Sound waves
Boston Jazz Composer's Alliance, Auros Group of New Music take to stage, and more

Composing jazz

Many of the greatest jazz compositions come from the great players — Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman. But what of those for whom performing was secondary to writing — Duke Ellington, Gil Evans, Sun Ra, George Russell? Or those who aspired to orchestral writing rather than for small groups? Ellington, it’s said, kept his expensive band together primarily so he could hear his pieces played.

Boston’s Jazz Composers Alliance formed 17 years ago for just such a purpose: here was a way for composers to pool their resources and assemble a band from the local ranks for the purpose of playing new compositions for jazz orchestra. In addition, the JCA has commissioned work and initiated an annual Julius Hemphill Composition Awards. On January 25, the JCA and the 18-piece JCA Orchestra begin their season at Emmanuel Church, on Newbury Street, with new pieces by Laura Andel, Darrell Katz, David Harris, Bob Pilkington, Ken Schaphorst, and Warren Senders. The performers will include some of the best in town: saxophonists Allan Chase, Jim Hobbs (Fully Celebrated Orchestra), and Phil Scarff, trumpeter Mike Peipman, trombonists Harris and Pilkington, drummer Harvey Wirht (Either/Orchestra), pianist Art Bailey, and flutist Hiro Honshuku. That’s at 15 Newbury Street at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10, or $6 for seniors and students. Call (781) 899-3130.

Next month, moreover, the JCA will release two new CDs, In Thru & Out (on Cadence, with pieces by Andel, Harris, and Katz) and The Death of Simone Weil (from a piece by Katz, on Innova). Later this year, through a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund, the JCA will record for the C.I.M.P. label. And on March 15, as part of the Boston Creative Music Alliance concert series at the ICA, the JCA will join forces with saxophonist/composer Steve Lacy and his vocalist wife, Irene Aebi, for a performance of Lacy’s original compositions for big band.

Going electric

The Auros Group for New Music gets into some old-school avant-garde this weekend with a program called "Wavelengths: Television and Radio." Auros plans to go back to the beginning of the "innovative and often radical use of TV and radio in music and art" in the mid 20th century with John Cage’s Music Walk and Radio Music (for from one to eight radios) and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Spiral for saxophone and short-wave radio. Also on the program are Ken Ueno’s WATT, for saxophone, percussion, and boombox and Michael Daugherty’s Yo amaba a Lucy, or "I Loved Lucy," for flute and guitar. Interpolated between musical selections will be screenings of works by pioneering video artist (and former musician and composer) Nam June Paik, including TV Cello and TV Bra, both performed by the late Charlotte Moorman. Additional footage by Paik and Moorman will be shown before the concert. That’s at Brandeis’s Slosberg Hall, on the Waltham campus, at 8 p.m., with the pre-concert screenings beginning at 7:30. Tickets are $10, or $5 for students; call (617) 736-3400.

North by northwest

The Robert Hull Fleming Museum up at the University of Vermont, in Burlington, is a bit of a trek. Then, again, if you’re driving to Montreal, it’s on the way. And right now it’s got two added attractions: a collection of San Francisco rock posters, and the exhibit "Andy Warhol Work and Play." Designed by the likes of Stanley Mouse and Wes Wilson, the posters advertise concerts produced in 1966 and ’67 by Bill Graham at the Fillmore West and Avalon Ballroom: the bands depicted include the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messengers, and the Mothers of Invention. They’ll be up through July 13, but to protect them from overexposure to light, the Fleming is exhibiting them in two batches, the first through April 13 (so you can wait till the snow melts) and the second from April 15 on. "Andy Warhol Work and Play" collects paintings, prints, and drawings done between 1948 and 1984, including the Pop icons Campbell’s Soup, Marilyn, and Flowers, the 1971 screenprint portfolio Electric Chair, and four canvases from the 1975 Ladies and Gentlemen series. It will go up this Sunday, January 26, and remain through June 9. The Robert Hull Fleming Museum is at 61 Colchester Avenue in Burlington; call (802) 656-0750 or visit the museum’s Web site at www.flemingmuseum.org.

