Gerry Mulligan--The Evolution Continues

Gerry Mulligan’s album “Symphonic Dreams” with Erich Kunzel and the Houston Symphony, which has been earning extensive classical as well as jazz radio exposure, is now in its 26th week on the jazz charts (currently in Billboard magazine at No. 9 with a bullet). More significantly, though, the LP represents a giant step forward in the creative evolution of the composer/baritone saxophonist.

Not that there haven’t been many other memorable career moves. Since writing his first big-band arrangement at age 15, Mulligan has had countless images: As arranger (along with Gil Evans) for Claude Thornhill’s seminal orchestra; as key figure in the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool band, as leader of his precedent-setting pianoless jazz quartet, and, over the years, as occasional actor, founder of a big band and occasional featured soloist with Dave Brubeck.

“People have said I retired,” he says, “but remember when Brubeck ‘retired’? He was actually busier than ever.”

The fact is that Mulligan is not constantly on the scene, partly because he and his Italian wife, Franca, divide their time between homes in Milan and Darien, Conn. But “Symphonic Dreams” kept him busy, at home, mainly with the composing of “Entente for Baritone Sax and Orchestra,” the opening work in the album.

“Yeah, it’s the most ambitious thing I’ve done in a long while; the first time I’ve ever composed and orchestrated for a full symphony. I was afraid to tackle it, but finally took the bull by the horns and spent the best part of six months on it.”

Mulligan is a proud autodidact. “I never had any training, but so much of orchestration is simply logic--figuring out what the instruments can do with each other.

“I’d played a lot of pieces with symphony orchestras written by other composers, but they didn’t feel natural; so I had to do a lot of woodshedding. So I thought I might as well do something that would enable me to avoid these problems. Too many experiments trying to combine symphony and jazz elements wind up with attempts to get the orchestra to play the way jazz musicians would--which, of course, just doesn’t work.”

To prepare himself for the self-assignment, Mulligan accepted an offer from one of the operators of La Scala in Milan, inviting him to attend the morning rehearsals there whenever he wished. “It was the start of the season and they were doing ‘Turandot,’ which is Puccini at his most magnificent. I found myself stumbling onto something brand new, because I’d never paid attention to opera. Hearing this from the ground up was a whole education in orchestrating.

“Puccini was fearless, man--he’d try anything, the most outlandish combinations of instruments. This inspired me; I’d spend the morning at La Scala, come home, have lunch and devote the afternoon to writing.

“The other thing they were working on was one of Rossini’s lightweight things, which was another form of education for me, because Rossini was able, with relative simplicity, to bring so much vitality into his writing.”

Along with the “Entente,” the most adventurous and perhaps controversial work in Mulligan’s symphonic repertoire is “The Sax Chronicles,” a seven-part collaboration by the saxophonist and the eminent Canadian composer Harry Freedman. There was a time when this suite might have been dismissed as another attempt at “jazzing the classics,” but actually it is the reverse, since each movement includes at least one Mulligan composition adapted to the style of seven classical composers.

“Harry Freedman and I used to hang out when I was in Toronto and he was working with the symphony there. He wrote a piece that was commissioned by the CBC to celebrate my 50th birthday in a program up there. Well, I decided to commission him to write another piece for me, and I had this idea: There has never been much writing for saxophone and symphony orchestra, and for baritone sax it’s been just about nonexistent. So I thought, why not do a sort of revisionist history of the baritone as it might have been used in classical music?”

The result was a unique series in which various Mulligan works were transformed: “Sax in Debussy’s Garden” was adapted from an old, never-recorded Mulligan tune, “Willows.” “Sax in Mozart Minor” began life as Mulligan’s “Festive Minor.”

Two pieces from the saxophonist’s celebrated “Little Big Horn” LP (with Dave Grusin on GRP) were similarly transmogrified: “Sun on Stairs” became “Sun on the Bach Stairs,” while “Under a Star” became part of “Sax and Der Rosenkavalier.” “Actually,” Mulligan recalls, “the origin of ‘Under a Star’ was a Broadway musical based on Anita Loos’ play, ‘Happy Birthday,’ with lyrics by Judy Holliday.” (The late actress was the woman in Mulligan’s life for several years.) “But the musical never got produced.”

“Sax on the Rhine” stems from a song called “Grand Tour” from Mulligan’s “Age of Steam” album. “A Walk With Brahms” had its origin in a new work, not yet recorded in a jazz context.

As for “Sax and the Rite of Igor,” Mulligan says: “Harry was fascinated with the fact that my ‘Song for an Unfinished Woman’ employed certain devices that Stravinsky used in the ‘Rite of Spring.’ So he reworked that melody into something that sounds a bit like a re-arrangement of the Stravinsky work.”

Although the “Sax Chronicles,” like the other material in the “Symphonic Dreams” album, is relatively new to most ears because its live performances have been only occasional, there is an imposing list of past and future performances. “I opened my European tour in 1984 playing the ‘Entente’ and the ‘Sax Chronicles’ with the London Symphony. Since then it’s been performed at the Hollywood Bowl with Erich Kunzel conducting, in Tel Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta conducting--what a fantastic man!--and several other dates.”

Mulligan was due to leave a few days ago for a performance in Stockholm with the Philharmonic, under the baton of Dennis Russell Davis. “From there I go on to Salzburg, where we rehearse for a concert with the Mozarteum Orchestra in Munich.”

Nowadays Mulligan, once the lean, clean-shaven string bean with red hair, presents a still gaunt appearance, but the eyes still twinkle, in an ever more hirsute setting: A mass of white hair, beard and eyebrows, looking (as he always did) as if the baritone saxophone should be playing him .

The symphony orchestra represents just one of at least three settings in which this perennial award winner (since 1953 he has been voted No. 1 baritone saxophonist dozens of times in the jazz journals worldwide) can be heard during the coming year. “I’m doing some dates with my quartet--Dean Johnson on bass, Richie de Rosa or Bobby Rosengarden on drums, and a young and exciting new pianist, Bill Charlap. We’ll play the New York festival; then I have part of a European tour with the quartet and part with my big jazz band. I’ll be in Glasgow for a week as composer in residence, playing concerts in several settings, then on to Italy for a whole bunch of concert bookings.

“After a month or so with the big band I’ll be playing quartet dates in the U.S. for a while; then off to Australia followed by two weeks in Brazil.”

This frequent alternation of contexts is a bracing experience, he says. “It’s not that I prefer one over another. Whether it’s a symphony, the quartet or a large jazz ensemble, I just want to create some music that will be fun for all of us to play.”