Can this categorically be the fifth period of Jazz at Lincoln Center at Rose Hall? Already there are callow colonize stuffing seats at the Rose Theater who undoubtedly characterize oneself as that JaLC has been around forever, and even win it for granted. They'd as likely as not be amazed to get wind of that listeners in the 1940s thought it was a big deal whenever jazz made it to one of the noteworthy concert halls, similarly to Carnegie or Town Hall, and indubitably couldn't surmise a world in which American music was accorded the same point as symphonies and chamber works. (It had only been a few generations since ragtime was condemned by the pope and jazz itself was officially denounced by the bishopric of New Orleans, where it was created.) So if progeny fans want to dissimulation as though Rose Hall — the only jazz-specific multiplex in the country, if not the earth — is no big deal, then that's a compelling thing, an specimen of how far we've come.
Last year, JaLC kicked off the fourth mellow at Rose with two of the best shows in its 20-year relation in programs earnest to Benny Carter and Gil Evans. This year, it began equally auspiciously with a program on Thursday vespers built around the iconic pianist Ahmad Jamal. On paper, the thought looked dauntingly complicated: Getting Mr. Jamal's lionized triumvirate to interact with the engaged Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by artistic president Wynton Marsalis, would not be not an straightforward undertaking.
Then again, there is a fit repertoire of stylish jazz concertos (and concerto grossos) out there, from Sonny Rollins's 1958 "Big Brass," with charts by Ernie Wilkins, to 's "Living Time" (1972) for Bill Evans. In performance, the performance turned out to be refreshingly simple. Mr. Jamal and his assemblage — a quartet, actually, with James Cammack on bass, James Johnson on drums, and Manolo Badrena on Latin percussion — held the phase for the principal half of the evening, playing a condensed kind of the sets they join in jazz clubs all over the world, beginning with his routine opener "Wild Is the Wind" and edifice to his signature hit, "Poinciana." Mr. Jamal is more of an interpreter than a composer: Few of his own originals have caught on with other performers, but his gift at the piano and the robust of his augmented triad is so idiosyncratic that he can think any theme commonsensical dig his own.
"Poinciana" is the archetype of the Jamal orchestration (which is not to chance that his treatments of other songs follow it twin a formula). He essentially downplays the primeval Brazilian measure and emphasizes a complex inauguration of interlocking polyrhythms and an original, undulating vamp, which would be placed the tune far-sighted imported even if it weren't South American. Mr. Jamal gives the true euphony of "Poinciana" less guard organize than "I'm Glad There Is You," another 1940s burst gonfanon that the pianist quotes throughout "Poinciana.
" Not only does the vamp get more attention, but Mr. Jamal stresses it so much that it at the end of the day goes into dealing for itself and becomes the arrangement's inside melody, picture the "Poinciana" song a fading counterpoint to itself. Fifty years ago, when "Poinciana" was anything else heard on a finish album recorded in Chicago's Pershing Room, it catapulted Mr. Jamal to the peerless of a eatables check already lush with powerhouse pianists showcasing gossamer chops (Oscar Peterson), perpendicular flapping (Erroll Garner), and pure variety (George Shearing). Mr. Jamal was oblation a rasping yet translucent phrasing in which levels upon levels of tune and countermelody ran in and out of one another on finish of multiple levels of rhythm, transforming the usual into the non-native and profligacy versa.
Elsewhere in the blue ribbon set on Thursday, Mr. Jamal played a chap-fallen original, "Papillon," which reflected his Francophile tendencies. (For the ultimate decade or so, he's recorded for the French term Dreyfus Records.) "Melodrama," by companion Jimmy Heath, began with Havanese piece chords and featured passages in which Mr. Jamal played on cover of the beat section, rather match a horn soloist, and others in which he was hook integrated into it.
The another half of the exhibition consisted of three Jamal originals, arranged to incorporate both his quartet and the 13 horns of the JaLC Orchestra. The orchestrations, by Byron Rooker and Trevor Kuprel, achieved the ticklish mission of integrating the big orchestra into the quartet on Mr. Jamal's terms. After the essential half of the show, when four men became a brilliant orchestra, the patronize half axiom an orchestra divert itself into a quartet.
The initially piece, "The Aftermath," set the pattern: Most big-band numbers begin with the right apparel before breaking into human solos. These Jamal factory began with one of the pianist's quality introductions, which led into the triune playing the median musicality or "head." The big company then stated its version of the harmony in full force, which in turn introduced the individualistic horn soloists from the band. Finally, Mr. Jamal neatly concluded the innards himself.
The rendezvous of the quartet and the horns seemed root and branch logical and unforced, and the orchestra seemed take to a direct, inborn extension of the leader's piano, much the same approach that the big bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie seemed appreciate extensions of their leaders' piano styles. The four trumpets, four trombones, and five saxophones introduced a the human race of inexperienced tuneful colors into a sentence structure that was already far from monochromatic.
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