Packed with top regional instrumentalist/composers, The New England Jazz Ensemble has long been a band for all seasons, a non-profit collective of devoted modern jazz practitioners who are also right at home celebrating traditional Christmas fare in the bright, bona fide spirit of jazz.
With pianist/composer Walt Gwardyak as music director, the NEJE unwraps its handsomely packaged Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn "Jazz Nutcracker" at 1:30 pm on Sunday, December 7, atInfinity Music Halland Bistro, 32 Front Street in Hartford.
Along with the venerable Ellington/Strayhorn jazz adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s "Nutcracker Suite," the orchestra presents a merry mélange of jazz charts for such familiar fare as "Frosty the Snowman," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and "Winter Wonderland." A diverse, accessible litany of seasonal sounds is served featuring the 16-piece orchestra’s signature mix of swing and sophistication. Free of the humbug and commercial schmaltz that sometimes taint holiday musical fare, the band’s first-rate charts, solos and ensemble playing wed genuine jazz with a vibrant holiday spirit.
The New England Jazz Ensemble is the first group to experience the acoustics of a 16-piece big band at the brand new Infinity Hall.
Mixing jazz with Christmas music is a most welcome, longstanding tradition for the NEJE, according to Gwardyak.
"We did the Ellington 'Nutcracker' with Hartford Conservatory for eight years in a full-stage production. We have played the Ellington piece with the Wallingford Symphony Orchestra in two holiday concerts," said Gwardyak, a musician and scholar who appreciates the historic aura surrounding the music.
"It's great to play the actual Ellington/Strayhorn arrangements of this clever and beautiful piece," Gwardyak added. "Recorded for the first time by Ellington in 1960, it is based on a classical Tchaikovsky ballet premiered in 1892. It is fun to perform music that was composed and developed over a 122-year period."
Jazz and Christmas music, the maestro stresses, can be quite a compatible mix.
"A lot of Christmas music is a vehicle for jazz," Gwardyak said, "because most of it was written or popularized by composers who either played jazz or wrote using a style that was readily adaptable to jazz-- people like Irving Berlin, Mel Torme, Nat 'King' Cole and Vince Guaraldi."
Even the band’s discography enjoys a solid link with that jazz/Christmas bond.
Among its acclaimed albums is A Cookin’ Christmas, which was recorded in 2003. A festive feast, it’s a perennially appropriate stocking stuffer. Historically, it marked one of the earliest, non-Ellington big band recordings of the suite from the "Nutcracker" ballet, Tchaikovsky’s universal sugarplum of a holiday favorite. See NEJE’s website: neje.org.
Ed Bride, a NEJE board member, calls the Ellington/Strayhorn "Nutcracker" a "seminal classical-jazz crossover," while expressing amazement that "it has only been in the past ten years or so that today’s big bands have performed and recorded it."
Among the earliest big band appreciators of its possibilities, Bride said, was the NEJE, with its recording eleven years ago. He said it's what he believes is the first non-Ellington recording of the work.
The opening half of the Infinity Hall concert will be devoted to the Ellington/Strayhorn jazz take on the Tchaikovsky work. The second half of the program features the band’s original arrangements of contemporary holiday tunes.
Created in 1991 by its then lead trumpeter Mike Jones as a rehearsal band and forum for new compositions written by its members, the ensemble has made recordings and performed in numerous jazz festivals ranging from the Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz to the Corinth Jazz Festival in Greece.
The Hartford-based unit’s step into the international scene with its jaunt to Greece in 2004 was made possible by a National Endowment for the Arts grant.
In a time when big bands have been, at best, an endangered species, the NEJE, through talent, dedication and resiliency, hasn’t just merely survived. It has also performed in concerts, made recordings in both live and studio settings, and played with many guest luminaries ranging from Ali Ryerson andGiacomo Gates to Thomas Chapin and John Abercrombie.
Gwardyak, who has been the NEJE’s music director since its inception, has a thick, sheaf-like resume as a pianist, composer/arranger and educator. His credits include service as the dean of the former Hartford Conservatory, a full-time stint with theBuddy Rich Band and gigs with jazz notables ranging from Pepper Adams to Zoot Sims.
