Groups play jumping tribute to Sir Duke

MUSIC REVIEW | Sinfonietta, Jazz Ensemble are effective teammates

Chicago Sun-Times
By Bryant Manning
Published September 19, 2007
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After a rollicking weekend gala that brought steady doses of Italian and Spanish-themed music to Symphony Center, the Chicago Sinfonietta and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble teamed up Monday night for some American home cookin’.

A tribute to Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington shaped the evening’s program, and selections of both his symphonic and jazzier works made apt companions in our great downtown hall. (The program also was performed Sunday at Dominican University in River Forest.)

The celebrated writer Ralph Ellison once said Ellington’s music proved that jazz could possess the same range of expressive possibilities present in European classical music. Yet Ellington himself usually boasted of another quality in his music: you could dance to it.

The Chicago Jazz Ensemble rendered with veteran flair and swagger Sir Duke’s and Billy Strayhorn’s swinging adaptation of Edvard Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” Suite. Ellington based the work on Henrik Ibsen’s play, taking some fairly somber material and injecting it with jive. Gifted soloists had their chance to shine, and pianist Peter Saxe and clarinetist Rob Denty made memorable contributions.

In June, the Chicago Sinfonietta performed with folk-rock act Poi Dog Pondering for a similar study of juxtapositions in Bizet’s “Carmen.” Like “Carmen,” “Peer Gynt” possesses many tuneful melodies, and lyrical excerpts like “Morning Mood,” “Anitra’s Dance” and “In the Hall of the Mountain King” kept the diverse audience on the same page.

The two treatments of “Ase’s Death” marked the most compelling contrast between classical and jazz styles. In the Grieg original, the long and broad melodic strokes paint a funereal landscape, as conducted calmly and evenly by Sinfonietta music director Paul Freeman. In Ellington’s and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble’s hands, the music became an easy-swaying Harlem nocturne, where hazy smoke drifted around an emptying nightclub long after last call.

Chicago Jazz Ensemble director Jon Faddis also happens to be an internationally acclaimed jazz trumpeter, and the stratospheric range he squeezes from his horn is unforgettable. In Ellington’s “Happy Go-Lucky Local,” the charismatic Faddis impossibly blew out higher and higher tones while a supporting cast of cawing trombone plungers mimicked hollering crowds. Ellington’s “Harlem” (1950) brought the Sinfonietta and jazz ensemble onstage together for a dizzying array of trombone portamento, wicked brass trills and spastic percussive rhythms.

Yet it was the Sinfonietta that kept newer music in mind with Russell Peck’s Harmonic Rhythm: Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra (2000). If Peck’s orchestral writing sounded stale in places, Robert Everson’s vivacious soloing on five timpani drums made it all fresh again.