Fewer Gigs Lined Up for the Bowl’s House Band

Jazz at the Hollywood Bowl seems to be secure, at least for the coming summer season.Once again, there will be eight Wednesday night Jazz at the Bowl concerts as well as an additional Sunday evening JVC contemporary jazz presentation. Add to that the West Coast premiere of Wynton Marsalis’ “All Rise” (Sept. 13), featuring the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and a chorus, and it would be hard to describe it as anything other than a high-quality season.

But there’s a subtext to the proceedings. The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra--the Bowl’s resident jazz ensemble for the past two seasons--has been given a reduced presence, participating in only four of the season’s eight Wednesday night programs.

Asked to comment, Patricia Mitchell, chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn., simply explains, “In planning this season’s jazz series at the Hollywood Bowl, we wanted to reflect the complexity and diversity of jazz as an art form. Therefore, we have concerts in the season ranging from jazz trios and jazz vocalists to the terrific big band sound of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.”

Bassist-composer-bandleader John Clayton--who co-leads the ensemble with his brother, saxophonist Jeff Clayton, and drummer Jeff Hamilton--has also been the front man for the programs, as well as the principal programmer. Although he clearly is not as sanguine as Mitchell about the reduction in the CHJO’s participation, he prefers to take an upbeat stance.

“Hey, I’m very pleased about the programs we’ve scheduled,” Clayton says. “But we did have to deal with a basic challenge: Since the CHJO was only going to have 50% participation, compared to the previous two years, how do we make the shows look good? How do we make them balanced? How do we still make them special?

“One of the things that we were really proud of in the past two years was the fact that when someone came to the Hollywood Bowl, they were going to hear a show that they could hear nowhere else in the world. Now we were faced with four evenings where that won’t be the case.”

Clayton does not, of course, mean to minimize the quality of any of the individual programs. But his past practice of showcasing the star acts with CHJO accompaniment--the unique aspect of the ensemble’s Bowl tenure--will not be as extensive as it has been in the past.

Given that fact, Clayton’s first task was to decide where, among the eight concerts, to use the CHJO.

“We wanted to do all of them, of course,” he says with a laugh. “And I think it would have worked extremely well with the CHJO on all of them. On the ‘Art of the Combo’ [Sept. 5], for example, I thought about a finale in which we would get the Ray Brown and George Shearing and John Pizzarelli groups on stage with the orchestra. It could have been great; but it was not meant to be.

“So I just started eliminating things. OK, the ‘Art of the Combo’ evening--I could imagine that happening without the CHJO. Etta James [‘Blues Hot and Live,’ Aug. 15]--even though it’s still my dream to do something with her and the orchestra--obviously could work as a stand-alone performance.

“For the ‘Latin Jazz Legends’ [July 11] program, I knew that Poncho Sanchez would be there, and he’s like the voice of Latin jazz in L.A. With Cachao--who’s like the Duke Ellington of Cuba--and his big band, and Eddie Palmieri and his group, it obviously is a great show on its own. And the Dianne Reeves and Shirley Horn evening [Aug. 1] has the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra to provide whatever instrumentation is needed for the Johnny Mandel and Billy Childs arrangements they use.”

Clayton also had to look at the series from another perspective: that of the shows that he absolutely wanted to do.

“Diana Krall insisted--even more than I did--that the CHJO be present,” he says. “But I told her I wanted it to be completely her evening [‘Diana Krall: Sultry and Swinging,’ July 25]--that she should pick the instrumental combinations, the music, everything she wanted.

“I did the same thing with Oscar Peterson [‘Ultimate Jazz,’ Aug. 22]. He’s the one who chose Clark Terry and James Moody as his guest artists. But I wanted to surprise him, too. He did an album in the ‘60s called ‘Canadiana Suite,’ all his compositions. I’ve gone back to the recording, had Tamir Hendelman transcribe Oscar’s solos from certain movements, and I’m writing an orchestrate suite that will kind of toggle back and forth between the orchestral passages and the orchestrated Oscar solos.”

One of the highlight events in the CHJO programs takes place on Sept. 12 [“Lights, Camera, Jazz”] with trumpeter Wallace Roney as soloist. Clayton plans to transcribe some of the classic Miles Davis-Gil Evans recordings--including selections from “Porgy and Bess,” “Miles Ahead” and possibly “Sketches of Spain”--to feature Roney.

“We’ll also do jazz pieces from a number of different films,” he adds, “some in synchronization with actual film clips, others as accompaniment to montages from the films. We’ll be doing something from Duke Ellington’s ‘Anatomy of a Murder,’ something of Herbie Hancock’s, we’ll do ‘The Windmills of Your Mind,’ several Henry Mancini tunes, including ‘The Pink Panther,’ and pieces by Johnny Mandel and Lalo Schifrin.”

The remaining concert featuring the CHJO is “Smooth Soul Grooves” (July 18) with Lou Rawls, Les McCann and Joey DeFrancesco as headliners. It was, reports Clayton, the only real tossup. Although the Etta James evening was his first choice, scheduling problems intruded.

“But I’m not complaining,” he says. “Jeff Hamilton and I had a lot of fun playing with Lou at the Monterey Jazz Festival last year. So I decided to bring the package here, and then augment it with the orchestra on a couple of songs.”

It’s hard to argue with programming of this quality. But it’s also difficult not to wonder about developments at the Bowl in future seasons. Jazz always has been one of the venue’s most vital genres of music, and attendance has increased during Clayton’s tenure.

Will the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra return after the conclusion of its three-year contract this season? That remains to be seen. But one thing’s for sure: It is absolutely vital that jazz--regardless of who is in charge of its stewardship--remain an essential part of summer at the Hollywood Bowl.