Brassy Vitality at Big-Band Salute to Jones and Wilson

The music of Quincy Jones and Gerald Wilson was in the air Sunday at USC’s Bovard Auditorium. And it was a very good sound--classic big band jazz, filled with brassy vitality, earthy melodies and propulsive rhythms.

Performed by the Thornton Jazz Orchestra, the music was the centerpiece of the annual Fall Jazz Gala, this year titled “A Tribute to Quincy Jones and Gerald Wilson.”

Jones, of course, has been one of the most preeminent figures in the entire world of music over the past half century; Wilson has had less visibility. But neither has been fully credited for his insistence upon advancing the creative development of big band jazz composing and arranging at a time--the ‘50s and ‘60s--when large ensembles were in a period of deep decline. And Thornton Jazz Orchestra director Shelly Berg deserves credit for putting together a program illustrating how successful they were in doing so.

Jones’ pieces such as “The Quintessence,” “Stockholm Sweetnin”’ and “Meet Benny Bailey,” and Wilson works such as “Blues for Yna Ya” and “Viva Tirado,” were delivered by the fine young players in the orchestra with professional style and verve.

The playing went up a notch when Wilson made an appearance to conduct his own works. Still full of vim and vigor at 83, though recovering from eye surgery, he galvanized the young players into stepped-up jazz voltage. Waving his arms, using body language, even--at one point--pounding out rhythms on the piano, Wilson gave a lesson in the dynamics of big band music.

The Jazz Orchestra was also joined for several numbers by a second generation of Jones and Wilson artists. Guitarist Anthony Wilson, already an established young star in his own right, added a few stirring solos to his father’s works. And singer Jolie Jones, less well known, but filled with potential, sang her father’s song “The Slender Thread,” with a warm sensuality and graceful musicality boding well for her future.

The program opened with a brief set by the resident septet at USC’s Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance. Thoroughly attesting to the global reach of jazz, the group--consisting of players from the U.S. (singer Gretchen Parlato, trombonist Nick Vagenas and tenor saxophonist Dayna Stephens), South Korea (pianist Yoon-Seung Cho), West Africa (guitarist Lionel Loueke), Sweden (bassist Massimo Biolcati) and Hungary (Ferenc Nemeth)--ranged easily from thoughtful originals to an upbeat romp through Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t.”