Post tag: Bill Evans
“Blue in Green” An Award-Winning Album of Poetry and Jazz Released April 2019

Blue In Green: Original Compositions by Eugene Marlow, Inspired by the Jazz Poems of Grace Schulman“Blue In Green: Original Compositions by Eugene Marlow Inspired by the Jazz Poems of Grace Schulman”—a collaborative album of 10 poetry tracks by world-renowned, award-winning poet Grace Schulman and 10 original jazz compositions by award-winning composer/arranger Eugene Marlow—was released on April 30, 2019, International Jazz Day. April is also both Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM) and Poetry Appreciation Month.

Dr. Grace Schulman, a Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College (City University of New York) —who contributed and recorded the jazz poems on this album—will be inducted in the American Academy of Arts and Letters on May 22, 2019.  She is also the 2016 Robert Frost awardee from the Poetry Society of America.

Hear Now Official Selection 2019“Blue In Green” was selected to be part of  National Audio Theatre Festivals (NATF) Playhouse’s 2019 PODCAST  PALOOZA at the 2019 HEAR Now Festival. The Festival’s podcast pages opens the day of the Festival, June 6, 2019, and runs through August 1, 2019.

“Blue In Green” is also a March 2019 recipient of a Silver Medal Award from the Global Music Awards.

2019 Silver Medal AwardNumerous jazz musicians are referenced in Schulman’s poems, including: Art Tatum, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk, as well as classical violinist Itzhak Perlman and Danish author Chris Albertson.

Marlow’s challenge was to create compositions that reflected—in whole or in part—the content or tone of each of Schulman’s 10 jazz poems.

“Blue In Green” will be available on cdbaby.com April 30, 2019.

The CD can be purchased for $15 + S&H by contacting meiienterprises@aol.com. Use code word “BING” in the subject line.

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Book Review: “Letters to Yeyito: Lessons from a Life in Music” by Paquito d’Rivera

The Marlowsphere Blog (#134)

Letters to Yeyito: Lessons from a Life in Music

Letters to Yeyito (Restless Books, Brooklyn, NY, 228 pages, softcover, 2015) by world renowned reed player Paquito d’Rivera has the sub-title “Lessons from a Life in Music.” Fact is the book is much more than that.

It is more than a litany of lessons from a life in music for one major reason: Paquito d’Rivera. If this book had been written by less than an accomplished jazz/classical musician than Maestro d’Rivera, it would have less meaning. Fact is Cuban-born clarinetist and saxophonist d’Rivera is celebrated for his artistry in Latin jazz and achievements in classical composition. He has received 14 Grammys, the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Award, and the National Medal of the Arts.  He is the only artist to have won Grammys in both classical and Latin jazz categories.

But it is not this wall of awards that gives Letters to Yeyito its literary heft. Not only does the author offer a highly descriptive account of life in Cuba under Fidel Castro, he also provides a detailed account of the many people who have crossed his musical path and the family and friends who have surrounded him. More than the lessons, the page after page mention of people in his career is what gives the book its life.

The list of musical mentors and colleagues is lengthy. And it is not just name-dropping. Many are familiar in their own right; many others are less well known, but nonetheless important to his evolving career.

Here’s a partial list: “Charanguero” flutist Jose Fajardo, pianist Rafael Somavilla, guitarist Carlos Emilio, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, bassist Carlitos Puerto, trap drummer Enrique Pla, trumpeter John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, pianist Mike Longo, composer Lalo Schifrin, the twins Placido and Domingo Calzadilla, Stan Getz, Earl Hines, David Amram, Mario Bauza (an old friend of Paquito’s father), alto clarinetist Rudy Rutherford, bassist Ron McClure, drummer Billy Hart, Ray Mantilla, John Ore, Mickey Rocker, Ben Brown, Paquito d'Riverapianist Joanne Brackeen, Rodney Jones, Bruce Lundval, jazz event entrepreneur George Wein, pianists Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner, bassist Israel Cachao, local guitarist Carlo Emilio, saxophonist Phil Woods, saxophonist and flautist Frank Wess, soprano Martina Arroyo, trumpeter Claudio Roditi, bass guitarist Lincoln Goines, drummer Portinho, pianist Michael Camilo, trombonist Conrad Herwig, Argentinian saxophonist Oscar Feldman, and cellist Yo Yo Ma. Again, this is a partial list.

There’s also Uncle Ernesto, Jesus Canon the grocer, and old lady Cheché, among many other family members, friends, peers, and Castro-ites from his native Cuba.

If there’s a life lesson in this book it is that talent and high musical accomplishment attracts like talent and accomplishment.

Paquito d’Rivera’s  Letters to Yeyito: Lessons from a Life in Music offers the reader a first- hand account of life in Castro’s Cuba from a musician’s perspective. But more than this, it underlines the importance of family, friends, mentors, and peers in the development of a musical career.

Eugene Marlow
September 19, 2016

© Eugene Marlow 2016

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Classical & Jazz: A Century Old Melding of Genres

World Music BrewThe Marlowsphere Blog (#110)

There are still some quarters on this planet where musicians, musicologists, and critics perceive the world of music in terms of categories: classical music here, jazz over there, world music in other places. In fact, pick up any music history book and the world of music is neatly divided among early music, medieval music, Baroque, classical, Romantic, and then 20th century music.

This latter category is a potpourri of musical styles, and extends into the early part of the 21st century.

