‘Jazz Americana’
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis
Frederick P. Rose Hall
Streaming Through February 15

About halfway through the second act on Sunday night at Jazz at Lincoln Center, artistic director Wynton Marsalis told us about Hagar, an Old Testament figure who has a large role in African American religious tradition, and who inspired W.C. Handy’s classic standard of 1920, “Aunt Hagar’s Blues.” Over the course of more than 100 years, the composition’s best-loved vocal version is probably by trombonist and singer Jack Teagarden, who made it one of his signature songs. Then there’s Art Tatum’s version: He recorded a masterpiece solo piano performance in 1949 that, among other things, invented Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” 

Mr. Marsalis and the Orchestra introduced a stunning new version of “Aunt Hagar’s Blues” arranged by Wycliffe Gordon and featuring the outstanding young vocalist Shenel Johns.  Like many Handy works, it’s in several sections. Mr. Gordon’s arrangement started with a drum intro by Obed Calvaire before the ensemble played a simmering version of the part that’s sometimes called the verse, leading into the main chorus with trombones and handclaps. The piece then slowed down and shifted to 2/4 from 4/4 for Ms. Johns’s entrance.  

The narrative of the lyrics concerns an older church lady who stands up to a disapproving deacon and defends her right, and that of the congregation, to party to the beat of the blues. “It’s like a choir from on high broke loose / If the Devil brought it, the good Lord sent it right down to me.” This is not a particularly erotic blues, compared to other works in the general genre, but Ms. Johns made it seem very sexy just the same.

After exploring swing, early modern jazz, and the hard bop/cool dichotomy in earlier concerts this season, now Mr. Marsalis and his Lincoln Centurians are traveling back to the roots of the music with “Jazz Americana,” a show that features new arrangements of pivotal pre-jazz pieces — the blues, folk songs, ragtime, and even some country music — along with two newly commissioned works.

Whereas other contemporary maestros revisiting this early music — such as Steven Bernstein, whose Millennial Territory Orchestra is playing Carnegie Zankel on March 14 — try to incorporate some of the funk and grit of early jazz and protojazz, Mr. Marsalis and his staff of arrangers keep everything very smooth and highly swinging, driven by rock-solid propulsion from Mr. Calvaire along with bassist Carlos Henriquez and guest pianist Sean Mason. In general, the results sound like a set of early music as played by Count Basie’s New Testament Orchestra of the 1950s, gloriously swinging in its own way. Also, it works: This is an interpretation, not a recreation.

The playing of two guest violinists, Mark O’Connor and his wife and musical partner Margie O’Connor, fit comfortably into this vein: Mr. O’Connor seems able to switch seamlessly between the classical repertoire, jazz, country, bluegrass, and movie music and play it all incredibly, without breaking a sweat. He played a C&W classic, “The Tennessee Waltz,” a jazz standard, “Honeysuckle Rose,” and the traditional fiddle breakdown “Sally Gooden,” attributed to Eck Robinson.

The two new pieces composed specifically for this concert were both wholly successful. Terry Waldo, the 80-year old ragtimer and stride pianist, gave us the self-titled “Waldo’s World,” in three short movements, starting with “Ragtime” composed in the spirit of Scott Joplin and featuring a 21-year-old banjo virtuoso, Gavin Rice. 

“Bix Lix,” dedicated to the legendary cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, was played  by the five saxophones of the reed section — but rather than evoke Beiderbecke’s saxophonic partner Frank Trumbauer, this impressionistic piece was highly inspired by Bix’s piano compositions. The final movement, “Striding into Swing” summoned up James P. Johnson and showed how the great swing bands evolved out of the Harlem stride players. Mr. Waldo’s outstanding work, orchestrated for the big band by Sam Chess, succinctly covered many generations of jazz in a brief eight minutes or so.

“New Orleans Humbug,” by a New Orleans clarinetist and educator, Michael White, was introduced by the composer as referring to a heated argument or a kerfuffle of some kind transpiring in one of the Crescent City’s omnipresent traditional social clubs. It began with what seemed like a paraphrase of “Wild Man Blues,” and then featured Mr. Mason playing very spare blues piano as well as Mr. Rice, and eventually evolved into a piece that recreated what NOLA pioneers such as Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver were playing as they eased into larger format dance orchestras in the late jazz age. 

It included prominent tuba by Chris Crenshaw, more customarily a trombonist. Mr. White took only a single chorus of a clarinet solo, a blues so funky it sounded like the instrument would disintegrate into dust before he finished playing.

Dr. White also described “Humbug” as having been inspired by the New Orleans funeral tradition, like the last piece of the evening, trumpeter Marcus Printup’s excellent arrangement of the traditional hymn “Amazing Grace.” It began slow and somber, like the dirge-like walk to the graveyard, with Abdias Armenteros playing tenor saxophone with a big, highly vocalized tone reminiscent of the great Gospel saxophonist Dr. Vernard Johnson. Soon enough, it broke into the expected uptempo free-for-all, representing the jubilant march back into town from the cemetery, and this time Chris Lewis took a powerful tenor solo.

With both tenors wailing and everyone in the hall leaping to their feet, it proved to be one of the most jubilant moments I’ve ever experienced in Rose Hall. This served to prove that, 250 years after the abolitionist John Newton originally gave us “Amazing Grace” and 100 years after W.C. Handy, we are all still Aunt Hagar’s children.