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(Updated June 2013)

For the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro‘s 50th Anniversary Celebration I was invited to perform the original 19-piece jazz band version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with members of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, leading from the piano. It was a welcome chance to get reacquainted with a piece I’ve known all my life. We performed at the beautiful Empire Room in downtown Greensboro. Below are my program notes for the occasion:

There was a period when Rhapsody in Blue was the only reason I practiced the piano. My first encounter with the piece  - I was 10 – was at a Billy Joel concert: the Rhapsody was his pre-show music (the house lights went out at exactly 2 bars before figure 37). After that a sheet music version for solo piano consumed possibly weeks in total of my life hours during high school. I recall staying up late listening to a famous record of Leonard Bernstein playing and conducting, and later to George Gershwin’s piano rolls. As I became interested in jazz, which by then had seen over a half century of evolution since the Rhapsody in Blue, I was captivated by Gershwin’s sense of pianistic voice leading, combining the chromaticism of composers like Debussy and Ravel with vernacular rhythms and progressions from theatre, early jazz bands, tin pan alley, and popular songs of the 1920s.

Though Rhapsody in Blue has become a standard of the repertoire, it is not classical music in the strictest sense, nor do many jazz musicians I know consider it jazz. And though it draws on both classical and popular raw materials, it is not in any form typical of either. It is an episodic collection of medium length ideas, connected by sudden stops and starts, abrupt changes of rhythm and mood, and a combination of anxiety and restlessness that manages to express something much larger than any of its moments. The Rhapsody holds together so well, and yet so casually.

Whereas the familiar symphonic version smooths all of this over somewhat under the weight and homogeneity of full orchestra, the jazz band version, scored originally for the Paul Whiteman band by Ferde Grofe, does nothing if not accentuate the piece’s idiosyncrasies. Scored for brass, clarinets, saxes, rhythm section and violins, everyone ends up sticking out – there is no anonymity. Phrases everyone has heard rendered with highbrow sophistication by great symphony string sections are blurted out cartoon-like by three saxophones, while the banjo keeps time. The bass clarinet part that was once an inconspicuous auxiliary becomes a featured solo. The violins are not those of Carnegie Hall, but written in three parts like a vaudeville pit orchestra. It would seem to be some inept attempt at reducing a large work for a tight budget, if the historical fact were not just the opposite. Seldom can a piece of music transmute instrumentations with its essence so utterly intact. The Rhapsody in Blue is tamper-proof; it is indestructible; it works no matter what instruments you play it on. That is one of the many reasons it has found itself in rock ‘n roll songs, video games, commercials, and a sundry host of other unlikely places. The Rhapsody in Blue has had a career most classical or jazz compositions would envy.

Out of the “blue”, the Rhapsody coalesces in one of the greatest melodies ever written, one which refuses to ever quite resolve, digressing endlessly before finally finding an optimistic stride toward some uncertain destination. To people living in America in a decade that was roaring, rhapsodic, and at times surely blue, all of this must have hit a nail right on the head. There is something for everyone here. If you are not in the right mood for it, just wait a few bars. It never stays blue for long.

The concert opened with The Thrill of the Orchestra, a lively composition for narrator and orchestra by Russell Peck that introduces kids to the instruments, colors, and capabilities of the symphony orchestra. Bill Flynn, a favorite radio personality in North Carolina, narrated Greensboro Symphony’s first performance of the piece since the passing of Russell Peck in 2009. Cameron Peck, Russell’s wife and 2nd Horn in Greensboro Symphony for a number of years, was in attendance at rehearsal and performance.

We continued with excerpts from the last movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as well as the famous “love theme” from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, animating on a large screen the layout of each orchestra score and zooming in to highlight several features in the orchestrations of each.At this point (and in reckless disregard of the advice of Erich Leinsdorf – see here), we departed from the letter of the score. Playing the Tchaikovsky excerpt again, we altered several details of the orchestration without specifying what they were in advance … the famous melody at rehearsal G was proffered by the clarinet rather than the English Horn; low brass were inconspicuously added to the subsequent divisi string passage; and where the melody returns in the woodwinds shortly thereafter, this was substituted with a trumpet. Hands shot up in the audience as kids took turns identifying the differences, some of them shockingly observant, such as ”The trombones were playing the viola part!!”

Unable to resist the temptation to take this idea to its obvious conclusion, we played the passage again, orchestrations becoming ever more preposterous: the melody moves now to the tuba; the strings pluck rather than bow their passage; the melody returns cartoon-like in the trombone with plunger mute, accompanied by the xylophone; delicate counterlines lose all nuance as they are chugged inelegantly by low strings and brass; snare drum, tubular bells and cymbals render climactic points ridiculous; the melody grinds to a halt two octaves too low as a tam-tam reverberates into the hall. Every conceivable bad orchestration idea was carried out with utter conviction, throwing into painful relief the superiority Tchaikovsky’s original choices.

