Mirage Avant-Garde and Third-Stream Jazz - Various

 

Avant-Garde and Third-Stream Jazz

Mirage 

Avant-Garde and Third-Stream Jazz

Program Consultant: Gunther Schuller

Rerecording Engineer: Frank Haber

Cover Art: Gabor Peterdi "Angry Skies"

Cover Design: Elaine Sherer Cox

New World Records NW 216 Mono

1977

Summer Sequence (Parts 1, 2, 3) - Ralph Burns -Woody Herman and His Orchestra

The Clothed Woman - Duke Ellington - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra

Yesterdays - Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach - Lennie Tristano Quartet

Mirage - Pete Rugolo - Stan Kenton and His Orchestra

Eclipse - Charles Mingus - Charles Mingus Octet, with Janet Thurlow

Edon Heath - Bill Russo - Stan Kenton and His Orchestra

Concerto For Billy The Kid - George Russell and His Smalltet

Transformation - Gunther Schuller - Brandeis Jazz Festival Ensemble

Piazza Navona - John Lewis - John Lewis and His Orchestra

Laura - David Raskin and Johnny Mercer - Jeanne Lee, vocal; Ran Blake, piano

Summer Sequence (Parts 1, 2, 3) - Ralph Burns

Recorded September 19, 1946, in Los Angeles

Originally issued on Columbia 38365, 38366 and 38367 (mx# HCO2044, 2055 and 2066)

Woody Herman and His Orchestra: Sonny Berman, Cappy Lewis, Conrad Gozzo, Pete Candoli, and Shorty Rogers, trumpets; Ralph Pfeffner, Bill Harris, Ed Keifer, and Lyman Ried, tombones; Woody Herman, clarinet; Sam Marowitz and John LaPorta, clarinets and alto saxophones; Sam Rubinowitch, baritone saxophone; Ralph Burns, piano; Chuck Wayne, guitar; Joe Mondragon, bass; Don Lamond, drums.

By the mid-1940s, with Ellington's superb experiments with form and structure, with a truly orchestral formulation of the traditional jazz instruments, with his development of jazz compositions rather than the more or less skillful arrangement of tunes, and with the harmonic/rhythmic innovations of the the early bop movement (see New World Records NW 271, Bebop), accomplished, the stage was set for further exploration of these new musical territories. It is a juncture in jazz history which we can readily see as parallel to those years between 1905 and 1909 when classical composers such as Debussy, Mahler, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Ives were putting the final touches to the dissolution of tonality and in turn devising new systems of tonally free music. In jazz, the crossing of that threshold can be heard on such performances as Ralph Burn's Summer Sequence and Ellington's remarkable foray into atonality, "Clothed Woman," as well as Tristano's atonal-contrapuntal studies of 1946, "I Surrender Dear" and "I Can't Get Started," The latter two titles are not represented on this LP, but a similar treatment of Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays" dating from 1949 is.

In 1977, thirty years after its creation, one must marvel at the compositional cohesion, craftsmanship, and emotional strength of Ralph Burn's four-movement Summer Sequence. (The fourth movement, "Early Autumn," not included here, was composed separately and revised a few years later into a solo vehicle for the tenor saxophonist Stan Getz; in this independent form it survived its three sister movements, perhaps because it contains virtually none of the foreign intrusions with which the other movements abound, thus tacitly acceding to broader popular tastes.)

The first nine measures of Summer Sequence present in capsuled form the diverse influences at work in this piece. A quiet and lonely duet for two clarinets, classical in conception (it could have been written by Milhaud, Hindemith, or Berg) is joined in the fourth measure by a rising pizzicato figure in bass and piano. A descending sequential phrase of two measures, with Harmonmuted trumpets subtly introducing the first sign of a true jazz trimmer, erupts unexpectedly into a two-measure piano cadence, this time strongly reminiscent of the piano music of De Falla or Albeniz. With an overlapping upward trumpet glissando we find ourselves squarely back in the key of C minor (where the clarinets originally started) except that a totally foreign pitch, a softly held D-flat, emerges quite unexpectedly from the chord; and one measure later, as if by some musical slight-of-hand, we find ourselves in the key of D-flat major and in a traditional 32-bar song form, initiated by the solo guitar.

These seemingly opposite elements miraculously fuse into a totality, splendidly serving its function as an introduction to the main body of the movement. None of its ideas come out of the jazz tradition, strictly speaking, and only become "jazzified" by virtue of the jazz sonorities of the players and their subtle jazz-rhythmic inflection.

It is this fine line between straight jazz (in later movements typical Ellington and Basie passages appear) and various classical intrusions which Burns treads so well, and in so doing he allows himself to swing easily to either side of the line without losing either the balance between these diverse elements or the  central thrust of the piece.  

