Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and the MSO

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and the MSO 28 FEBRUARY – 2 MARCH

Presented in collaboration with Arts Centre Melbourne and the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and the MSO Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Wynton Marsalis music director / trumpet Nicholas Buc conductor Philip Arkinstall clarinet Selections by Duke Ellington Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

Leonard Bernstein Prelude, Fugue and Riffs Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Philip Arkinstall, clarinet

INTERVAL Wynton Marsalis Symphony No. 4 The Jungle Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

Running time: Approximately 2 hours including a 20-minute interval.

Assistive Hearing A hearing system is available from Arts Centre Melbourne ushers, providing coverage to all seats via headphones or neck-loops.

In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for silencing and dimming the light on your phone.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we perform – The Kulin Nation – and would like to pay our respects to their Elders and Community both past and present.

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(03) 9929 9600

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Established in 1906, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an arts leader and Australia’s oldest professional orchestra. Chief Conductor Sir Andrew Davis has been at the helm of the MSO since 2013.

Engaging more than 4 million people each year, the MSO reaches diverse audiences through live performances, recordings, TV and radio broadcasts and live streaming.

Its international audiences include China, where MSO has performed in 2012, 2016 and most recently in May 2018,

Europe (2014) and Indonesia, where in 2017 it performed at the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Prambanan Temple.

The MSO performs a variety of concerts ranging from symphonic performances at its home, Hamer Hall at Arts Centre Melbourne, to its annual free concerts at Melbourne’s largest outdoor venue, the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. The MSO also delivers innovative and engaging programs and digital tools to audiences of all ages through its Education and Outreach initiatives.

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Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

Wynton Marsalis music director / trumpet

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) is the resident orchestra of Jazz at the Lincoln Center, one of the Center’s constituent organisations alongside the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera. The Orchestra serves a variety of events at the Center, including education, but maintains a busy touring schedule.

Over the years it has broadened its reach through television and increasingly collaborated with symphony orchestras.

Internationally-acclaimed Wynton Marsalis performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band at eight. At 17 he became the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center.

Moving to New York City in 1979 he attracted the attention of Columbia Records. He has produced over 80 records which have sold over seven million copies worldwide.

The Orchestra was founded in 1988.

When Wynton Marsalis became artistic director, the Orchestra enhanced its emphasis on the history of jazz. Over the years it has paid special attention to Duke Ellington. The Orchestra opened its 2017 season with arrangements of century-old compositions by Jelly Roll Morton.

Wynton Marsalis has performed with legends such as Art Blakey, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, and Herbie Hancock. In 1987 he co-founded a jazz program at New York’s Lincoln Center which has become a mecca for jazz learning as well as hub for performance.

The Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra has commissioned new works and recorded some of Wynton Marsalis’ more ambitious albums. Recent CDs include Handful of Keys, which reached Top Ten on Billboard’s Jazz Albums charts.

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Wynton Marsalis won a Grammy Award® with his classical debut recording. He has performed with orchestras such as the New York and Royal Philharmonics and composed works such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio Blood on the Fields.

He has presented TV and radio series and written six books. Honours include The National Humanities Medal from President Obama.

Nicholas Buc conductor

Philip Arkinstall clarinet

Nicholas Buc is a composer, conductor, arranger, violinist and pianist. He studied Composition with Brenton Broadstock and Stuart Greenbaum at the University of Melbourne, and completed a Master's degree in Scoring for Film and Multimedia at New York University.

Philip Arkinstall has been Associate Principal Clarinet of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra since 2009 and was principal with the Malaysian Philharmonic for 11 years prior. He was the winner of the Australian Woodwind Competition in Brisbane at the age of just 18 and also won the 2MBS Radio Performer of the Year in 1996 and the ABC Young Performers Award in 1997. Queen’s Trust and Big Brother awards enabled him to further his studies in Europe and he has appeared both as a soloist and as a guest principal with the Sydney, West Australian, Queensland, and Tasmanian symphony orchestras.

