Paying Tribute to Gil Evans

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The New York Sun

Gil Evans was the only major figure of the modern jazz era who was primarily known as an orchestrator, composer, and conductor. He wrote mostly for large-format ensembles, and his music opened up whole new vistas, not only for subsequent generations of jazz composers, but for soloists as well. He brought not only new rhythms and new tonal colors to the music, as well as an unprecedented gift for employing elements of dissonance, but he was forever rethinking jazz’s relationship to both pop and classical music.

Considering that Evans (1912–88) died nearly 20 years ago, around the time that the Jazz at Lincoln Center organization was being founded, it’s disappointing that artistic director Wynton Marsalis waited so long to honor one of the top five most essential figures in all of orchestral jazz. JALC has made up for lost time in both quantity — there were two Evans-centric events staged this weekend — and quality: The big show was hosted by Mr. Marsalis himself at Rose Hall. By coincidence, JALC’s doubleheader was supplemented by a complete presentation of what is perhaps Evans’s most famous work: the 1958 recasting of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” which was the second of Evans’s three masterpiece album-length collaborations with the trumpeter Miles Davis. “Porgy” was played on Friday afternoon at the Jazz Improv LIVE! convention by the Manhattan School of Music Jazz Orchestra, conducted by the MSM’s primary jazz educator, Justin DiCioccio. While I’ve heard the work performed by other trumpeters, such as Jon Faddis and Clark Terry, this is the first time I know of that the Evans-Davis “Porgy” has been played with a another instrument — soprano saxophone played by Dave Liebman — as the star soloist. Since the B flat soprano is in the same home key as the trumpet, it was possible for Mr. Liebman to play the work more or less as we know it.

The most radical departure from the original Davis version was a difference of temperament rather than instrument: “Prayer (Oh Doctor Jesus)” is one of several spiritual sections of “Porgy,” an anguished mournful cry from the heart asking for forgiveness and redemption. Mr. Liebman played it with the same degree of passion, but his treatment sounded more like a kaddish from a Second Avenue synagogue than anything out of Catfish Row. Also inspired was Mr. Liebman’s decision to play one of the street vendor cries, “Here Comes the Honeyman,” on a small wooden bird flute, bringing another new dimension to the material.

That evening, I caught the first of four performances by saxophonist Branford Marsalis of his presentation of “Works of Gil Evans.” Note that Mr. Marsalis chose his words carefully, since Evans was a creator of works for large jazz ensembles rather than strictly a composer; nearly all of his best works were adaptations of pre-existing melodies, usually done so radically that they blurred the boundaries between composition and orchestration. Interestingly, Mr. Marsalis chose to concentrate on Evans’s own compositions, and what’s more, to render them with only a seven-piece band. Between these two restrictions, he didn’t have a lot of wiggle room, and on the first show it still seemed like a work in progress, hampered further by an unbalanced rhythm section. Whenever Mr. Marsalis (who switched among alto, soprano, and his customary tenor sax) and his three fellow horns — trumpeter Terrell Stafford, trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis, and baritone saxophonist Jason Marshall — could cut loose on straight-ahead bop (as on the opener “Bud and Bird”) or blues (as on “Blues for Pablo” and Johnny Carisi’s “Israel”) they were on firm ground and in good shape. But so much of Evans’s music is in unconventional time signatures (the 6/4 “Time of the Barracudas,” the 5/4 “Zee Zee”) and so difficult that the project as a whole seemed in need of more rehearsal time. The highlight was one of Evans’s few small group charts for Davis, his driving, charging treatment of Bob Dorough’s “Devil May Care.”

Contrastingly, the show by the big JALC orchestra — supplemented by an additional 14 musicians — was everything a Gil Evans program should be, although I noted that nearly everything they attempted was in straight 4/4 time. Wynton Marsalis and the expanded ensemble concentrated on what is generally regarded the 20 years of Mr. Evans’ creativity, from his contributions to the Claude Thornhill band book of the World War II years to three of the four most celebrated albums he made as leader, “Gil Evans Plus Ten” (1957), “New Bottle Old Wine” (1958), and “Out Of The Cool” (1960).

In between, the JALCO sampled from two of the Evans-Davis masterworks, “Miles Ahead” and “Porgy and Bess,” with Ryan Kisor, Marcus Printemp, and Wynton Marsalis stepping into Davis’s trumpet shoes. The leader himself was inspired and driving on “New Rhumba”; a sequence from “Porgy,” with Evans’s original “Gone,” largely a vehicle for guest drummer Willie Jones III (it may be the most distinct melody Evans ever wrote, even though he more or less gifted it to the late Gershwin), leading directly into the prayer for the departed, “Gone, Gone, Gone,” was particularly moving. It was no surprise that the Lincoln Centurians got the swing-era numbers right, even though those French hornladen Thornhill arrangements, such as “Robbins’s Nest” and “Buster’s Last Stand” are tricky. Still, I was gratified to hear that they captured all the offbeat subtleties, tonal shadings, and unpredictable tempos of Kurt Weill’s “Bilbao Song,” with the main melody being taken by bassist Carlos Henriquez. They also nailed the exuberance in Evans’s inspired reworkings of the jazz classics “Lester Leaps In,” “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” and “King Porter Stomp.”

In general, as with the Centennial Salute to Benny Carter last weekend, the JALCO outdid itself. Maybe they were waiting to salute Gil Evans until they felt ready for the challenge. At any rate, these may be the greatest two weeks in the history of Jazz at Lincoln Center. The only drawback was that the JALCO didn’t include anything from two Evans milestones, the 1960 “Sketches of Spain” (with Davis), and the 1964 “The Individualism of Gil Evans,” (it would have been instructive to compare Wynton’s “Barracudas” with that of his older brother). Which, however, leaves the door open for more. The only thing they could follow these two concerts with is more Benny Carter and Gil Evans.

wfriedwald@nysun.com


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