The procedure is basically the same in all three movements, standard jazz forms surround by introductions, codas, and interludes which reach out beyond the confines of jazz, including some semi-improvised non tonal elaborations of the themes by the four-piece rhythm section of piano, guitar, bass, and drums. (These give a brief glimpse, incidentally, of what we find in a much-expanded format in the aforementioned Tristano quartet sides)

Perhaps Summer Sequence never had the pervasive influence it should have had, and which lesser and more artificial, often bombastic compositions like those of George Handy for the Boyd Raeburn band di have. Perhaps Ralph Burns was both too subtle and too far ahead of hi time. In any event, the work nd its superb performance by the Woody Herman orchestra of 1946 gave young musicians of the time a brief but clear glimpse of how the boundaries of jazz could be stretched without any loss of identity.

The Clothed Woman - Duke Ellington

Recorded December 30, 1947, in New York

Originally issued on Columbia 38236 (mx# CO38671)

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: Harold Baker, trumpet; Johnny Hodges, alto saxophone; Harry Carney, bariton saxophone; Duke Ellington, piano; Junior Raglin, bass; Sonny Greer, drums

It is by now a cliche to say that Ellington was almost always ten years ahead of his contemporaries. In no work is this truer than in his remarkable "Clothed Woman" of 1947, substantially a piano solo with a few minor interjections from a quintet of supporting instruments. Cast in a simple ABA form, the outer sections are startling explorations of practices not then common in jazz: a freely atonal harmonic language and a commensurately free rhythmic/meter structure in the manner of a declamatory recitative. Jazz without a steady 4/4 beat was then, and still is today to some extent, a rarity; and only Thelonius Monk among the major early avant-garde shared Ellington's interest in such rhythmic experiments. Harmonically and rhythmically at the A sections of "Clothed Woman" could have come from the hands of composers like Szymanowski or early Schoenberg, but the inflections and rhythmic attack, the sense of "suspended time in motion" could only have come from a great jazz performer.

The diversity of musical styles, so much a part of the early avant-garde scene, is present in "Clothed Woman" too. The B section, a light, flighty ragtime interlude whose musical antecedents lay at least thirty years in the past, provides a delightful contrast to the framing A sections.

Yesterdays - Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach

Recorded March 14, 1949 in New York

Originally issued on Capitol 1224 (mx# 3714)

Lennie Tristano Quartet: Lennie Tristano, piano; Billy Bauer, guitar; Arnol Fishkin, bass: Harold Granowsky, drums

Frequently overlooked by jazz historians and writers, the early-chamber-sized improvisations of Lennie Tristano of the mid-and late forties show us yet another of the different kinds of experimentation that were the result of the harmonic and formal breakthroughs unleashed by the bop movement. The twin banners under which this music presents itself were atonality and contrapuntal design. Although Tristano was able by 1949 (in such pieces as "Wow" and "Crosscurrent") to break away from a traditional 32-bar song format and its tonal base, in the earlier sides the improvisations were still anchored to a more traditional ground. Indeed, one of the fascinations of these performances lies in the way that the harmonic underpinning of Kern's "Yesterdays," for example, is stretched almost to the breaking point. But no matter how far Tristano and Billy Bauer may roam, they always return to home base, a process which gives a remarkable fluidity to the harmonic contours of the piece. The delicious harmonic/melodic collisions which occur throughout the performance, the result of its free contrapuntal-linear format, are not only among the enduring charms of these sides, but present an aspect of broadening the base of jazz improvisation explored by few other musicians of the period.

Mirage

Recorded February 2, 1950, in Los Angeles

Originally issued on Capitol 28002 (mx# 5476)

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: Buddy Childers, Maynard Ferguson, Shorty Rogers, Chico Alvarez, and Don Paladino, trumpets; Milt Bernhart, Harry Betts, Bob Fitzpatrick, Bill Russo, and Bart Varsalona, trombones; John Graas and Lloyd Otto, French horns; Gene England, tuba; Art Pepper, clarinet and alto saxophone; Bud Shank, flute and alto saxophone; Bob Cooper, tenor saxophone and bassoon; Bob Kast, Jim Cathart, Lew Elias, Earl Cornwell, Anthony Doria, Jim Holmes, Alex Law, Herbert Offner, Dave Schackne, and Carl Ottobrino, violins; Stan Harris, Leonard Selic, and Sam Singer, violas; Gregory Bemko, Zachary Bock, and Jack White, cellos; Stan Kenton, piano; Laurindo Almeida, guitar; Don Bagley, bass; Shelly Manne, drums and timpani

