Mixed Media

Concert Spotlight: The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at Ithaca College

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra will conclude the yearlong Ithaca College Concerts season “Ensembles Great and Small” on Friday, March 27. The performance will begin at 8:15 p.m. in Ford Hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music. Ford Hall will also be the venue for a free workshop at 4 p.m.

   The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra is an ensemble that began as the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra in 1966 and has performed continuously ever since. In 1966, the cornetist, composer, and arranger Thad Jones and drummer Mel Lewis founded a band in New York. Having settled in the city after leaving their respective touring jobs with Count Basie and Stan Kenton, Thad and Mel, along with many of their colleagues, needed an outlet for their creative energies and relief from the tedium of studio work. With a handful of arrangements they approached legendary club owner Max Gordon and were booked at the Village Vanguard for three Mondays in February. Critical acclaim, awards and international success soon followed.

The original three weeks have become a permanent gig that has survived over three decades and resulted in the group changing its name to the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Several of the current key members played for Thad Jones, so the orchestra’s unique sound and swing are proudly held and displayed, while other original precepts of creativity and experimentation are nurtured and encouraged.

Here's a peak of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra performing at the Village Vanguard.

Tickets for the concert are on sale at the Ticket Center at Clinton House at (607) 273-4497 or (800) 284-8422 or at ithacaevents.com, and at the door if available.

 

Listen Again: Henry Mancini on Piano Jazz

Composer, arranger and pianist Henry Mancini was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1924. His father, a flutist and piccolo player, encouraged his son to pursue music, and the young Mancini began taking lessons from Philadelphia concert master and jazz enthusiast Max Adkins. Adkins was influential on the local music scene, and Mancini's cohorts in Adkins' stable included Billy Strayhorn and Jerry Fielding.

Mancini decided to pursue music and attended the Juilliard School. After a brief stint in the Army band during WWII, Mancini worked as a composer and arranger with the Glenn Miller Band. There, he met and later married the group's singer, Ginny O'Connor.

The couple settled in L.A., and after working odd jobs as an arranger and freelance musician, Mancini was eventually hired by Universal Studios. Universal proved to be a unique training ground for Mancini; there, he was called on for a multitude of jobs, from producing new arrangements of old tunes to writing original pieces for all kinds of theatrical situations. His big-band experience made him a natural choice to score The Glenn Miller Story in 1954, as well as The Benny Goodman Story in 1956.

After a successful run at Universal, Mancini left and began working as an independent arranger and composer. In 1958, he was tapped to write the score for a new television series, Peter Gunn. The theme song for the show became an immediate success; the soundtrack went to No. 1 on Billboard's charts, and Mancini received an Emmy nomination and two Grammys for the album.

In the early '60s, with a growing reputation as a composer who could write hits, Mancini made a living as a freelance composer/arranger, and during this time, he wrote such hits as "Moon River," "Days of Wine and Roses" (both with Johnny Mercer) and "The Theme from The Pink Panther."

Mancini continued composing and arranging for film and television through the early '80s. Newhart, Remington Steele and Hotel were some of the hit shows for which he penned the theme. In addition to his composition work, Mancini began actively appearing as a conductor and special guest of symphony orchestras around the world.

Throughout his career, Mancini recorded more than 90 albums, eight of which went gold. He won 20 Grammys, though he earned a whopping 72 nominations. Mancini also received a Golden Globe, two Emmys and four Oscars.

Mancini died in Beverly Hills in 1994.

Listen to the full program here.

Jazzed about art: American Artistic Renaissance Symposium

By Daniel Aloi - Cornell News Service

In the 1970s, painter Frederick J. Brown's studio loft in downtown Manhattan attracted many young artists, musicians, dancers and writers to collaborate and experiment.

The American Artistic Renaissance Symposium, Sept. 22-24 at Cornell University, will reunite Brown and many major players from that scene, including jazz greats Charlie Haden, Henry Threadgill,  

Stanley Crouch and Sam Rivers. Three panel discussions will explore the confluence of visual and performance art, dance and experimental jazz at the time; and the Hans Bethe House lawn on Cornell's West Campus will host a live jam session Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. Participants also will visit classrooms and hold master classes.

"This is an unusual and historical reunion of a large number of towering figures of American art and culture of the last quarter of the 20th century," said Bethe House Dean Porus Olpadwala, formerly dean of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP).

Brown, whose daughter Sebastienne graduated from AAP this year, donated his "Triptich Portrait of Harriet Tubman" to Cornell's Africana Studies and Research Center in 2006, and four paintings to Bethe House after a visit with Threadgill in October 2007. After enjoying interactions with faculty and students, the two artists discussed bringing a group of their friends and collaborators to Cornell.                                                                                        

Brown is well-known for the colorful, vivid portraits of musicians in his "Jazz and Blues" series, and depictions of presidents, artists, folk heroes and Native Americans. His large-scale works include "The History of Art," consisting of 110 interlocking canvases. His influences encompass abstract expressionism and African, religious and folk art.

Raised on Chicago's South Side, Brown moved to New York in 1970 after college and quickly made connections in the music and art worlds. His musical associates, including high school friend Anthony Braxton, were notable leaders of the free jazz movement and his SoHo loft became a center for avant-garde performance and expression. Brown eventually gave up the loft in the late 1990s, after his family moved to Arizona.

The panel discussions - Sept. 23 at noon in B20 Lincoln Hall, Sept. 24 at noon at the Africana Center, and Sept. 24 at 8:30 p.m. in Barnes Hall - will look at the history and conditions that helped establish the loft scene from the 1960s forward, how new creative directions evolved, effects on culture and the artists who followed, and the prospects for such collaborations to thrive today.

