Cue the Violins

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The New York Sun

It is said that when the composer W.C. Handy heard his most celebrated work, the “St. Louis Blues,” being played by a symphony orchestra, he was struck by the mental image of a farmer plowing his field in a full-dress dinner jacket and tailcoat. Some 30 years later, when someone had the nerve to ask Miles Davis his opinion about the use of classical form and formalism in the Modern Jazz Quartet, he likened the effect to a great boxer stepping into the ring in a tuxedo.

Despite the contradiction they described, “symphonic jazz,” as it was termed in the 1920s in the wake of George Gershwin’s overwhelmingly successful “Rhapsody in Blue,” has stood the test of time. Since Gershwin’s era, composers have sought to balance the expanded canvases and large-format structures of European music (commonly known as “classical”) and the energy, rhythm, and improvisations of American music (commonly know as “jazz”). Two of the more successful efforts to find this elusive chord, “Symphonica” (Blue Note), by the saxophonist Joe Lovano, and “Across the Crystal Sea” (Verve), by the pianist Danilo Perez, were recently released

Typically, one of two brands of music emerges when one stirs overtly classical elements into the jazz mix: music that can be either very light, making it more like pop, or music that is very dark, deep, and somber, making it considerably heavier than most jazz is on its own. The lighter side of symphonic jazz gravitates toward the French and Impressionists; the heavy side favors Germans and deep Romantics.

“Across the Crysal Sea” is, at first glance, a sequel of sorts to the 1965 album “Bill Evans Trio With Symphony Orchestra.” As with that album, the musical director for Mr. Perez’s project is the German-born composer Claus Ogerman. The music is undeniably pretty, at times beautiful, but at others somewhat froufrou, lightweight and Muzaky.

In repeating his approach from 43 years ago, Mr. Ogerman (whose finest hour as an arranger is unquestionably the classic Frank Sinatra-Antonio Carlos Jobim album of 1967) has employed a method that will surely incur the wrath of classical purists even more than the jazz police: He begins the album with works from the classical repertoire little known to the general public. The title track derives from Hugo Distler, an early-20th-century writer from Nuremberg who committed suicide to escape Nazi persecution. However, the original themes serve only as points of departure: Messrs. Ogerman and Perez reinterpret the pieces on the exteriors (in the shapes of the arrangements) and on the interiors (in Mr. Perez’s improvised solos).

Mr. Ogerman has perfected this approach during the last four decades and made it nearly seamless, but I have to say I prefer the 1965 project with Evans. On that album, the jazz and classical elements didn’t blend quite so perfectly and homogenously. There was an unmistakable element of roughness, even in the midst of all the pretty music. At times, the Evans Trio fit into the classical backgrounds like jagged pieces of a jigsaw puzzle forced together, and the music was a lot livelier and more interesting. Compared with the 1965 album, “Across the Crystal Sea” is almost too perfect.

That said, two tracks on the album benefit enormously from all the perfection, and those are the ones featuring guest vocals by Cassandra Wilson. Intonation has never been one of Ms. Wilson’s great strengths, but here she’s amazingly in tune, rendering her trademark combination of restraint and passion all the more effective. On two tunes — Harold Rome’s English lyric to “All of a Sudden My Heart Sings,” based on a French theme, and “Lazy Afternoon,” from “The Golden Apple,” the operetta-musical hybrid that brought Homer’s “Odyssey” and “Iliad” to Broadway — she tackles the music with European relevance. It seems perfectly fitting for one of the most African-styled of contemporary jazz vocalists to enhance the multicultural content of a project that’s already all over the stylistic map.

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By contrast, Joe Lovano’s “Symphonica” is nothing if not robust (even in its more gentle moments), representing the two-fisted, testosterone-fueled side of the jazz-classical equation. Mr. Lovano is joined by Mike Abene, a fellow Italian-American graduate of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra who has, since 2003, served as the director of the state-maintained WDR Jazz Orchestra.

Six of the seven tunes on the album, which was recorded live in Cologne three years ago, are the saxophonist’s own compositions, making this a more personal project for Mr. Lovano. Also, several of the pieces are dedications to close musical associates, such as the rousing “Emperor Jones” for the great drummer Elvin Jones. Still, that the album was recorded live (with the exception of one track) lends the proceedings an edgier element of risk. In addition to the familiar classical points of reference, some passages sound inspired by Stan Kenton and both of the Bernsteins — the cinematic crime jazz of Elmer and the symphonic dances of Leonard.

Where Mr. Perez’s album neatly takes care of all the details, “Symphonica” hardly pays attention to details; for all of the craft of the orchestrations, this album is all about the big picture, so don’t bother sweating the small stuff. “Symphonica” is a gutsy album that takes all kinds of chances, such as the use of funk rhythms and electric instruments in the middle of “The Dawn of Time” and the translation of hard bop — the most economic and least frivolous form of jazz — into philharmonic proportions, or the kinky sound of Mr. Lovano’s soprano on “Eternal Joy,” leading a whole section of fish horns.

There are also moments of tenderness, as on the Charles Mingus standard “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” (a convenient tune that allows one to reference two jazz icons in a single track), on which Messrs. Lovano and Abene evoke Billy Strayhorn more than anyone else. Mr. Lovano is also rapturous on “I’m All for You,” his own thinly disguised variant of “Body and Soul.” On the love songs, Mr. Lovano is the living embodiment of all the great tender tough guys of popular culture, from Ben Webster to Sinatra to Bogart.

Rather than making everything fit snugly together, Messrs. Lovano and Abene are happy to let some excitement emerge from the conflict and even the confusion. “Symphonica” finds the star soloist charging ahead as if daring the large accompaniment to try to keep up with him — he’s working against it as well as with it, tearing into the symphonic largesse like a sumo with a saxophone. Where Mr. Perez plays more genteelly with the symphony orchestra, Mr. Lovano plays more aggressively here than ever. There’s a photo of him at the Cologne concert wearing a white blazer, but in my mind’s eye I see him sparring in satin trunks; how he can play the tenor while wearing those boxing gloves I’ll never know.

wfriedwald@nysun.com


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