(Review by Debra Milne).
This
musical project was inspired by the ‘Syntopicon’, a cross referencing index for
‘Great Books of the Western World’ published by Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1952. SNJO director Tommy Smith bought
the entire 54 volumes in 1990, and in Kurt Elling he has found the ideal
collaborator to explore some of the key themes in the context of jazz. The
programme included ideas of knowledge & wisdom, language, good & evil,
love & beauty, life and death, with re-workings of pieces from composers
including Wayne Shorter, Thelonius Monk, Leonard Bernstein and traditional
Scottish music.
The
evening opened with ‘Green Chimneys’ a
Monk piece representing joy, which Elling embraced with gleeful scatting. He
provided lyrics to several numbers, including Vince Mendoza’s ‘Esperanto’
and Wayne Shorter’s ‘Go’. In the latter, the drummer
Alyn Cosker’s sinister beating rumba was particularly effective, and presaged
an old man’s haunting memories of the loss of his family in the Holocaust. The
highlight of the first set was Paul Simon’s ‘American Tune’
(knowledge & wisdom), arranged by the young German Christian Elsasser, and
played by the orchestra to great effect with Elling’s soaring vocal.
The second set
continued with themes of love, beauty and death, but these pretensions never
got in the way of the outstanding delivery of some great arrangements by SNJO.
Elling gave a reprise of ‘A
New Body and Soul’ from the Nightmoves album, with a faultless delivery
of his extended vocalese of Dexter Gordon’s solo. Initially a duet with Steve
Hamilton on piano, then joined by bass and drums, the trio provided contrast to
the other pieces, and gave focus to the superb vocal performance. A new
arrangement of Bernstein & Sondheim’s ‘Somewhere’ was specially
commissioned from Geoffrey Keezer, and was another example of how the different
parts of the band were utilised to provide contrast, dynamics and drama. The
evening ended on a seriously funky note with John Scofield’s ‘Jeep
on 35’, with Elling singing a vocalese with
attitude by Nina Clark (‘…got my plan, gonna get me a life…’), and a blistering
tenor solo from Tommy Smith. However, the band leader got to show his tender
side in his solo in the encore ‘Loch Tay
Boat Song’.
Debra
M.
No comments :
Post a comment