JAZZ REVIEW : Soviet a Smash at Idaho Festival

It is a long trip from Moscow to Moscow, but for Arkadi Shilkloper it was worth the effort. The Soviet French-horn virtuoso was one of four jazz men from the Soviet Union who arrived here last week to take part in the 23rd-annual University of Idaho Jazz Festival at his hometown’s namesake city.

Shilkloper, 33, on his first visit to the United States, was the artistic sensation of the four-day event. Playing first at the 6,000-capacity Kibbie Dome, he was backed by the bassist Michael Karetnikov. Later, at a clinic held in the main building of the Lionel Hampton School of Music, he was on his own except for an interpreter, Soviet jazz critic Alexey Batashev, through whom he informed us that “trying to play jazz on the French horn is like committing suicide.”

Shilkloper, however, has survived and thrived beyond all reasonable expectations. Formerly a classical player who worked for seven years in Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, he began studying jazz in 1977, when he attended Batashev’s jazz history classes. He has developed into one of the most formidable artists the instrument has ever produced.

During the clinic he switched from French horn to fluegelhorn, then to a small post-horn, using double-tones, circular breathing, hand-slapping and foot-stomping, finally playing two post-horns at once to produce four-note chords.

The festival, which ended Saturday with a concert by the full Hampton orchestra, doubled the campus population as more than 9,000 students descended on the area to take part in competitions by a stream of soloists, combos, big bands and vocalists from high schools and universities in Northwestern states.

It was the professional participants who attracted the biggest crowds for the main events. By far the hardest working of them was the pianist Hank Jones, whose fluent trio not only played its own sets but backed Hampton’s vibraphone and several instrumentalists and singers. Creatively, though, the high point in what had started as a rather lackluster jam session came with a rare joint appearance by the brothers Branford and Delfeayo Marsalis, on tenor sax and trombone. Both youths responded smartly to the mainstream call of Hampton’s vibes; Branford even played the melody on “I Got Rhythm.” The Marsalises then joined forces with trombonist Carl Fontana and two eminent Art Blakey alumni, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and trombonist Curtis Fuller, in a cheerful round-robin blues foray.