His commissioned works have been premiered by the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, The Australian Voices, and the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. He has also written for film and television, with work screened at festivals and theatres around Australia, Asia and the US. Nicholas has worked with pop sensation Tina Arena on six Australian tours, written arrangements for The Whitlams, Passenger and Stu Larsen, and worked on five seasons of The Voice Australia.

Conducting engagements include concerts with Grammy-winning trumpeter Chris Botti and the Australian tour for singer-songwriter Ben Folds.

He’s an active chamber musician and has been fortunate enough to tour Australia for Musica Viva with the Auer quartet, also working with groups such as the Goldner Quartet, the Eggner trio, as well as the Australia Ensemble, The Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and many contemporary ensembles including PLEXUS, MSO's Ensemble in Residence.

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Program Notes DUKE ELLINGTON

(1899–1974)

“ I don’t know where jazz itself starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley starts or where jazz ends, or even where more serious music and jazz divide. There is no specific boundary line. You know what it is about music?

When it sounds good, it is good.”

– Duke Ellington Duke Ellington had a favourite phrase to describe musicians whose work he admired: he would say that they were ‘beyond category’. The man whom many regard as jazz’s – or indeed America’s – greatest composer lived an extraordinary life and amassed thousands of compositions. His career began in the relatively modest dance band scene in Washington D.C. and would eventually encompass the Harlem Renaissance, the rise and ebb of swing, the challenge of bebop, and the subsequent fragmentation of jazz styles. Through it all Ellington continued to follow his own course,

Duke Ellington (photo: Louis Panassié) 6

and by the time of his death in 1974 jazz had truly established itself as one of the foremost art forms of the 20th century.

In jazz history Ellington occupies a place uniquely his own due to the breadth of his vision and diversity of his output. Among his compositions are to be found pieces in the exotic plunger-muted style favoured by patrons of the Cotton Club, tunes that acquired lyrics and became popular songs (‘Sophisticated Lady’, ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’), concertantestyle numbers to showcase his soloists (‘Clarinet Lament’, ‘Echoes of Harlem’, ‘Boy Meets Horn’), concert suites, ballets, film scores, and music for his Sacred Concerts of the late 1960s/early 70s.

Many of the musicians that Ellington assembled for his band had their own unique voice, and he crafted music with their particular talents and idiosyncrasies in mind – Sonny Greer’s flamboyant drums, the growl and gutbucket techniques of trumpeter Bubber Miley and trombonist Joe ‘Tricky Sam’ Nanton,

and altoist Johnny Hodges, whose portamento graced many ballads such as ‘Prelude to a Kiss’. As he expanded the orchestra he experimented more freely with harmony, tone colour and texture, creating those lush dissonances which long-time collaborator Billy Strayhorn termed ‘the Ellington effect’. The 1930s and early 40s are widely regarded as the peak of the band’s career, the essence of the Ellington sound captured in numbers such as ‘Take the A Train’, ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)’, ‘Perdido’, ‘Caravan’ and ‘In a Mellotone’.

The introduction of the long-playing record in the 1940s offered Ellington the opportunity to expand the three-minute format, and in a series of annual concerts at Carnegie Hall he showcased extended works including The Deep South Suite, The Liberian Suite, The Perfume Suite and The Tattooed Bride. The first of these, Black, Brown and Beige, which Ellington called ‘a tone parallel to the history of the American Negro’, is a musical portrait of the African-American experience, from enslavement to emancipation and migration to Harlem (themes that Wynton Marsalis would later explore in his 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz oratorio Blood on the Fields). The desire to tell the story of his people and to continually reimagine the jazz landscape in defiance of narrow stereotypes underpinned much of Ellington’s work.

His contribution remains unsurpassed and, in his words, ‘beyond category’.

Duke Ellington’s orchestra set the benchmark that bands today still seek to attain. This is something that Wynton Marsalis is determined to uphold. One of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s goals is to ‘attempt to preserve and honour the legacy of those artists who forged the

big band genre’. Central to JALC’s educational focus is Essentially Ellington, a program designed for high school bands using original arrangements of Ellington charts that have been transcribed from recordings (the program was rolled out to Australia in 2015).

