Artist: Protosynthesis Ensemble
Album: Jazz Classics Classical Jazz
Genre: Chamber Jazz
Label: RCA Victor
Released: 1990
Quality: APE (image+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Con Alma (Gillespie)
- In Your Own Sweet Way (Brubeck)
- In a Mist (Beiderbecke)
- Line for Lyons (Mulligan)
- Blue in Green (Davis)
- Pan Piper (G. Evans)
- Django (Lewis)
- Fontessa (Lewis)
- Blue Rndo a la Turk (Brubeck)
- Chelsea Bridge (Strayhorn)
- 'Round Midnight (Monk/Williams/Hanighen)
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It has been said that Jazz is America's classical music. I don't know who said it first, or when; but during the dear departed decade of the Eighties (a period, incidentally, when jazz reasserted itself in manifold ways, from reissues to a new wave of solidly rooted young players) the oft-echoed phrase was one that many enlightened thinkers took seriously.
Mike Berniker, who conceived and produced this album, set out to find "those jazz compositions that worked well in classical contexts but were strong jazz pieces to begin with; pieces that would transfer well in classical references."
Each piece refers not to any one classical composer, but to several. Though all suggest a classical ethos, it isn 't adhered to rigidly. For this project, which Berniker characterizes as "the first of this kind of synthesis'' (hence the title Protosynthes/s), he enlisted the services of three arrangers. Each one brought his own compositional and orchestral talents to the enterprise, and Berniker assigned pieces to each based upon his special gifts.
For Dizzy Gillespie's Con Alma (first recorded in 1954), arranger Brad Dechter drew upon Villa-Lobos's Bach/ana brasileira No. 5, written originally for soprano voice and eight celli and here adapted for guitar and string quartet.
Arranger Byron Olson describes Dave Brubeck as "one of the first crossover composers," and while not neglecting Brubeck's harmonies on In Your Own Sweet Way (first recorded in 1956), he adds the French Impressionism of Ravel to impart a feeling of wistful beauty, through the combination of a classical woodwind quintet with piano.
Bix Beiderbecke wrote In a Mist as a piano piece and recorded it at the keyboard himselfin 1927. "I wanted to get it away from the piano," says Hersch, "butthisis literally Bix—almost a transcription, but for string quartet. It's like a ragtime piece or a piano prelude and still has the flavor of the period when Bix was listening to, among others, Ravel, Debussy and Gershwin."
Mike Berniker suggested the fugue, theme and variation for Gerry Mulligan's Line for Lyons (1952) to arranger Brad Dechter, who put it into three movements. All three are built on phrases as melodic motifs. The first movement is in Bachian fugal style, with flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and harpsichord; the second, 16th-century and Mozart with a woodwind quintet and French horn; the third, 19th-century and Beethoven with French horn, clarinet and bassoon.
Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings crept into arranger Byron Olson's consciousness for his interpretation of Miles Davis/Bill Evans's Blue in Green. He retained the harmonies from the Hiies Davis recording on Kind of Blue (J959) but added classical harmony to give it a chamber feeling.
For Pan Piper, Dechter took Gil Evans's arrangement from Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain (1960) as the basis for his collaboration with drummer-writer Frank Bennett. The treatment of the old Spanish folk song contains references to De Falla and to Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole. It is played by the same chamber ensemble heard on 8/ue in Green.
Fred Hersch's adaptation of John Lewis's Django (first recorded by the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1954) is divided into four movements, played by oboe, cello, violin and harpsichord. "The first movement," Hersch explains, "is the piece set in a Baroque style. Movements two and four are based on the first motif of the piece. The third, a Largo, derives from a two-note figure from the 8 section." This is plaintive, thematic writing. Fred Hersch adds, "My heroes are those who play compositionally—Monk, Sonny, Ornette, Miles—and I like to compose like a player."
John Lewis's Fontesso (1956) was originally in four movements. Arranger Byron Olson retained material from the first three movements and used his own introduction and interludes at points within the movements. The more dissonant moments of plucking and sliding by the string quartet recall Bartok.
The small chamber orchestra returns for Brubeck's Blue Rondo a la Turk (1959), written, as the title implies, in rondo form. "Being such a strict rhythm," explains Byron Olson, "made it extremely difficult to record, so I brought in 4/4 to break up the 9/8. It has that Gershwinesque piano thing but it's still really the blues" — with, I might add, some Stravinsky references as well.
The ambiguity of the harmony led arranger Brad Dechter to take a Ravel approach on Billy Strayhorn's Chelsea Bridge (recorded by Ellington in 1941). This is not surprising given the piece's Impressionist origins: Strayhorn once revealed that its inspiration was a Whistler painting.
Fred Hersch's solo on 'Round Midnight (a piece first recorded by Cootie Williams's band in 1944, but probably composed by Thelonious Monk several years earlier) was written by Brad Dechter. His references are the harmonies of Gershwin's piano preludes and Erik Satie who, like Monk, according to Dechter, "was such a sparse writer that the space meant as much as the notes did.''
As Mike Berniker says, "With Protosynthesis, what we're saying is that wonderful music may be approached in any number of ways.''
Approach and recognize. — IRA GITLER