Ever since hearing Bill Holman’s album Further Adventures, I have been a fan of the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra. A combination symphony orchestra and jazz ensemble, it is the only permanent group of its kind in the world. I had the opportunity to see this group in rehearsal and performance under their new Music Director, Vince Mendoza, in Europe in 2005. I had studied jazz composition with Mr. Mendoza at the Henry Mancini Institute, and he later invited me to participate in his conductors seminar with the Metropole Orchestra in March 2007.

The participants were all classically trained conductors like myself, some with experience in jazz. Unlike other seminars  we’d all attended, this one didn’t include a single piece of music by Schumann, Brahms or any of the classical canon. Instead we had prepared repertoire by composers including Jeff Beal, Bill Holman, Jim McNeely, Bob Brookmeyer, and Vince Mendoza himself, composers whose orchestra music uses both jazz and classical elements and involves improvisation.

The central topic was groove. This unfortunate term invariably elicits smirks from classical musicians, conjuring images of skating rinks, mirror balls and the works of John Updike — residue from its cousin, the word “groovy.” Speaking to a concert audience with amusement and some consternation, Vince Mendoza told a story of an academic thesis committee he once sat on who asked a composition student to “define groove” … alas. It may be that jazz terminology cannot hope to come under the austere rubric of academia with hipness intact. Vince had come up with a compelling answer, however: “groove is a frame of reference for pulse.” Tapping his foot on the stage floor with unbelievable rhythmic commitment, he told how “everything has a pulse” — everything in music and in the rest of life, and groove refers to the way interactive events are organized around pulse. The focus of the seminar was to accustom us conductors to working with repertoire in which  groove is a fundamental point of reference.

Every participant was thrilled for the opportunity to, as Vince Mendoza put it, “drive the Ferrari.” Easily the hippest string section I’ve seen anywhere, a rhythm and percussion arsenal that would have provoked Berlioz to revise his Grand Traité d’Instrumentation et d’Orchestration Modernes, and a wind and brass complement that raises concern for the overall structural integrity of the building.