I am still waiting for more musicologists to come to terms with the term “world music” to define the 21st century because that is what music has increasingly become: a melding of musical styles with influences from all over the planet.

I am motivated to delve into this subject primarily for two reasons. First, later this week I’ll be hosting the fall concert of the Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Concert Series at Baruch College’s Engelman Recital Hall (on October 29). The performers are the Grammy-nominated Harlem Quartet. In addition to one purely classical piece (a movement from a Mendelsohn string quartet), the balance of their program will be all jazz.

Deanna Witkowski "Rain Drop"The second reason is a new CD from pianist Deanna Witkowski entitled “Rain Drop.” It is her sensitive and tasteful adaptation of several Chopin nocturnes and preludes sprinkled with her own short compositions inspired by the Romantic composer. The melding of the two genres—classical and jazz—is ever-present in this inspired CD. For example, Ms. Witkowski makes the musical point that Chopin’s Prelude in E minor (op. 28, No. 4) is also the basis for Antonio Carlos Jobin’s “Insensatez.”

This melding of classical and jazz genres (and in the case of Jobin, Brazilian rhythms) is not a recent happening, particularly when it comes to jazz-influenced classical compositions. Almost from the initial emergence of jazz as America’s classical music (a term the late Dr. Billy Taylor coined; and don’t let anyone tell you any differently), classical composers have mined the jazz genre. For example, parts of the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor (written in the 1890s) have melodies that sound like black spirituals (although he claimed he did not plan the resemblance).

There are other notable classical composers who have borrowed from the jazz genre for their compositions:

      • George Antheil (A Jazz Symphony)
      • Malcolm Arnold (Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra)
      • Milton Babbitt (All Set)
      • Leonard Bernstein (Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs)
      • Boris Blacher (Concerto for Jazz Orchestra)
      • Marc Blitzstein (The Cradle Will Rock)
      • Aaron Copland (Concerto for Piano and Orchestra)
      • George Gershwin (most famously Rhapsody in Blue)
      • Hans Werner Henze (Boulevard Solitude)
      • Pail Hindemith (Suite fur Klavier)
      • Arthur Honegger (Concerto for Cello and Orchestra)
      • Constant Lambert (Elegiac Blues)
      • Rolf Liebermann (Concerto for Jazzband and Symphony Orchestra)
      • Frank Martin (Ballade for trombone and piano)
      • Darius Milhaud (Trois rag caprices)
      • Maurice Ravel (Piano Concerto in G)
      • Gunther Schuller (Concertino for Jazz Quartet and Orchestra)
      • John Serry (American Rhapsody)
      • Dmitri Shostakovich (Suite for Jazz Orchestra);
      • Karlheinz Stockhausen (Sonatine for violin and piano);
      • Igor Stravinsky (Ragtime for 11 instruments)
      • Michael Tippett (Symphony No. 3)
      • Kurt Weill (The Threepenny Opera)
      • Alec Wilder (Octets)

The mixing of classical and jazz in the 20th and 21st centuries has flowed the other way. The highly classically trained Andre Previn made several small ensemble albums of jazz and popular music standards. His classical roots are clearly imprinted on every track.

The Swingle Singers (1964)The Swingle Singers, (pictured left) directed originally by Ward Swingle (who once belonged to Mimi Perrin’s French vocal group Les Double Six), began as session singers mainly doing background vocals for singers such as Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf. Christiane Legrand, sister of Michel Legrand, was the original lead soprano, and they did some jazz vocals for Michel Legrand. The eight session singers sang through “Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier” as a sight-reading exercise and found the music to have a natural swing. They recorded their first album “Jazz Sébastien Bach” as a present for friends and relatives. Many radio stations picked it up and this led to the group recording more albums and winning a total of five Grammy Awards.1

You can hear the strong classical training roots in the playing of jazz pianist greats Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans. I recall Evans once telling me that when he was younger he studied the Romantic composers (he also apparently worked harder than anyone else to achieve his harmonically complex yet sensitive playing style, despite the fact that his hands were unusually large).

Turtle Island Quartet & Chick CoreaEven more recently the two-time Grammy-winning Turtle Island Quartet —through the talents of founder David Balakrishnan–has adapted jazz stylings for violins, viola, and cello. Similarly, the aforementioned Harlem Quartet performs Chick Corea’s crossover (classical to jazz) compositions.

On a more individual basis, virtuoso guitarist Romero Lubambo of Trio Da Paz fame is fond of performing Bach’s Prelude in C minor at the drop of a hat and at unbelievable breakneck speed (I have heard him perform it in the context of a Trio Da Paz performance and separately at a Diane Reeves concert). Very often jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut will morph an improvisation into a familiar classical melody and back to various jazz stylings.

The larger concept, of course, is this trend–present throughout the 20th century—has evolved into a melding of world music styles in the 21st century. In other words, every musical and rhythmic style is now fair game for composition and performance. Influences come from all corners of the planet. It has become a melting pot of musical influences. My own quintet, The Heritage Ensemble, performs arrangements and original compositions that combine Hebraic melodies with various jazz, Afro-Caribbean, Brazilian, and, yes, classical styles.

There’s no getting around it: along with a global economy there’s also a global exchange of music styles. This is the new music of the 21st century.

If you have any comments or questions about this or any of my other blogs, please write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
October 27, 2014

© Eugene Marlow 2014

 

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swingle_Singers

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