Going south

One bunch of guys who probably won’t be shoveling snow next month are Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops, who with vocalists Ron Raines and Lisa Vroman will be making a whirlwind nine-city tour of the Southeast from February 6 to 16. The focus will be on Richard Rodgers, with the program including selections from last year’s RCA recording My Favorite Things: A Richard Rodgers Celebration as well as other Rodgers favorites from Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Mostly the Poppers will be hanging out in Florida: when they’re not on the beach, they’ll be playing in Estero on the 6th, Daytona Beach on the 7th, Vero Beach on the 8th, West Palm Beach (twice) on the 9th, Miami Beach on the 11th, and Tampa on the 12th. After that they’ll head north: Greenville (South Carolina) on the 14th, Raleigh on the 15th, and Danville (Kentucky) on the 16th. It’s tough missing out on 11 days of snow and ice and freezing rain, but the Poppers are troupers. And if you feel brave enough to go down there and cheer them on, call (617) 266-1492 or visit www.bostonpops.org.

Going on-line

Keith and the gang might miss a BSO concert or two while they’re down South, but they’ll still be able to keep in touch with what’s going on back home via the new BSO Online Conservatory, an "interactive multimedia addition" to the orchestra’s already very successful Web site (nearly three million hits per year). Developed in partnership with Northeastern University, the Online Conservatory will go up Friday February 7, and its first order of business will be Chinese-American composer Tan Dun’s The Map, a "multimedia" concerto for cello and orchestra that will be getting its world premiere with the BSO in Symphony Hall on Thursday February 20, with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist. (Conducted by Tan Dun himself, the program will also include Shostakovich’s Overture on Russian and Khirgiz Folk Themes, Cage’s The Seasons, and the Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s Peter Grimes. The BSO will perform it in Symphony Hall February 20, 21, 22, and 25 before taking it to Carnegie Hall for concerts March 10 through 12.) There’ll be a video interview with Tan Dun plus audio clips from The Map, and the team of BSO artistic administrator Anthony Fogg and Northeastern music professor Anthony De Ritis will be weighing in on all four works.

The BSO also promises that visitors to the Online Conservatory will be able "to interact with the music on the program by altering tempo, pitch, and instrumentation in passages from the scores scheduled for performance. This feature will allow visitors to hear what a certain section of music would sound like with trumpets instead of clarinets, or at a faster or slower tempo than originally scored." And there’ll be a "basic analysis of each piece, identifying key passages and themes as a way to broaden the concertgoing experience." You’ll even be able to draw on a glossary of musical terms. Maybe all that will make attending performances of contemporary classical music (not to mention Bruckner and Mahler) a less formidable experience. The BSO’s Web-site address is www.bso.org.

Chickening out?

While the Boston Symphony is looking to bring audiences into the 21st century, Boston Ballet is just trying to figure how to get Carlos Acosta into a chicken suit for next month’s production of Frederick Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardée. Well, maybe not, but it is true that Acosta, a native of Cuba who’s been a principal with the English National Ballet and Houston Ballet and is now a member of the Royal Ballet (he was a regal Siegfried in the Swan Lake that the Royal brought to Boston in June of 2001), is being brought in for La Fille. He’ll be dancing the lead male role, Colas, in four performances: February 26 and 27 at 7 p.m. and February 28 and March 1 at 8 p.m.

It’s also true that there will be chickens in this Fille, as well as a rooster (all portrayed by Boston Ballet personnel) and a live pony (and you thought the Russian wolfhounds in Giselle were a big deal). The story has country girl Lisa wanting to wed her sweetheart Colas even as her widowed mother, Simone, tries to marry her off to rich suitor Alain. For the barnyard poop on this production, you should hop, or fly, down to the company’s studio, 19 Clarendon Street in the South End, at 7 p.m. this Wednesday, January 29, when Christopher Carr and Grant Coyle, who are in Boston to set the ballet, and principal dancer Paul Thrussell will offer "An Insider’s View of La Fille" complete with excerpts danced by company members. Tickets for this "DanceTalk" are $12 ($5 for students with ID) and can be purchased at the studio that evening beginning at 6 p.m.; call (617) 695-6955 or e-mail events@bostonballet.com. Boston Ballet’s La Fille Mal Gardée runs from February 20 through March 2 at the Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street in the Theater District, and tickets range from $26 to $82; call (800) 447-7400 or visit www.telecharge.com or drop in to the Wang box office.

Issue Date: Janaury 23 - 30, 2003

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