Composers have been marrying elements of jazz and classical music for a century with drastically uneven results. The aesthetic bliss promised by the union is too seductive for many composers to ignore, but the challenge is daunting. So if you're Wynton Marsalis, you seek advice from a master.
When Marsalis finished his 1999 oratorio “All Rise" for orchestra, jazz band and chorus, he shared the score with the composer-pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, who had dedicated a large part of his career to synthesizing classical forms and jazz improvisation. Lewis, a fiercely intelligent man not given to empty flattery, silently studied the score for an hour. Finally, he spoke:
“This piece has solutions to a lot of problems we've been thinking about for a long time."
Metro Detroiters have the rare opportunity this week to hear two starry jazz composers, Marsalis and Wayne Shorter, renew the quest to merge jazz and classical idioms. Marsalis' “Two in 3" will be given its world premiere Wednesday in East Lansing by the Michigan State University Symphony Orchestra and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. A cocommission by MSU, Wharton Center and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the piece will also be performed Saturday by the DSO and Lincoln Center band at Orchestra Hall.
Shorter's “Terra Incognito" (2006), his first piece of classical chamber music, will be performed by the Imani Winds, a young ensemble that specializes in genre-bending works, on Saturday in Ann Arbor for the University Musical Society. Shorter, a leading tenor and soprano saxophonist, will also appear with his quartet and both groups will team to play his arrangements.
Marsalis, 46, the most famous jazz musician on the planet, and Shorter, 75, the most influential composer in jazz since the '60s, are musicians of vastly different artistic temperament and style. But both, to paraphrase Lewis, are seeking solutions to similar problems -- how to marry the formal complexities, strategies and orchestral colors associated with classical music with the improvisatory freedom, melodic language and blues-groove-swing of jazz.
When Marsalis finished his 1999 oratorio “All Rise" for orchestra, jazz band and chorus, he shared the score with the composer-pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, who had dedicated a large part of his career to synthesizing classical forms and jazz improvisation. Lewis, a fiercely intelligent man not given to empty flattery, silently studied the score for an hour. Finally, he spoke:
“This piece has solutions to a lot of problems we've been thinking about for a long time."
Metro Detroiters have the rare opportunity this week to hear two starry jazz composers, Marsalis and Wayne Shorter, renew the quest to merge jazz and classical idioms. Marsalis' “Two in 3" will be given its world premiere Wednesday in East Lansing by the Michigan State University Symphony Orchestra and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. A cocommission by MSU, Wharton Center and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the piece will also be performed Saturday by the DSO and Lincoln Center band at Orchestra Hall.
Shorter's “Terra Incognito" (2006), his first piece of classical chamber music, will be performed by the Imani Winds, a young ensemble that specializes in genre-bending works, on Saturday in Ann Arbor for the University Musical Society. Shorter, a leading tenor and soprano saxophonist, will also appear with his quartet and both groups will team to play his arrangements.
Marsalis, 46, the most famous jazz musician on the planet, and Shorter, 75, the most influential composer in jazz since the '60s, are musicians of vastly different artistic temperament and style. But both, to paraphrase Lewis, are seeking solutions to similar problems -- how to marry the formal complexities, strategies and orchestral colors associated with classical music with the improvisatory freedom, melodic language and blues-groove-swing of jazz.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