One of the musicians who broadened the base of jazz improvisation was Pete Rugolo, Stan Kenton's chief arranger an composer-in-residence in the late forties and early fifties. However, Rugolo never aspired to the absolute purity of contrapuntal design which so singularly motivated Tristano, but rather treated linear devices as only one of a larger arsenal of compositional techniques. "Mirage" (1950) is a striking example of how an expanded jazz orchestra, including strings and classical winds, could integrate such diverse musical concerns into a cohesive totality. Essentially it is what we call a pedal-point piece in which the harmonic/melodic continuity is spun over a single pitch or ostinato bass, a device already throughly explored by composers like Mahler and Shostakovich, to whose influences "Mirage" owes a great deal. (The fact that the recurring four-note motive resembles the main theme of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde is, I think, pure coincidence.) But again, it is another example of how diverse stylistic and technical elements, some from separate worlds of music, could be welded together in a single work.

Eclipse - Charles Mingus

Recorded October 27, 1953 in New York

Originally issued on Debut EP 450 (mx# none)

Charles Mingus Octet, with Janet Thurlow: Janet Thurlow, vocal; Willei Dennis, trombone; Eddie Caine, alto saxophone and flute, Teo Macero, tenor saxophone; Danny Bank, baritone saxophone; Jackson Wiley, cello; John Lewis, piano; Charles Mingus, bass; Kenny Clarke, drums

Mingus's "Eclipse" performance espouses the same basic approach already exemplified in Summer Sequence – although I do not mean to imply that Mingus in any way emulates Burns – of saving the really advance explorations for the introductions, interludes, and postludes, reserving a somewhat milder (more tonal) treatment from the song itself. Essentially Mingus's approach is contractual or polyphonic, with the cello acting as a second voice to the solo vocal part, to a large extent letting vertical/harmonic relationships be the result of linear developments. It is one of many examples of what was then a growing concern to return to the earlier polyphonic concepts of New Orleans jazz, virtually forgotten in the swing era with the rise of the arranger and the excessive use of "block chord" homophonic writing. It also links up with various attempts to return jazz to a chamber music format, rather than an orchestral one, in which the individual instrumental voices function with a greater degree of linear/melodic independence.

Egdon Heath - Stan Kenton

Recorded March 3, 1954, in Los Angeles

Originally issued on Capitol EAP-525 (mx# 12449)

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: Buddy Childers, Vic Minichiello, Sam Noto, Stu Williamson, and Don Smith, trumpets; Bob Fitzpatrick, Frank Rosolino, Milt Gold, Joe Clavadrone, and George Roberts, trombones; Lee Konitz, Dave Schildkraut, and Charlie Mariano, alto saxophones; Bill Perkins and Mike Cicchetti, tenor saxophones; Tony Ferina, bariton saxophone; Stan Kenton, piano; Bob Lesher, guitar; Don Bagley, bass; Stan Levey, drums

The term Third Stream simply suggests that intermingling of two musical mainstreams, jazz and classical music, into one larger flow – though in recent years the pianist and composer Ran Blake has expanded Third Stream to include a multiplicity of the ethnic musics, an idea quite logical and inevitable in the American melting pot. In Third Stream, as elsewhere, the specific ways in which two (or more) musical traditions are combined or fused can vary tremendously. Thus, the combining has sometimes been done linearly – that is to say, in successive sections of a piece; or vertically – when disparate elements may be fused simultaneously, perhaps in concurrent layers or strands. Finally, there can be Third Stream pieces that represent a combination of both approaches, but in all instances the concept suggests an in-depth fusion of musical elements or techniques rather than a superficial appliqué or mere grafting of one technique onto another.

With this degree of latitude in the overall concept of Third Stream, it is inevitable that different composers will choose to emphasize different elements in different pieces. Thus, William Russo's "Egdon Heath" (Russo was at the time one of Stan Kenton's chief arranger-composers) eschews the typically explicit jazz beat as stated by a rhythm section, substituting various pedal-point or ostinato devices, and challenges the ears of jazz-oriented listeners with a free-ranging harmonic language which relates only tangentially to conventional tonality. In four sections, the saxophones provide ostinato background figures for the opening trombone solo (played by Bob Fitzpatrick); a pedal-point of cymbal rolls serves the same function for the brass gestures of the fast second part, which shifts in turn to a more conventional improvised alto saxophone solo (by Dave Schildkraut) and ends with a recapitulation of the opening section.

Editor's note" According to the composer the title of this work bears no relation to Gustav Holst's orchestral piece Egdon Heath, although both are inspired by a passage in Thomas Hardy's The Return Of The Native: "A place perfectly accordant with man's nature – neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring, and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony."