A versatile, award-winning musician, Gwardyak has worked as an accompanist for such diverse showbiz figures as Jack Jones, Roy Clark, Jackie Mason, Bobby Vinton and Henny Youngman, and as the conductor and pianist for the touring version of the Broadway musical, Ain’t Misbehavin’. As a skilled and much sought-after arranger/composer, he can combine jazz elements with orchestral traditions, employing even serial and 12-tone elements, as he did in his "Suite for Orchestra and Jazz Band," which was commissioned by the Manchester Symphony Orchestra and Chorale.
Part of the emotional kick for the band -- even aside from the regular pre-concert adrenaline rush and the charge of the holiday spirit -- is the pure joy of playing for the first time ever in the new Infinity Hall, a bright, rejuvenating spot for downtown Hartford, said Steve Bulmer, the band’s bassist and president of its board.
"We’re particularly excited to be the first group to experience the acoustics of a 16-piece big band at the brand new Infinity Hall," Bulmer said. "With its lofty, spacious stage, exceptionally tight wooden interior and great acoustics, the venue seems tailor-made for a non-electronic ensemble offering vast music intensity and dynamic range."
Helping to make it a festive experience for jazz fans and even non-jazz fans, young and old alike, is the band’s lineup of premier regional musicians.
Here’s the complete roster: John Mastroianni, Bob DePalma, Larry Dvorin, Mike Leventhal and Lisa LaDone, saxophones;Jeff Holmes, Steve Fitzko, Phil Person and Hank Zorn, trumpets; Tim Atherton, Ben Griffin, Peter McEachern, and Dave Wampler, trombones; Walt Gwardyak, piano; Steve Bulmer, bass; and Jon Mele, drums. Tickets: $25.00-$40.00. Information: infinityhall.com and box office: (866) 666-6306.
A Bag Full of Cheer
If all this whets your appetite for Christmas classics, Concord RecordsandLegacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, offer a giant bag full of musical cheer for you containing vintage pop holiday material, rare tracks and never before released selections.
Fans of pianist/singer Michael Feinstein, for example, can make their season bright with Concord’s A Michael Feinstein Christmas, with selections that were originally part of a limited release and have been out-of-print for more than ten years.
The heavyweight champion and scholar of the Great American Songbook is accompanied, in a simpatico alliance, by the fine jazz pianist Alan Broadbent. Feinstein interprets songs ranging from Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song” to the Gene Autry mega-hit, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
Legacy’s Classic Christmas Album series rings in the season with eight new compilations featuring Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand, Perry ComoandIl Divo, plus collections by genre individually devoted to hard rock, pop and country.
The Classic Christmas Album by Frank Sinatra features two previously unreleased tracks, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” pairing Old Blues Eyes with Metropolitan Opera diva Dorothy Kirsten, and “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” with the popular nightclub trio led by pianist/vocalist Page Cavanaugh.
Johnny Mathis’s Classic Christmas Album includes two previously unreleased tracks, “Ol Kris Kringle” and “Give Me Your Love for Christmas,” along with such mellow Mathis musings as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “Home for the Holidays.” Johnny teams up with Bette Midler on a mini-medley, walking through "Winter Wonderland" and "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" Still reigning as a king of romantic crooners, Mathis, who’s apparently ageless at the age of 79, is scheduled to perform next May in Hartford at The Bushnell.
Streisand brings her classic voice and dramatic sense to bear on her compilation on everything from “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” to Gounod’s “Ave Maria.” Even the grand diva’s ride through “Jingle Bells” jingles all the way with a certain sense of gravitas.
Como is all about home, hearth, heart, holiness and tradition with his warm embrace of such songs as "There’s No Christmas Like a Home Christmas," and "(There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays." Como, who always sounds as relaxed as though he were singing in his living room, revisits the most nostalgic, bittersweet of all songs about home sweet home: Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.”
A mega-hit written in 1942 as World War II raged, it was the Greatest Generation’s nostalgic homefront hymn of longing for the end of carnage, the reunion of loved ones and restoration of the serenity we used to know. Como makes you believe everything about that pre-war Camelot where treetops glistened and children listened.
