicate themselves to orchestra instruments and to rigorous, competitive high school and college ensemble programs, as a cursory survey of Down Beat<\/em> magazine\u2019s large annual education section proves.<\/p>\n

\"Superband\"<\/p>\n

The highly accomplished and dynamic All-Star Superband has played weekly for most of the 21 century throughout Milwaukee. All their performances proceeds go to local charities.\u00a0Courtesy All-Star superband.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 2,318 rehearsal big bands on the planet,\u201d asserts Gary Christensen, leader of the All-Star Big Band. \u201cOn YouTube I came across a young people\u2019s big band in Japan really nailing this high-level jazz piece. So it\u2019s like, wow, they really are everywhere!\u201d<\/p>\n

The UWM Jazz Ensemble and The Marquette University Jazz Band, of varying sizes, function alongside the school\u2019s traditional classical music instruction. Most jazz orchestras require strong reading ability of sometimes devilishly complex charts, the disciplined ear for harmonizing, counterpoint and tricky time signatures, as well as individual imagination and virtuosity for soloing.<\/p>\n

A gifted composer-arranger like Schneider, Marsalis, Argue or Jensen — or the SFJazz Collective\u2019s multiple composer-arrangers, including the brilliant Miguel Zenon — can make musical magic with such forces. And magic, that transports the imagination and spirit, never goes out of style.<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

See sidebar post on CC for a Selected Discography of the Modern Jazz Orchestra: https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6335<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Among the notable artists and recordings underscoring the importance of the\u00a0ArtistShare brand and kick-starter funding concept are Pulitzer-nominated composer Patrick Williams,\u00a0The Clayton Brothers, Milwaukee-raised trumpeter Brian Lynch for the Grammy-winning large-ensemble Eddie Palmieri Project’s\u00a0Simpatico<\/em>, Bob Brookmeyer, Danilo Perez, Jim Hall, SFJazz Collective’s Robin Eubanks, Ingrid\u00a0Jensen, Donny McCaslin, Jane Ira\u00a0Bloom,\u00a0Torben Waldorff,\u00a0Geoff Keezer and\u00a0Alex Sipiagin.<\/p>\n

Coming soon, a more in-depth interview with Ryan Truesdell<\/strong>, creator and music director of The Gil Evans Project.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in OnMilwaukee.com<\/em>:http:\/\/onmilwaukee.com\/music\/articles\/jazzgoldenage.html<\/a><\/p>\n

This article is dedicated to the memory of my father, Norman Lynch, who introduced me at a young age to the power and possibility of the jazz orchestra. He especially loved Stan Kenton and often said, “My dream always was to play trombone in the Kenton Orchestra.”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"norm<\/p>\n

Norm and Kevin Lynch, beside a Stan Kenton poster, The Jazz Estate, Milwaukee, 1983.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Verona native Ryan Truesdell, who began jazz study at Verona High School, now leads The Gil Evans Project during a recent live recording at The Jazz Standard in New York. All the brass horns gleam, whisper and shout. Tonal colors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-1DZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6323"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6437,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6323\/revisions\/6437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}