Tonight’s concert is a more celebratory kind of tribute, so enjoy the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as they swing hard and go back to where it all started with the Duke.

Lorraine Neilson Symphony Services International © 2008/2019

LEONARD BERNSTEIN

(1918–1990)

Prelude, Fugue and Riffs “This is the piece we referred to earlier in the session. We’re going to play it for you now. It is called Prelude, Fugue and Riffs,” says Leonard Bernstein in his Omnibus TV show of 16 October 1955. His delivery here, as compere, is oddly stiff and formal, particularly so considering he was probably the first symphonic conductor to realise the power of television and promote music through this medium.

Then he turns to conduct. It’s not an orchestra. It’s a 1940s-style swing band and the performance reminds you that Bernstein was among the first classical composers to be able to convey the feel and freedom of contemporary American music.

The great swing-era bandleader Woody Herman (1913–1987) had commissioned Prelude, Fugue and Riffs from Bernstein for delivery in 1949, the same year that saw the premiere of Bernstein’s second symphony, The Age of Anxiety. Woody

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Herman engaged in jazz experiments and Bernstein was not the only classical composer he commissioned. In 1945 Igor Stravinsky had written Ebony Concerto for Herman’s band.

Gunther Schuller, in his impressive study The Swing Era, admits that Stravinsky’s work reveals a limited understanding of the nature of jazz, for example the ‘blue notes’ in Ebony Concerto coincide with the crushed major-minor harmonies Stravinsky had arrived at through his own distinctive brand of neo-classicism.

Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs begins in what sounds like a nod to Stravinsky’s dry articulation of changing metres, but by the time the music has reached its first big tutti (‘with a bit more drag’), you can hear that Bernstein possessed more of a sense of jazz’s swing.

The structure of Bernstein’s nineminute piece is quite simple and the three sections are signalled by different instrumental combinations. The opening section of changing metres is begun by trombones and trumpets (Harmon mutes providing a distinctive colouring). The ‘fugue’ is given to saxes taking the lead in turn. Finally, piano enters for the ‘riffs’, accompanying the solo clarinet which plays a thrilling upwardly rising motif, one of the riffs of the title. Finally, the work’s various themes combine in an exuberant tumult. Bernstein’s conducting in the Omnibus footage – heel tapping, forearms circling like windmills, sweat trickling down his cheek – provides apt visual expression of the exultant climax.

Bernstein hoped that his TV audience would appreciate the special beauty of jazz that he felt when writing this piece and understand why he considered Prelude, Fugue and Riffs a ‘serious piece of American music’. Straddling jazz and classical styles was a constant concern for this musician. And he succeeded at it more often perhaps than he thought.

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When he was on tour in Europe just prior to composition of this piece a violinist in the Bavarian State Orchestra had told him that ‘there were maybe two conductors in all Germany who could do Schumann as well as I, and they were both over eighty!’

Soon he would take up Jerome Robbins’ January 1949 suggestion of an updated version of Romeo and Juliet set on New York’s east side.

Gordon Kalton Williams © 2019 The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s only previous performance of this work took place in September 2009 with conductor Keith Lockhart.

WYNTON MARSALIS

(born 1961)

The Jungle (Symphony No.4) The Big Scream (Black Elk Speaks) The Big Show Lost in Sight (Post-Pastoral) La Esquina Us Struggle in the Digital Market In 1987 Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at New York’s Lincoln Center that by 1996 had grown into a fully-fledged constituent organisation, Jazz at Lincoln Center. He now serves as its artistic director and as music director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Marsalis embodies the spirit of interorganisational involvement that was imagined by Lincoln Center’s founders.

For New York City Ballet he composed Jazz: Six Syncopated Movements and Them Twos. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center has commissioned two works from him, introducing the string quartet At the Octoroon Balls in 1995 and then, three years later, A Fiddler’s Tale (inspired in part by Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale). He also serves as director of the Juilliard Jazz Studies program.

