Search - Marcus Shelby :: Port Chicago

Who Says Jazz Ain't Classical?

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 10/30/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The MSJO is an "integrated" ensemble, including about equal numbers of Afro- and Euro- American musicians, but also integrating influences from Black as well as White musical antecedents. It's a swing band on stage, a dozen horns, percussion, bass, and piano, but it's better than just a nostalgic recreation of swing. Believe me, it swings! It could hold its own if a time-machine carried it to 1947. The swing sound is well seasoned with be-bop; the trumpet solos in particular stretch and weave through the eight-bar blues structures with delicious independence, rather like the melismas of a Renaissance polyphonist like Josquin des Prez. The trumpet licks on track 14 should lay to rest any doubts anyone ever had about the technical mastery of jazz trumpeters; no orchestral trumpeter alive has better chops. If you hear echoes of Lester Young one moment, John Coltrane the next, don't imagine that it's accidental. These horn players know their jazz history. The whole suite of 14 pieces will remind you of Duke Ellington in scope and in attention to structure and tone painting. Then you'll hear "White" swing band riffs floating on the musical surface also -- Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, etc. And there's a peppering of avant-garde classical sounds, an awareness of composers like Philip Glass and John Adams or else a 'convergent evolution' of musical ideas. The composer and leader of the orchestra, bassist Marcus Shelby, has a well-grounded conservatory understanding of musical theory, whether he studied at a conservatory or not. I can hardly praise this performance enough, either for jazz fans or for classicists."