Concerto For Bill The Kid - George Russell

Recorded October 17, 1956, in New York

Originally issued on RCA Victor LPM 1372 (mx# G2JB7838)

George Russell and His Smalltet: Art Farmer, trumpet; Hal McKusick,  alto saxophone; Bill Evans, piano; Barry Galbraith, guitar; Milt Hino, bass; Paul Motian, drums

In "Concerto For Billy The Kid" – Billy being the young Bill Evans – the point of emphasis is the concerto form, adapted to Russells' "Lydian chromatic concept of tonal organization" and to the fact that the concerto soloist is essentially an improviser. The idea of fashioning a frame from a major jazz soloist had already been thoroughly explored by Duke Ellington in the late thirties in a series of four-minute "concertos" for members of his orchestra. In Russells's brilliant expansion of that basic idea we can see how composition and improvisation are welded into a seamless totality, where both complement  each other and operate in the same harmonic/melodic mold. (An even more successful realization of these particular musical ideas was created a year later [1957] in the last movement of George Russell's classic "All About Rosie.")

Transformation - Brandei Jazz Festival Ensemble

Recorded June 20, 1957, in New York

Originally released on Columbia WL 127 (mx# CO58205)

Brandeis Jazz Festival Ensemble: Jimmie Knepper, trombone; Jimmy Buffington, French horn; John LaPorta, clarinet; Robert DiDomnica, flute; Manuel Ziegler, bassoon; Hal McKusick, tenor saxophone; Teddy Charles, vibraphone; Margaret Ross, harp; Bill Evans, piano; Joe Benjamin, bass; Teddy Sommer, drums

In my own "Transformation" a variety of musical concepts converge: twelve-tone technique. Klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color-melody), jazz improvisation (again Bill Evans is the soloist), and metric breaking up of the jazz beat. In regard to the latter, rhythmic asymmetry has been a staple of classical composers' techniques since the early part of the twentieth century (particularly in the music of Stravinsky and Varese), but in jazz in the 1950s it was still an extremely rare commodity. As the title suggests, the work begins as a straight twelve-tone piece, with the melody parceled out among an interlocking chain of tone colors, and is gradually transformed into a jazz piece by the subtle introduction of jazz-rhythmic elements. Jazz and improvisation take over, only to succumb to the reverse process: they are gradually swallowed up by a growing riff which then breaks up into smaller fragments, juxtaposing in constant alternation classical and jazz rhythms. Thus, the intention in this piece was never to fuse jazz and classical elements into a totally new alloy, but rather to present them initially in succession – in peaceful coexistence – and later, in close, more competitive juxtaposition.

Piazza Navano - John Lewis

Recorded February 15, 1960 in New York

Originally issued on Atlantic LP(SD) 1334 (mx# 4254)

John Lewis and His Orchestra: Melvin Broiles, Bernie Glow, Al Tiger, and Joe Wilder, trumpets; Dick Hixon and David Baker, trombones; Gunner Schuller, Al Richmond, Ray Alonge, and John Barrows, French horns; Harvey Phillips, tuba; John Lewis, piano; George Duviver, bass; Connie Kay, drums

In John Lewis's "Piazza Navona" (preceded by a brief fanfare) the emphasis is more on brining the regal, stately gestures of later Renaissance music with all its massed brass-consort sonorities (as in the works of Giovanni Gabrieli) into relationship with Lewis's own brand of classical chamber improvisation (trumpeter Al Kiger is the other soloist). Another continuing interest of John Lewis's has been the relationship between the Italian media dell'arte, a semi-improvised street theater, and the improvisatory techniques of jazz.

Laura - Jean Lee, vocal and Ran Blake, piano

Recorded December 7, 1961, in New York

Originally issued on RCA Victor LPM(S) 2500 (mx# M2PB5535)

It is fitting that this album of Third Stream offerings should close with Ran Blake and Jeanne Lee' remarkable 1961 dissertation on David Raksin's "Laura"; for Blake is still, in 1977, the leading (and indefatigable) disciple of Third Stream doctrine. Having expanded it to include a broader ethnic and idiomatic base, he at the same time enjoys a national following with belies the frequent and recurring predictions of the demise of the Third Stream. The date of this cut – 1961 – is also significant because it coincides with the end of the first flowering of the Third Stream movement.

To fully  appreciate the wide range of musical influences that motivate Blake' music one must know some of his other works; a single piece cannot do him justice. On the other hand, Raksin's already highly chromatic "Laura" is the ideal vehicle for a Lee-Blake collaboration. Their extraordinary ears an their sensitivity allow them considerable latitude in searching out the deepest harmonic nooks and crannies of this standard tune; yet they always return to tonal home base – though in ways that can easily baffle the ordinary musician or listener. Here the many worlds or music – Schoenbergian atonality, Billie Holiday's sadly poignant laments, the American popular balla, extemporization and composition – all intertwine and blend into a music that epitomizes the basic concept and highest ideals of the Third Stream philosophy. – Gunther Schuller