(Review by JC)
The Irish playwright,
Samuel Beckett (who, as it happens, was born in the same suburban village
outside Dublin as I was - or should that be the other way around?), was renowned
for being very picky about how his plays should be performed. He refused
permission for his most famous play, Waiting
for Godot, to be performed with an all-women cast saying that was not how
he visualised or wrote the play. But to be fair he did write some major roles
for women: in Happy Days the sole
woman actor spends the whole play buried up to her neck in sand, and in Endgame the female lead lives in a dustbin
(as does the male lead).
However Beckett was not
the only artist to get ratty about what people did to his work so I am not sure
what Miles Davis would have thought about Jon Schapiro's attempt to transform
'Kind of Blue into inventive and unpredictable big band jazz' to quote the
publicity blurb. Miles is quoted in the sleeve notes as having said that if
'you get the right guys and play the right things at the right time you got a
m-----f-----' but as the writer notes Miles was 'legendarily indiscriminate
(and one might add variable) in his use of that last noun' which risks making
this project a hostage to fortune.
However, I am not going to
try and be the judge of whether Schapiro succeeds in his transformative project.
Maybe this is modal big band jazz. I don't know. So I am happy to leave that task
to more knowledgeable reviewers and critics who understand in detail what Davis
was trying to do and, more importantly, what he achieved musically with 'Kind
of Blue'.
Personally I am happy for
all kinds of experimental projects based on iconic pieces of art to take place
as long as they work in their own terms and the originals are still available.
So in relation to the
music on this 2-CD album, Schapiro is the composer/conductor/arranger for a
17-piece big band that plays seven original pieces, six by Schapiro and one by
the piano player Roberta Piket, arranged around what they call the five
'themes' of 'Kind of Blue'. For instance, Piket has a very nice improvised
piano solo which is then followed by, according to the track listing, a big
band 'version' of So What. Then a big
band composition by Schapiro is followed by a big band 'version' of Blue in Green and so on. I say 'versions'
of the 'Kind of Blue' tracks advisedly, for although I could recognise the odd
riff or figure from the originals these soon disappeared into the big band's
sound.
That is not to say that
there is not some fine playing by individual members of the band. As well as
Piket's piano, there is some fine saxophone playing on Blue in Green by Ben Kono on alto and Rob Middleton on tenor.
Trumpeter Andy Gravish highlights the opening track of disc two and the guitar
work of Sebastian Noelle on Flamenco
Sketches is also a treat but interestingly, as far as I could tell, without
a hint of Spanish influence.
Now I like big bands and
this is a very good one but in relation to being a
tribute/re-interpretation/transformation I'd have to say 'What's the point?' or
(more predictably) 'So What?' The issue is quite well illustrated by a number
of statements in the publicity material describing what the band does to the
compositions on 'Kind of Blue' with one representative example being, 'All Blues briefly retains its theme
but, rather than being a blues waltz, becomes an uptempo romp...' That would
have had even Sam Beckett (who wasn't a great jazz fan) issuing writs from
beyond the grave on Miles' behalf.
Readers who have
persevered with this review might have noticed that I haven't mentioned the
titles of the original pieces on this album and that is because I can hardly
bear to. Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to continue the
transformative theme by utilising the letters in 'Kind of Blue' ('Please tell
me it wasn't you, Mr. Schapiro') so that the pieces written by Schapiro are
called 'Boiled Funk 1,2,3,4,5'. Tragically, the fine piano player jumps the
shark by calling her piece 'Foiled Bunk'.
Some anagrams are okay and
work like 'Live Evil' or Gil Evans becoming Svengali, but the only thing that
can be said about the ones on this album is 'No! Just no!'
JC
Jon Schapiro (composer/conductor/arranger);
Ryan Davis, Andy Gravish, Eddie Allen, Noyes Bartholomew (trumpets); Deborah
Weisz, Alex Jeun, Nick Grinder (trombones); Walter Harris (bass trombone); Rob
Wilkerson (alto sax tracks 1-4), Ben Kono (alto sax tracks 5-12), Candace
DeBartolo (alto sax), Paul Carlon, Rob Middleton (tenor saxes), Matt Hong (baritone
sax); Roberta Piket (piano); Sebastian Noelle (guitar); Evan Gregor (bass); Jon
Wikan (drums).
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