An Ellington Acolyte Maps a New Course
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The accomplishments of Duke Ellington are so diverse — being jazz’s single greatest composer and bandleader was only the beginning — that it’s almost easier to talk about what he didn’t do. Ellington wrote music of genius for virtually every instrument or combination of instruments in the jazz arsenal — that is, except two. He never composed anything of note for the guitar (even though he employed a rhythm guitarist, Fred Guy, for the first 20 years of his band), nor for the vibraphone/xylophone family. One of Ellington’s trombonists, Tyree Glenn, doubled on vibes and played a handful of solos on that instrument with the band, but the Duke never collaborated with any of jazz’s great mallet men, such as Red Norvo, Lionel Hampton, or Milt Jackson.
Ellington would doubtless be pleased to know that the present-day master of one of the only instruments he overlooked is making up for lost time. Stefon Harris’s “African Tarantella,” subtitled “Dances With Duke,” is more than the most exciting reinterpretation of Ellington to emerge in a while. It’s also a rare example of a contemporary musician addressing Ellington’s more ambitious works in something like their original suite format, rather than simply playing his individual songs. For me, it’s the jazz album of the year.
Another thing Ellington steadfastly refused to do was to commercially release one of his most sublime works, the 1959 “Queen’s Suite”; the reference is to the monarch, not the borough. After he and partner Billy Strayhorn composed the work for a festival in Leeds in honor of Queen Elizabeth, Ellington recorded the six-part suite at his own expense and had a single copy pressed for Her Majesty. Despite many requests, the work was only heard in live performances and not issued until after his death in 1974.”The New Orleans Suite,” is one of Ellington’s last major works, and the last to feature the greatest of all Ducal instrumental stars, the amazing alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who died in between sessions.
The two suites are of particular interest to Stefon Harris, who began his career as a classical musician but transitioned to jazz as a college student. As with many of his extended compositions, Ellington alludes to classical forms and elements: Although “The Queen’s Suite” does not, as one might expect, paint a musical picture of England, there’s a lot of European grandeur in it, especially in the two most famous movements, “Sunset and the Mockingbird” and “The Single Petal of a Rose.” Contrastingly, “The New Orleans Suite,” which included tonal portraits of three famous Lousianians who had deeply impacted Ellington’s music, was in part a reflection on the beginnings of Afro-American music.
Where Ellington was thinking of Old New Orleans and Old Europe (both suites contain a movement with a French title), Mr. Harris takes this music back even further on “The African Tarantella,” to mother Africa, a continent Ellington himself frequently visited in his music. Even Mr. Harris’s imaginative title imagines a European dance form within an African context. For most of Ellington’s career, he wrote music specifically for dancing couples in ballrooms; in subtitling the album “Dances With Duke,” Mr. Harris points out that even in his long-form works, such as the suites, Ellington was still utilizing dance rhythms and forms.
Ellington’s original “Thanks for the Beautiful Land on the Delta” was originally referring to the church music heritage of the Crescent City; Mr. Harris’s treatment makes it sound more like the Fertile Crescent of The Nile. Ellington opened with a haunting minor vamp played by the composer himself, leading into a Ben Webster-influenced tenor solo by Harold Ashby. Mr. Harris opens with dark, minor tones on his marimba, harmonized in a way that suggests John Williams’s use of the instrument in his theme to “Catch Me if You Can,” but many times more mysterious. “The Single Petal of a Rose” was one of the Maestro’s most evocatively romantic statements as a piano soloist, using repeated note patterns and his trademark erotic chromaticisms. Done here as an unaccompanied solo by Mr. Harris, it has a wholly reverential quality, as if were part of one of Ellington’s sacred concerts.
After reinterpreting three movements from “New Orleans”and two from “The Queen’s” suites with his ensemble, which features the versatile trombonist Steve Turre (who is adept at using various mutes to wah-wah in the style of the great Ducal brassmen), two woodwinds, and two strings, Mr. Harris offers an original suite of his own. On “The Gardner Meditations,” the vibraphonist reflects on his own personal discovery of jazz. It’s a lovely piece, tranquil and meditative in the manner of such Ellington piano works as “Reflections In D.” One gets a real sense of that conflict, and its resolutions, in Mr. Harris’s titular piece, “The African Tarantella,”which seems deeply inspired by Ellington’s 1962 “Fleurette Africaine” — another Afro-Euro concoction. Yet there’s nothing more moving than “The Single Petal of a Rose,” in which Mr. Harris, like Ellington before him, seems to express every profound human emotion that can be felt.
THE REST OF THE TOP 10
IN JAZZ FOR 2006:
RAY BARRETTO, Standards Ricanditioned (Zoho): One of the final statements of two Latin jazz masters, conguero Ray Barretto and pianist Hilton Ruiz is a thoughtful reworking of classic American songs.
STEVEN BERNSTEIN, “Millennial Territory Orchestra” (SunnySide): The extravagant trumpeter deconstructs pre-war jazz and postwar R&B with a decidedly downtown attitude.
ANDREW HILL, “Time Lines” (Blue Note): More challenging compositions from the most accessible pioneer of the post-modern piano.
JOE LOVANO, “Streams of Expression” (Blue Note): This Nonet album centers around “The Birth of The Cool Suite,” composed and conducted by Gunther Schuller, who played French horn on the original “Birth” in 1949.
JASON MORAN, “Artist in Residence” (Blue Note): The young magician up to new tricks: tape manipulation, sound collage, classical references, the low-down blues, and other feats of keyboard wizardry.
HOUSTON PERSON & BILL CHARLAP, “You Taught My Heart To Sing” (High Note): A whisperingly intimate set of ballad duets by a great tenor and piano twosome.
ODEAN POPE SAXOPHONE CHOIR, “Locked And Loaded” (HalfNote): The sound of nine saxophones working through the postmodern vocabulary in perfect sync is something wondrous to behold.
SONNY ROLLINS, “Sonny Please” (Doxy): The tenor colossus’s first release on his own label lives up to expectations and is highlighted by the semiclassical “Serenade.”
CATHERINE RUSSELL, “Cat” (World Russell): The debut album of the year is by a veteran, rather than a newcomer, who artfully blends jazz, blues, and country standards.
BENNIE WALLACE, “Disorder at the Border” (Justin Time): The music of tenor sax pioneer Coleman Hawkins reimagined by an outstanding contemporary tenor and guitarist-arranger Anthony Wilson (whose own “Power of Nine” is also a contender).