Jazz Reviews : Composers Orchestra Revives Charts--on One Level

Mark Masters has a good idea with his Jazz Composers Orchestra: Revive and rejuvenate the arrangements of some of jazz’s finest orchestrators.

For most of the ensemble’s vigorous Big Band program at Long Beach’s El Dorado Regional Park on Saturday evening, the idea worked just fine--on one level. The 16-piece assemblage of young professionals performed the charts (written by such sterling arrangers as Gil Evans, Bill Holman, Hank Levy, Willie Maiden and Don Piestrup) with crisp precision.

But a significant element was missing. As important and fascinating as good jazz charts may be, if they’re not performed with vitality and spunk by performers who can solo as well as swing collectively, they become little more than exercises in technical expertise.

Only occasionally--in the work of alto saxophonist Danny House, flugelhornist Paul Mazio and trombonist Dave Woodley--did the improvisation match the high achievement level of the written charts. Equally bothersome, the ensemble, for all its mechanical accuracy, never really got down to the basic swinging that might have brought their archive repertory back to vivid and pulsating life.

Alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, who appeared with the Orchestra as a guest artist, limited himself to brief excursions through the Big Band charts associated with his playing in the ‘50s: “Stella by Starlight,” “Out of Nowhere,” “What’s New” and “Stairway to the Stars.”

Listening to his playing, it seemed remarkable that Konitz had been described, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, as having a thin and passionless sound. His playing on this program clearly indicated what was not always apparent in his earlier work--that he is a lineal descendant of Lester Young, both in the warmness of his tone and in the lyricism of his melodies.

This was not, however, one of his better recent outings in the Southland. Although he occasionally came up with strikingly lovely phrases, his playing--which never quite got in sync with the orchestra--had the offhand, detached quality of another day at the musical office.