Panelists also include dancer-choreographers Blondell Cummings and Megan Bowman Brown (Brown's wife); poet and community activist Felipe Luciano; artists Anthony Barboza and Gregoire Muller; drummer Jerome Cooper; and James Jordan, Ornette Coleman's baritone saxophonist and manager, who mentored the early SoHo scene and later worked for the New York State Council on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts.

Cornell professor of music Steven Pond and Brent Edwards, a professor at Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies, will moderate. Edwards is writing a cultural history of loft jazz in 1970s New York.

Also expected to attend: Playwright Christina Ham, New York Times editor Carla Anne Robbins, Ogden Museum of Southern Art curator David Houston, and filmmaker Mary Kemper Wolf, who profiled Brown's career in her 2002 documentary "120 Wooster Street."

"What I'm looking forward to is getting a sense of not only this critical mass of creativity happening in music at the time, but how it was interwoven with the other arts," Pond said. "SoHo became a magnet for these wildly creative people who had relocated from other cities. Henry Threadgill had been part of the AACM, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians [in Chicago]. He relocated, as many people did, to New York in the '70s to be closer to this whole scene Š the scene itself became a draw."

The panels and concert are free and open to the public. Supporting sponsors at Cornell include the American Studies Program, Cornell Council for the Arts, Cornell Library, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Departments of Music and Art, the Rose Goldsen Lecture Series, Campus Life, the Society for the Humanities, and several other units across campus.

(Image: Charlie Haden)

Jazz prodigy takes her Latin jazz mainstream

When Esperanza Spalding was still a senior at Boston's Berklee College of Music, the jazz singer and bassist had a startling moment of self-recognition. Traveling on a bus into the city, she glanced up at the college – briefly visible from the highway – and saw a multistory poster of herself on the wall of The Berklee Performance Center. "I had no idea!," she exclaims.

The billboard, an early indicator of stardom in 2005, is appropriate for a larger-than-life personality who, at age 20, became the youngest faculty member in the college's history. Now, Ms. Spalding is having a different kind of banner year. She's about to appear on David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel as her second album of Latin jazz knocks on the door of mainstream success.

Remarkably, it's not a "crossover record." A couple of the songs are in Portuguese, for starters. As her voice sambas over vibrant South American rhythms and her Elastigirl fingers climb up and down the double-bass's skyscraper neck, you'd swear the girl was from Ipanema, not Portland, Ore. Even people who think they don't like jazz may respond to the melodies on "Esperanza."

"[Musicians] are taking more risks, adding more colors and sounds to the music, ultimately to the benefit of the listener," she says in a phone interview.

Spalding has worked with saxophonist Joe Lovano and bassist Stanley Clarke. She's even been the opening act for comedian Bill Cosby, who offered to find her a record deal. She beat him to it.

"I recognized right away that she had a lot to say and was also unlike any musician I had ever run across before," raves legendary jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, in an e-mail. "Her unique quality is something that goes beyond her pretty amazing musical skills; She has that rare 'x' factor of being able to transmit a certain personal kind of vision and energy that is all her own."

Read the full article here.

Listen Again: Riverwalk Jazz explores the heroes of swing

At the dawn of jazz, in early 20th century New Orleans, players like trombonist Kid Ory and cornetist King Oliver taught themselves how to play—or learned informally from other musicians. Many worked 'day jobs' on the docks, or as servants. 'First generation' jazz musicians created a driving, rhythmic style that caught on around the country. But it was a relatively simple music—you might have called it 'urban folk music.'

Though early New Orleans jazz lacked the spit and polish of technical proficiency, jazz soloists of the Swing Era declared this territory their battleground. These 'Heroes of Swing' won their medals with precise intonation and the ability to play fast, clean runs, with absolute accuracy in both low and very high ranges. As author John McDonough wrote in "Streamlining Jazz: Major Soloists of the 1930s and 40s" in The Oxford Companion to Jazz, "In the struggle to outgrow its origins, jazz became caught up in an arms race of virtuosity that took the solo form from folk art and popular art to the portals of high art."

Just as King Oliver was the visionary who wrote the rules on what ensemble-style jazz bands should sound like, his protégée Louis Armstrong led the pack on defining the art of the jazz soloist.

And ever since Louis Armstrong recorded his first spectacular jazz solo inventions in the 1920s, the music has revolved around stellar solo playing. Louis Armstrong and reedman Sidney Bechet were among the first jazz players to define their art with equal emphasis on technical expertise, dazzling solos, and passionate performances. But by the mid-30s, their influence was heard in a new generation of jazzmen, in some cases, using formal musical training to expand the language of jazz, inventing new rhythms and more daring harmonies. The results thrilled audiences.

In this program, Riverwalk Jazz salutes the great soloists of the 1930s, who propelled jazz to a new level. We'll hear the music of two Irish-American brothers from Pennsylvania who shared a drive for musical perfection—Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey; as well as the work of the self-taught, European gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, whose solo playing re-invented jazz guitar. And, also on the bill is music from a trio of highly inventive reedmen—Benny Goodman, Bud Freeman, and Benny Carter.

Find a link to the program here.

Charmaine Clamor and 'jazzipino' on Weekend Edition

Charmaine Clamor is a jazz vocalist who grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald on the radio, which shouldn't be surprising. What may be surprising is that Clamor grew up in the Philippines — as a 3-year-old, she sang to passengers on the bus in Manila. Clamor is now a star in her homeland and she's attracting attention in the United States.

Her second CD, Flippin' Out, introduces a hybrid sound, which she calls "jazzipino." Clamor spoke with Liane Hansen about her distinct sound and offered her definition.

Click here to listen to the interview and to find out more about Charmaine Clamor.