A member of the pantheon of American composers, Leonard Bernstein was his own category of music.
Ann Hampton Callaway
Friday, Nov. 9 at the Knight Concert Hall marked the first offering from the Jazz Roots 2018-19 11th anniversary season, celebrating Leonard Bernstein’s centennial. There’s a prodigious amount of diverse music to choose from in order to celebrate such a brilliant and prolific composer, conductor and pianist; Bernstein’s compositions include symphonies, musical theater, movie scores, sacred and choral music, ballet and chamber works.
Rather than a homage to a composer who understood and skillfully combined the components of the classical elements of counterpoint and fugue with modern traditions of syncopation and 12-tone, and virtually everything in-between, this evenings production was not the dumbing down of Bernstein’s genius, but a mostly jazzed-up interpretation of his work, that was, at times, pleasant, yet mostly unmemorable.
Let’s be clear – the musicians of UM’s Frost School of Music Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, under the capable baton of Scott Flavin, are first-rate. However, highlighting Bernstein’s music for “West Side Story,” “Candide,” “On the Town” and “Mass,” the jazzy and pop arrangements by the Frost students and faculty, though competent, were at times overwrought or protracted.
It is a hallmark of jazz to take otherwise traditional songs, Broadway tunes and even classical compositions and give them a jazzy spin. Certainly, Bernstein himself imbued much of his eclectic work with jazz idioms and sensibilities. However, you never want the arrangement to bury the melody. For example, the striking musical melodic line from “New York, New York,” the most memorable song from Bernstein’s “On the Town,” was almost unrecognizable amidst the hyperbolic orchestration of this stand-up tune. It was more bedazzle than Bernstein.
Puzzling was that Shelly Berg, artistic advisor for Jazz Roots, who not long ago performed a terrific modern jazzed-up arrangement of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” didn’t tamp down some of this evening’s orchestrations.
Kirk Whalum
Yet, a medley from Bernstein’s “Mass” (commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, featuring a Latin text and the five traditional sections of a Catholic mass) might have been seen as sacrilegious when peppered with the riffs of a tenor sax and jazz singers, but the Knight Hall did start to swing when Ann Hampton Callaway and the Frost Jazz Singers began scatting and trading licks amidst the “hallelujahs.”
It was no wonder that the Overture to “Candide” that closed the first half of show, a brilliant piece of syncopation, transition and tonality, met with the most robust applauds of the evening – it was played as scored by Bernstein. Props to the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra and maestro Flavin that acquitted the overture with aplomb. Flavin and the HMIO also superbly executed their “West Side Story” overture at the top of the second half of the program.
Images of Bernstein throughout his life were projected onto a large screen upstage and from the pix one could get the sense of the energy of the man who helmed the New York Philharmonic and often conducted piano concertos from his keyboard.
Featured vocalists were Ann Hampton Callaway and Jon Secada, rendering jazzy/pop arrangements from “On the Town” and “West Side Story.”
Tony Nominee, songwriter and great American songstress Callaway, with a husky alto, delivered the romantic “Lucky to Be Me” with fine phrasing and honesty, tapping nicely into the character as Berg took a jazzy center solo. Also, from “On the Town,” Callaway agreeably rendered the bluesy ballad “Some Other Time,” Berg drawing applauds from his turn with some slow swinging runs. Straight-ahead vocals don’t appear to be in Callaway’s wheelhouse, and not until “I Feel Pretty” kicked into a jazzy groove did she grab hold of it with her signature voice.
Songwriter, actor, three Grammy® Awards recipient and Frost School of Music alum, Jon Secada, applied his dreamy-pop voice to several songs from “West Side Story.” He used his well-trained falsetto for the high notes with his edgy take on “Maria” and imbued sincerity into “One Hand, One Heart.”
The third featured voice was the tenor sax of Grammy® Nominee and Award recipient R&B saxophonist Kirk Whalum, his rich and soulful sound well suited for this evening’s arrangements. His take on “Lonely Town” was smooth (props to David Sneider issuing a trumpet solo) and passionate round tones bellowed from his horn on “Something’s Coming.” Whalum and the big band crushed it on “Cool,” both of Berg’s hands nimbly running the keyboard on a center cut.
The banter among the lead performers between the tunes mostly fell flat, though Callaway did deliver a funny line to the shorter Secada: “I’m five-foot ten but I’m worth the climb.”
The HMIO’s percussive section, featuring a terrific Marcello Carellii on traps, ramped it up well on “America,” though Callaway’s aimless scatting and chanting ‘America!’ proved to be distracting.
Callaway and Secada blended well on “Somewhere,” though again, the arrangers, apparently feeling compelled to change the dynamic of the song, turned in an overblown arrangement and missed the profound depth inherent in the simplicity of its melody.
Twelve-year-old pianist Brandon Goldberg (suggesting a young “Lenny”) sat in with the orchestra for the opening overture highlighting passages from “West Side Story” and “On the Waterfront” and for the “Tonight” finale, sporting excellent chops alongside all the voices onstage.
The intention of the concert was well meaning, and Lenny Bernstein will remain an American treasure for the generations.
Up next/Jazz Roots:
ARTEMIS: GREAT WOMEN IN JAZZ
December 7, 2018 at 8 p.m.
Cecile McLorin Salvant, Renee Rosnes, Melissa Aldana, Anat Cohen, Noriko Ueda, Allison Miller and Ingrid Jensen—a stunning ensemble of powerful women in jazz today. At the Knight Concert Hall of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, Fla., 33132. Tickets $45-$125. Call 305-949-6722. Find out more at http://www.arshtcenter.org/Boletos/Subscriptions/Jazz/Jazz-Roots-2018-19/#
