Download - Downbeat

SubScrIbe
877-904-JAZZ
64 DOWNBEAT NOVEMBER 2010
Stan Kenton
This Is An Orchestra
TANTARA 1125
★★★★
the Stan Kenton
Alumni Band
Have Band Will Travel
SUMMIT 535
★★★★
Fame came to Stan Kenton just in
time as the whole big band genre began
its collapse. This is why his music
reflected an almost frantic search
for a new sound, another unexpected
vein of originality, one more big
surprise that might jump-start a faltering
format. This is why Kenton’s
name still marks a major part of jazz’s passage
from tradition to modernity, from entertainment
to art music.
This Is An Orchestra, a two-CD companion
to a book of the same name from the University
of North Texas Press, covers a 25-year span in
the Kenton band’s life. The music begins in 1948
with the “progressive” orchestra that gave Kenton
his last major hit, “Peanut Vendor,” and continues
into the early 1970s as he was pioneering the
early outposts of jazz education. Tantara, whose
sole mission is the Kenton legacy, has taken care
to avoid any previously issued performances.
In the fall of 1947, after a six-month hiatus
during which the band business seemed to be flatlining,
Kenton decided to administer shock treatment.
His “progressive jazz” made the Kenton
brand synonymous with the most traumatizing
frontiers of modernism among the general jazz
audience. Much of that historical ambiance is
caught on the 1948 DownBeat awards broadcast
here in which Kenton rakes in the plaques. The
performances showcase his winning stars—June
Christy, Eddie Safranski, Shelly Manne and arranger
Pete Rugolo, whose shadowy “Impressionism”
sounds like a noirish film score in
search of a soundtrack. But it’s the blaring brass
of “Peanut Vendor” that was the most imitated
and ultimately parodied element of Kenton’s progressivism
at its most strident.
The music moves on next to a 1956 California
concert that is musically, if not historically,
far more interesting. Bill Holman is now the
principal arranger (with Gerry Mulligan and Bill
Russo also contributing) and both the band and
the soloists swing hard, untied from any poses
of European modernity and free to speak in the
tongues of bebop. Drummer Mel Lewis steers
beautifully from the drum chair with none of the
ponderousness often attributed to Kenton. Much
of the West Coast jazz scene came from various
Kenton bands of the ’50s, among them here Carl
Fontana, Lennie Niehaus, Bill Perkins and Curtis
Counce. Niehaus is constantly invigorating
on alto, as are Perkins (“Out Of Nowhere”) and
Spencer Sinatra on tenor.
Disc two collects six live and studio sessions
from 1961 to 1973, with early glimpses of Don
Menza, Marvin Stamm, Gabe Baltazar and Peter
Erskine. Kenton went into the ’60s with much of
his Stravinskyish flair intact, though the music
here presents a mix of the dance book, original
charts and some “bigger” pieces. “Prologue:
West Side Story” and “Maria” give arranger
Johnny Richards license to mix tempos and dynamics
in intriguing ways, while the 1973 performances
include several fresh, punchy originals of
the period in the brassy Kenton style.
The Kenton band has been gone for more
than 30 years, but Have Band Will Travel rounds
up about 10 veterans whose service goes back to
1957, while a half-dozen younger ringers present
no burden. All are eager to play the old book.
But alas, the old book is not what this remarkably
fine band delivers. For an orchestra that
presents itself as custodian of the Kenton legacy,
two thirds of its material is essentially guesswork—how
would that legacy have evolved today?
The question is, why settle for the Kenton
“spirit” when the real thing is at hand? Perhaps
he would be doing a chart like “Joint Tenancy” if
he had a couple trumpets as lean and crisp as Don
Rader and Steve Huffsteter. But with so much
of the vast book in a limbo, one is a little disappointed
that that this isn’t the band to bring it to
life. We do get a nicely reconfigured “Intermission
Riff,” and “Swing House” reminds us what
treasures Gerry Mulligan left behind. Perhaps
leader Mike Max doesn’t wish to preside over a
museum of memories. —John McDonough
this Is an orchestra: Disc 1: Theme & Introduction; Lover; June
Christy Award; Lonely Woman; Pete Rugolo Award; Impressionism;
Eddie Safranski Award; Safranski; Shelly Manne Award; Artistry In
Percussion; Stan Kenton Award; The Peanut Vendor; Theme &
Sign-Off; A Theme Of Four Values; Young Blood; Intermission Riff;
Cherokee; Take The “A” Train; Polka Dots And Moonbeams; Fearless
Finlay; I’m Glad There Is You; Kingfish; Out Of Nowhere; Limelight
(78:24). Disc 2: Gone With The Wind; Intermissino Riff; Sophisticated
Lady; Lullaby Of Birdland; It’s A Big Wide Wonderful World;
Give Me A Song With A Beautiful Melody; Prologue–West Side
Story; Maria; Malaguena; What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your
Life; No Harmful Side Effects; Of Space And Time; For Better Or
For Worster; Street Of Dreams; Malaga; Artistry In Rhythm (76:21).
Personnel: Stan Kenton and orchestras.
ordering info: tantaraproductions.com
have Band Will travel: The New Intermission Riff; Softly As I
Leave You; El Viento Caliente; Long Ago & Far Away; Artemis &
Apollo; Five & Dime; This Could Be The Start Of Something Big;
Our Garden; Swing House; Tonight; Joint Tenancy; Invitation; The
Shadow Of Your Smile; Crescent City Stomp. (70:24)
Personnel: Mike Vax and orchestra.
ordering info: summitrecords.com