With that, we performed the famous return of the love theme near the end of the overture, this time with Tchaikovsky’s notes intact. And to avoid ending on a tragic note we concluded with the humorous “Celebration Dance” from Billy the Kid by Aaron Copland.

A short video and example scores will be posted shortly.

Nicole and I had been college friends at Indiana University and performed together in a variety of obscure rural venues before she went off and got famous on MadTV, as Elphaba in Wicked, in Europe with Full Frontal Comedy, and a variety of other exciting projects. Alli was new to me on this concert, but two bars into accompanying her at the piano rehearsal I was an instant fan. The program (from John Such’s Bravo Broadway series) included music from Gypsy, Chicago, Ragtime, Phantom of the Opera, and Wicked.

The excellent musicians of the Greensboro Symphony were able to parlay a rehearsal plagued by blowing music pages and collapsing stands into a most energetic and exciting concert. Thanks to Alex Forsyth for this great photography and to United Arts Council for permission to use. More can be seen on Alex’s Facebook album.

Below are a handful of tracks plucked from the depths of my MacBook Pro which spent countless evenings plugged into the soundboard immortalizing our mistakes. In early 2009, Stan, Rabbit and myself convened in Orlando to record a few tracks together and a few of those can also be heard here.

It Might As Well Be Spring : Recorded at the studio of Jeff Green in Orlando, FL. Rabbit Simmons (bass), Stan Soloko (drums).

I Loves You Porgy : Recorded on the same day. Both were recorded following a period of study with jazz pianist Lynne Arriale which focused on phrasing the melody from the words and motivic development.

The Very Thought of You : With Austrian jazz vocalist Simone Kopmajer. For this weekend Kevin Gallagher was on bass and Chris Nolin on drums, both friends and veteran players from the days of Seaside Music Theater. We accompanied Simone for the U.S. release party for her album Romance.

Dr. Sasso is an orchestral and choral composer whose works have been played by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Indianapolis Children’s Choir. He is now forming a reputation in the young field of performing arts psychiatry, that is, understanding and treating performers who have psychiatric problems.

As a composer participant for two seasons (2002 and 2004) I was commissioned to write orchestral pieces combining jazz with classical elements to be performed during the summer concert series at UCLA (University of California Los Angeles). The music can be heard and seen elsewhere on this site (see the Downloads page and this video). These summers afforded the chance to observe rehearsals with legendary Hollywood composers David Raksin, Johnny Mandel, Alf Clausen (of The Simpsons fame) and others. Musicians I met at the Henry Mancini Institute include Gordy Haab, Kyle Newmaster, Jack Smalley, Vince Mendoza, Justin DiCioccio.

In December 2002 following my first summer at HMI, Ginny Mancini, Henry’s wife of 43 years, presented me with the ASCAP Mancini Scholar Award at the ASCAP Awards at Lincoln Center. Incidentally, Stephen Sondheim received a lifetime achievement award at the same ceremony, slated to be the final event of the evening. Due to a blizzard my plane was hours late, and I wound up arriving just in time to follow this titan of music theater onto the stage at the last possible moment. Mr. Sondheim and I have never met, but I always felt I owed him an apology.

My connection to Henry Mancini through the circle of Indiana-based musicians who toured with him for decades, including Dick Dennis, Mike Lucas, Jack Gilfoy and Al Cobine contributed to making “HMI” an important part of my training in both composition and conducting. The Henry Mancini Institute closed in Los Angeles after the 2006 season and has recently reopened as a year-round program of the Frost School of Music, University of Miami.

Karla died last October following a stroke to correct a congenital heart condition. The Stanford Report provides more information on her life and contributions. A memorial concert will be held at Stanford University on May 21 and 22 of this year.

The Conservatory Theatre at the University of Central Florida maintained a partnership with Seaside Music Theater, affording its MFA candidates professional experience through apprenticeship, rehearsals, masterclasses and productions. The university also shared the two world-class performance spaces at the News-Journal Center in Daytona Beach, where I music directed productions of Romance, Romance and Starting Here,  Starting Now and commissioned new musical by composer Richard Pearson Thomas.

When Seaside Music Theater closed its doors in 2008 and the partnership was dissolved, I remained with University of Central Florida on their Orlando campus to music direct productions of West Side Story, The Last Five Years, and It’s Today! An Evening of Jerry Herman.

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