Ascending from Disciple to Prophet
A strategic chess opening move, the term Sicilian Defense is also the name of the acclaimed, cutting-edge trumpeter/composer Jonathan Finlayson’s swashbuckling bandof sonic adventurers that he leads at 8:30 and 10:00 pm on Friday, December 5, at Firehouse 12.
As grandmaster of his quintet’s combatively clever tactics and odd-metered maneuvers, Finlayson, an apostle of new messages for the jazz medium, has reaped momentous praise for his landmark album, The Moment and the Message (Pi Recordings). All About Jazz Italy, for example, has hailed his 2013 disc as no less than “the best contemporary jazz…captured in its entirety on this exceptional debut.”
While Finlayson has performed at Firehouse 12 numerous times with guitarist Mary Halvorson, percussionist Tomas Fujiwara and saxophonist Steve Lehman, Friday night’s two sets mark the onetime wunderkind’s debut as a leader at the noted New Haven performance and recording center. His Sicilian Defense collaborators are Cuban-born pianist David Virelles, guitaristMiles Okazaki, bassist Keith Wittyand drummer Damion Reid.
Described as a disciple of the visionary saxophonist/composer Steve Coleman, a MacArthur “genius award” winner, Finlayson has also played and recorded in groups led not only by Halvorson and Lehman, but also byCraig Taborn and the legendaryHenry Threadgill. He’s also preached the gospel of the new alongside such iconic innovators as Von Freeman, Jason Moran, Dafnis Prieto and Vijay Iyer.
The Guardian, a prestigious British newspaper, has trumpeted Finlayson as evolving from his role as disciple to that of prophet, proclaiming The Moment and the Message as a sign and testament “that he seems bound for the stature of Coleman, Lehman and Tim Berne, and even of the great Henry Threadgill before them.” Tickets: $20.00 first set; $15.00 second set. Information: firehouse12.com and (203) 785-0468. Firehouse 12 is at 45 Crown Street.
Notes from the Underground
The Chicago Underground Duo, featuring the freewheeling, electro-acoustic music of Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor, performs at 8:00 pm on Thursday, December 4, in the season finale for The Solos & Duos Series at the University of Massachusetts’ Bezanson Recital Hall on the Amherst campus. With Mazurek, trumpet/cornet and electronics, and Taylor, percussion and electronics, the duo presents both composed and improvised music.
Glenn Siegel, a spokesman for the concert and a noted Pioneer Valley jazz activist, said you can count on “powerful grooves along with ambient sound structures, folk song simplicity and polyrhythmic bursts of energy with lyrical melodic vignettes… (combining) high energy music with slow moving ballads.”
And that’s just for starters. The series is produced by the UMass Fine Arts Center (FAC). Tickets: $10.00 general; $5.00 students, available through the FAC box office, (413) 545-2511 or 1-800-999-UMAS.
Taylor Sows Free Jazz At RAW
Chad Taylor shows up for an encore performance on the regional scene as he sits-in at 3:00 pm on Sunday, December 7, in the Improvisations series at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor Street in Hartford. He’s the special guest of the ongoing series’ curator/performers, guitarist/bassist Joe Morris and cornetist Stephen Haynes.
Morris and Haynes, practitioners and exegetes of improvisation, celebrate free music every month with their handpicked guests, creating totally unrehearsed music on the spot in RAW’s cozy, intimate ambience. Admission: $15.00 general; $12.00 RAW members; $5.00 students. Information: realartways.org and (860) 232-1006.
Charles Mingus Lives!
The mighty Mingus Big Band flexes its Grammy Award-winning biceps as it performs on Friday, December 5, at 7:30 pm at Yale School of Music’s prestigious Ellington Jazz Series at Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall, 470 College Street, New Haven.
Standout Connecticut favorites among the powerhouse band’s celebrators and perpetuators of the legendary Charles Mingus legacy are the champion saxophonists Abraham Burtonand Wayne Escoffery and the splendid pianist Helen Sung. Tickets start at $20.00, $10.00 with student ID, available at (203) 432-4158 or at the box office.
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