Columbus Jazz Orchestra show to honor 'Ellington, Basie and Miles'
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The Columbus Jazz Orchestra will launch its 51st season this weekend, and they’re bringing along Ellington, Basie and Miles to help celebrate.
Composer-pianist Duke Ellington (1899-1974), composer-pianist Count Basie (1904-84) and composer-trumpet player Miles Davis (1926-91) each are artists who are identifiable without invoking their full names.
From Thursday throughout the weekend, in the Southern Theatre, the orchestra will perform four concerts featuring music by the jazz icons, each of whom experienced something of a creative rebirth during the 1950s. Columbus Jazz Orchestra Artistic Director Byron Stripling prepared a program reflecting the excitement and energy of the work Ellington, Basie and Davis made during those years.
Guest trumpet player Tony Glausi will join the orchestra to help summon memories of the jazz masters — and, of course, to create plenty of fresh memories for central Ohio jazz aficionados.
Stripling recently spoke with The Dispatch about the concert, Glausi and the three legends who enjoyed a concurrent renaissance during the middle part of last century.
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Question: Tell us about this program, “Ellington, Basie and Miles.”
Byron Stripling: What I did think about, as I put this together, was that that particular period in the 1950s, when they (Ellington, Basie and Davis) were all on this upward trajectory that continued for a while. ... Ellington’s career had been stagnant for a little bit, and then he went to the Newport Jazz Festival, which he often did. But this time he went blazing, and he played a whole suite dedicated to the Newport Jazz Festival. The last part of that suite that he wrote for them, he just let his tenor saxophone player, Paul Gonsalves, just go for like 25 choruses.
Count Basie had the same thing during that time in the ’50s. Creativity was bubbling within his orchestra. He had people like Thad Jones and Frank Wess and Frank Foster and Sonny Payne on drums. Everything he did was magical.
And then Miles Davis had the same exact thing, but from a different sort of feeling of swing. Whereas these guys (Ellington and Basie) were blatantly old-school swing, Miles Davis was the new kind of thing.
Q. So, these three artists, independent of each other and working in the same idiom, kind of all explode around the same time.
Stripling: That was a sort of artistic jazz renaissance happening with all of these different styles (in the 1950s). Miles is the outlier in there, because where everybody else might want to play higher and faster and more complex, Miles simplified everything. (Davis’) record “Kind of Blue” is accessible to anybody, and that’s what I like our concerts to be. ... (Author) Toni Cade Bambara said, “The role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible.” By the time we get to the 1960s, through their music, Ellington, Basie and Miles, certainly, were thinking about the Voting Rights Act and all the marching, so the music gets even deeper.
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Q. For your concerts, are we going to hear mostly their music from the 1950s, or is it going to spill into the 1960s?
Stripling: It’s mostly in the ’50s, but just talking to you, we probably need to get some of that (’60s) feeling in there! (Laughs.)
Q. Do you enjoy talking to the audience about some of the history of this music?
Stripling: Yes, because I think it gives them the context of what people were feeling at the time. There are people who don’t want to hear that; in some cases, it spoils it for them because they don’t want to hear ... for lack of a better word, truth. ... If you feel this cacophony in the music, or you feel this striving for even harder swing, even a louder voice, it’s like you’re almost playing with your fists balled up — you’re angry, right? ... It’s art as a delivery system to lift people up and realize we’re going through struggle, too, and we’re expressing it through art.
Q. Tell me about your guest artist, Tony Glausi.
Stripling: Tony Glausi is an amazing young man who’s really a free spirit. He likes Miles, he likes Dizzy (Gillespie), he loves Wynton Marsalis’ music, but he’s still in his late 20s. He’s his own man. ... He picks up that trumpet and he just blows you away. He’s toured the world with his own group (and) is very popular in Spain.
Q. The Jazz Arts Group, the parent organization of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, has a newly named CEO, Katy Coy.
Stripling: We’ve been working already. I was on the (search) committee, and I was like, “This is who we need.” She’s fantastic. She managed an orchestra deep in the heart of Texas (Valley Symphony Orchestra in McAllen, Texas), a little orchestra that was tearing it up (and) was very community-oriented, which is what we like, and very education-based. She was the perfect person for us. I’m loving working with her, and I want everybody to meet her.
At a glance
The Columbus Jazz Orchestra and guest trumpet player Tony Glausi will perform “Ellington, Basie and Miles” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Southern Theatre, 21 E. Main St. Tickets start at $17.33. For more information, visit jazzartsgroup.org.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Jazz Orchestra to celebrate Ellington, Basie and Miles
