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The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra
2008-2009 Season
Dec. 13, 2008, Feb. 21, Apr. 4, June 6, 2009
PROGRAM DETAILS
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The Nutcracker and Peer Gynt, Arranged by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn
Full Orchestra
Sat., Dec. 13, 2008 at 7:30 p.m.
Celebrate the season with Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s 1960 adaptations of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Grieg's Peer Gynt. To recreate these classics, Ellington and Strayhorn developed a blend of classic thematic materials, faithfully rendering the melodies while mixing in their characteristic horn colorations and chordal voicings. The result includes titles such as “Peanut Brittle Brigade” (originally the “March”), “Volga Vouty” (originally “Russian Dance”), and “Toot Toot Tootie Toot” (originally the “Dance of the Reed Pipes”).
CODE: 1P0-065
The New Jazz Standards
Full Orchestra
Sat., Feb. 21, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.
In an era of musical innovation, new creative approaches were taken to the orchestration of the jazz ensemble as new harmonic concepts created vehicles for longer, freer improvisation. This music came straight from the source: the jazz musician. Highlights included John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” a hallmark of virtuosic jazz, and the subtle, modal “So What” that helped define the musical voice of Miles Davis.
CODE: 1P0-066
Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and His Modal Period
Small Ensemble
Sat., April 4, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.
Kind of Blue, recorded in 1959, was not only one of Miles Davis's masterworks but one of the most influential albums in jazz history. Davis’s new formulation--influenced by George Russell’s book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization--used scales or a series of scales for improvisations and became known as “modal.” Modality was the framework for Kind of Blue, which included “So What,” “Freddie Freeloader,” and “All Blues”--all destined to become classic tunes.
CODE: 1P0-067
Thelonious Monk’s 1959 Town Hall Concert
Full Orchestra
Sat., June 6, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.
Thelonious Monk organized a 10-piece ensemble to interpret his compositions in a concert at New York’s Town Hall in 1959. Monk asked arranger Hall Overton, a Juilliard-trained composer, to orchestrate the compositions for this project, including a remarkable transcription of Monk's original piano solo on "Little Rootie Tootie.” Overton’s transcriptions preserve Monk’s quirky voicings and harmonic ideas while expanding the ideas to 10 musicians.
CODE: 1P0-068
FULL SERIES (4 concerts)
CODE: BPJ1
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Voice of America, Auditorium
330 Independence Ave., SW Wash., DC
(Entrance on C St., SW Metro: Federal Center)