Fine Jazz, History Lessons From Gerald Wilson, Band

“Every song we play has a story behind it,” bandleader-composer Gerald Wilson said Tuesday during his 17-piece orchestra’s first set, beginning two consecutive nights at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood. And indeed they did.

Before each song was played, Wilson offered a bit of history. Count Basie asked him to write “Jammin’ in C” in the style of the Jimmie Lunceford band (the 78-year-old Wilson was a member of Lunceford’s organization in 1940). Wilson’s arrangement of “Sophisticated Lady” came from his days in Hollywood writing for Duke Ellington. “State Street Sweet” was inspired by the orchestra’s appearance at the 1994 Chicago Jazz Festival.

Though more than 50 years (roughly the period Wilson has been leading a big band here in Los Angeles) separated the oldest number performed from the newest, the music was all of one kind: rhythmically sophisticated, harmonically dense and infectiously exuberant.

A measure of its timeless quality came in the way the soloists, no matter their age or style, all sounded right against Wilson’s charts. The modern, often frantic sound of emerging tenor saxophonist Phil Vieux, who had worked with Wilson only weeks, fit every bit as well as that of sophisticated veteran trumpeter Snooky Young, who’s played on and off with Wilson since the ‘40s.

Wilson orchestrates densely with the horns, but in a narrow range giving the music a sharp, edgy sound. There were frequent, distinct orchestral contrasts, as on “Milestones” when the sax section theme danced fast on a relaxed, gliding trombone line.

Fine solos came from tenor saxophonist Carl Randall, alto saxophonist Randall Willis, baritone saxophonist Jack Nimitz, trumpeters Bobby Rodriguez and Ron Barrows. Pianist Brian O’Rourke seemed to jump back and forth between eras, mixing jump and boogie with more contemporary, Thelonious Monk-inspired twists. Drummer Mel Lee drove the music with both strength and finesse.

At times Wilson’s claims of innovation seemed a bit of a stretch. At one point, he told the audience how his 1965 composition “Carlos” introduced jazz to the music of the bullfight ring, an odd comment when you consider that Miles Davis and Gil Evans recorded “Sketches of Spain” in 1960. But there’s no doubt that Wilson has long been an innovator with an identifiable orchestral voice and continues to be a major figure among jazz arrangers.