Lincoln Center itself commissioned Marsalis’ Blood on the Fields, a vast, three-and-a-half-hour oratorio that, in its revised version, was awarded the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Music. In 2005 the New York Philharmonic included his composition titled #8 in a joint concert with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, in a benefit performance scheduled in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In 1999, the New York Philharmonic joined with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Morgan State University Choir to perform the world premiere of a work commissioned from Marsalis by the Philharmonic, All Rise, an evening-length work that represented a symphonic expansion of the idea of the blues.

According to the composer, the piece ‘was intended to extend the continuum of jazz/symphonic orchestra collaborations foretold by Dvořák, initiated by Ellington and Gershwin, and furthered by Bernstein and Schuller’.

In 2010 the New York Philharmonic performed the premiere of Marsalis’s Swing Symphony (Symphony No.3), whose five movements reference various strands of jazz that fed into the style of swing. In 2016 it introduced his The Jungle (Symphony No.4), which is a wary, unvarnished ode to New York City.

Marsalis has written: New York City is the most fluid, pressure-packed, and cosmopolitan metropolis the modern world has ever seen. The dense mosaic of all kinds of people everywhere doing all kinds of things encourages you to ‘stay in your lane’, but the speed, freedom and intensity of our relationships to each other – and to the city itself – forces us onto a collective super highway unlike any other in our country.

The composer describes the six movements as follows:

The Big Scream (Black Elk Speaks) represents nervous energy, the primal soul of our city as maintained across time.

It reflects on our Native American roots and the many forms of strife we have endured in an attempt to negotiate this small space with and without each other.

The Big Show evokes the brash, brassy, razzle-dazzle of our city. It is the feeling of ragtime, of Broadway, and the European immigrant’s transition to New Yorker through the syncopated spirit of the early 20th-century dance, animal movements like the turkey trot and fox trot.

Lost in Sight (Post-Pastoral): Everywhere we turn we see the homeless, the dispossessed, the out of luck, and the love-lost. In the midst of staggering wealth, we house a large population who can’t survive. They are ubiquitous and invisible. Their presence connects us to the 19th century and our legacy of slavery.

La Esquina: Hispanic sounds and rhythms have pressed an indelible groove into the character of the city. Afro-Latin culture is a foundation of New York life and our city has inspired some of its greatest music.

Us: Although we are gritty and brusque by day, we can also be romance, elegance, and sophistication by night. ‘Us’ is what it means to be with, against, and up against another.

Struggle in the Digital Market: The city is driven ever forward by more and more profit and the myth of unlimited growth for the purpose of ownership and seclusion. Some form of advertisement occupies every available space. The struggle asks, ‘Will we seek and find more equitable long-term solutions…or perish?’

This note originally appeared in the programs of the New York Philharmonic and is reprinted with permission. © New York Philharmonic This is the first performance of this work by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

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Your MSO Sir Andrew Davis Chief Conductor

Benjamin Northey Associate Conductor

Tianyi Lu

Cybec Assistant Conductor

Hiroyuki Iwaki

Conductor Laureate (1974–2006)

FIRST VIOLINS Dale Barltrop Concertmaster

Isin Cakmakcioglu Tiffany Cheng Freya Franzen Cong Gu Andrew Hall Isy Wasserman Philippa West Patrick Wong Roger Young Aaron Barnden*

Concertmaster The Ullmer Family Foundation#

Peter Edwards

Assistant Principal

Kirsty Bremner Sarah Curro

Michael Aquilina#

Peter Fellin Deborah Goodall Lorraine Hook Anne-Marie Johnson Kirstin Kenny Ji Won Kim Eleanor Mancini Chisholm & Gamon#

