On December 4th, 2011, the Boston Conservatory hosted the Jumpin’ Into The Future: Gunther Schuller and the Progressive Jazz Orchesta performance. This performance gave the audience the opportunity to see some of the most influential and progressive jazz music played by some of Boston’s finest musicians and conducted by American music luminary, Gunther Schuller. Schuller is the former president of the New England Conservatory and the Macarthur Foundation Genius grant recipient. He has been active as a composer and preserver of important jazz works since the early 50’s when he played French horn on Miles Davis’s landmark “Birth Of The Cool” sessions.
Gunther Schuller
The concert featured many pieces by Schuller, Charles Mingus, and George Russell. Additionally, there were several arrangements by the great Bob Graettinger as well as a complete performance of Graettinger’s masterpiece City of Glass. The concert began with a rendition of George Russell’s “Lydian M-1,” a small (ten-tet…not the technical term, of course) group piece that was the closest to a traditional head-solos-head jazz piece that would be played all night. Russell’s composition reflects his “Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization,” a method developed by his observation of jazz and more progressive classical practices. This method supplants the major scale with the Lydian mode as the root scale and represents an abandonment of the major-minor tonal system. The piece was performed very well despite the difficult counterpoint and technically demanding lines. The piece also featured an excellent vibraphone solo by Boston Conservatory student Laurent Warnier.
The Mingus pieces were nothing short of incredible. Schuller, a personal friend of Mingus, has been a great champion and preserver of Mingus’s music. Schuller arranged and directed Mingus’s gigantic, two and half hour long piece “Epitaph in 1989,” ten years after the composer’s death. One of the pieces performed, “Half-Mast Inhibition,” is a remarkable mixture of the classical and jazz idioms that Mingus wrote when he was only a teenager. The combination of classical and jazz was dubbed “Third Stream” music by Schuller in a 1957 lecture at Brandeis University. Mingus’s piece was a fantastic achievement in that style and written long before it was an established concept. Schuller first recorded this piece on the 1960 record “Pre-Bird,” a collection of some of Mingus’s early work.
“Taurus In The Arena Of Life” and “The Shoes Of The Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers” both appeared on the 1972 Mingus album Let My Children Hear Music. This record showcases some of Mingus’s most advanced writing for large ensemble and represents brilliant advancements in jazz composition and its combination with classical techniques. I had a chance to sit in on a rehearsal of the Mingus pieces and some of Schuller’s own work. Schuller has an incredible ear for detail and drilled the musicians on the most seemingly minute aspects of the performance. The results were fabulous: each piece was of the highest caliber. Through his prestigious background as a conductor, Schuller was able to bring out the unique character of the music and present the pieces in the way they were meant to be heard.
Schuller’s own compositions, “Headin’ Out, Movin’ In” and “Jumpin’ Into the Future” were fascinating pieces. Each was incredibly intellectual and contained many remarkable musical devices shown in their shifting time feels and 20th century harmony. These pieces were prime examples of the combination of classical harmony and modern practices with the swing of jazz.
The real highlights of the evening were composer Bob Graettinger’s imaginative pieces and arrangements. His version of the standards “Laura” and “Autumn In New York” still sound fresh and revolutionary nearly seventy years after he wrote them. The band, which included several Berklee faculty members, was not-surprisingly in top form. Graettinger’s compositions were originally performed by the Stan Kenton orchestra and the group did a fantastic job of sounding remarkably like the original orchestra.
Graettinger’s originals, “Thermopylae” and the stunning four movement “City Of Glass”, are some of the most daring and original progressive jazz pieces ever written. They should be carefully studied by any aspiring composer or jazz lover. This concert was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see great music performed by musicians of the highest quality. If you’re interested in hearing any of the pieces performed, they can be heard on these albums:
Stan Kenton Plays Bob Graettinger - City Of Glass by The Stan Kenton Orchestra
Robert F. Graettinger - Live At the Paradiso by Gunther Schuller and the Ebony Big Band
City Of Glass by Gunther Schuller and the Ebony Big Band
Let My Children Hear Music by Charles Mingus
Pre Bird by Charles Mingus
The Teddy Charles Tentet by Teddy Charles
Rush Hour by Joe Lovano
Jumpin In The Future by Gunther Schuller
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