JAZZ REVIEW : Ensemble Lacks Big-Band Heat

If a tie in hockey is like kissing your sister, then hearing the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra at El Camino College’s South Bay Center for the Arts was a bit like hugging a first cousin. Not that you don’t respect and admire the cousin, or the Masterworks Orchestra, but there’s just not a lot of heat in the relationship.

What musical directors David Baker and Gunther Schuller are doing with the ensemble--which is in residence at the Smithsonian, and is funded by a congressional appropriation--is clearly worth doing. There’s no argument about the fact that the living preservation of the music from the period in the 1930s and ‘40s, when the unique big-band assemblage of trumpets, trombones, saxophones and rhythm sections became the dominant sound in popular music, deserves all the help it can get.

But it’s a difficult task and one that requires not only superlative musicianship, but a feel for the propulsive swing, richly textured timbres and differing personalities present in the original bands.

The Masterworks Orchestra was nearly flawless with the first requisite, performing pieces from the Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Jimmy Lunceford orchestras, among others, with astounding accuracy, given the variety of orchestrations. Only in the rhythm section was there a feeling of stylistic uncertainty, with be-bop, swing and dance tunes too often underscored by the same straight-ahead rhythms.

What was really missing, however, was emotional connection. This was music that, for all its earnestness, was still closer to academic reconstruction than to the spirited playing of the originals. It worked best when individual players--alto saxophonists Loren Schoenberg and Steve Wilson soloing on Ellington’s “Warm Valley” and “Isfahan,” Britt Woodman’s trombone and Dick Johnson’s clarinet throughout--brought much-needed individuality to the evening.

Even then, and even with the benefit of conductor Baker’s informative and jocular between-tunes remarks, the two-thirds-full audience responded, for the most part, with mildly enthusiastic reactions. It was convincing evidence that this music--which generated waves of jitterbugging in its original incarnation--needs a little more spunk, a lot more spirit and an emotional interaction that reaches beyond a first cousin’s hug.