Mark Mogilevski Michelle Ruffolo Kathryn Taylor Michael Aquilina

#

Madeleine Jevons* Michael Loftus-Hills* SECOND VIOLINS Matthew Tomkins

Principal The Gross Foundation#

DOUBLE BASSES Steve Reeves Principal

Andrew Moon

Associate Principal

Sylvia Hosking

Assistant Principal

Damien Eckersley Benjamin Hanlon Suzanne Lee Stephen Newton

Christopher Moore Principal Di Jameson#

FLUTES

Anthony Chataway

Prudence Davis

Dr Elizabeth E Lewis AM#

Principal Anonymous#

Gabrielle Halloran Maria Solà#

Trevor Jones Fiona Sargeant Cindy Watkin Elizabeth Woolnough William Clark*

Wendy Clarke

CELLOS

Andrew Macleod

Associate Principal

Sarah Beggs Taryn Richards* PICCOLO Principal John McKay and Lois McKay#

David Berlin

Principal MS Newman Family#

OBOES

Rachael Tobin

Jeffrey Crellin

Associate Principal

Principal

Nicholas Bochner

Thomas Hutchinson

Assistant Principal Anonymous*

Associate Principal

Ann Blackburn

Miranda Brockman

Monica Curro

Andrew Dudgeon#

Assistant Principal Danny Gorog and Lindy Susskind#

Kylie Davies* Vivian Qu Siyuan*

Michael Aquilina#

Geelong Friends of the MSO

Associate Principal

Sophie Galaise and Clarence Fraser#

Lauren Brigden Katharine Brockman Christopher Cartlidge

Robert Macindoe

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Michael Aquilina# Andrew and Theresa Dyer#

VIOLAS

Sophie Rowell

Mary Allison

Michelle Wood

Rohan de Korte

Keith Johnson Sarah Morse Angela Sargeant Maria Solà#

#

The Rosemary Norman Foundation#

Emmanuel Cassimatis* COR ANGLAIS Michael Pisani Principal

CLARINETS

TROMBONES

David Thomas

Brett Kelly

Philip Arkinstall

Richard Shirley

Music director / trumpet

Craig Hill

Mike Szabo

Trumpet

Principal

Associate Principal

BASS CLARINET Jon Craven Principal

BASSOONS Jack Schiller Principal

Elise Millman

Associate Principal

Natasha Thomas CONTRABASSOON

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA Wynton Marsalis

Principal

Trumpet

TUBA

Marcus Printup

Timothy Buzbee

Trumpet

Principal

Vincent Gardner

TIMPANI**

Trombone

Christopher Lane

Trombone

Chris Crenshaw

Principal

Sam Chess

PERCUSSION

Trombone

Sherman Irby

Robert Clarke

Alto Saxophone

Principal

Ted Nash

Brock Imison Colin Forbes-Abrams*

Robert Cossom

HORNS

Robert Allan* Matthew Brennan* Timothy Hook*

Nicolas Fleury Principal

Saul Lewis

Kenny Rampton

Principal Bass Trombone

John Arcaro

Principal

Ryan Kisor

Tim and Lyn Edward#

Alto Saxophone

Tim and Lyn Edward

#

Drs Clem Gruen and Rhyl Wade

Victor Goines #

Tenor Saxophone

Camille Thurman Tenor Saxophone

Paul Nedzela

Baritone Saxophone

Acting Associate Principal

HARP

Dan Nimmer

Abbey Edlin

Yinuo Mu

Carlos Henriquez

Nereda Hanlon and Michael Hanlon AM#

Principal

Piano Bass

Jason Marsalis

Trinette McClimont Rachel Shaw Rebecca Luton*

Drums

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER TOUR PERSONNEL

TRUMPETS

Christi English

Shane Hooton Associate Principal

Assistant Director, Music Administration

Tristan Rebien*

Daniel Israel

Guest Associate Principal

Assistant Director, Touring

William Evans Rosie Turner

Raymond Murphy Tour Manager

Kathleen Murray

John and Diana Frew#

Manager, Touring Operations # Position supported by * Guest Musician ** Timpani Chair position supported by Lady Potter AC CMRI

David Robinson

Production Manager / Sound Engineer

Frank Stewart

Senior Photographer 11

Gershwin Reimagined Troy Miller conductor Laura Mvula vocalist José James vocalist FRIDAY 31 MAY / 7.30pm SATURDAY 1 JUNE / 7.30pm Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall

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