Luckman Steps Closer to the Cutting Edge

The Luckman Jazz Orchestra took another important step Saturday night in a continuing journey aimed at establishing the ensemble as an innovative jazz entity. Led by veteran composer-flutist-educator James Newton, the orchestra--filled with some of the Southland’s most gifted players--offered a program bursting at the seams with compelling new looks at works by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Charles Mingus and Newton himself.

Risk-taking is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when big jazz bands are mentioned, at least not since the departures of Ellington, Gil Evans and Sun Ra (to mention only a few). More commonly, the goal is to balance attractive textural qualities with a propulsive sense of swing.

In Newton’s hands, the Luckman players are being urged into more provocative areas of expression. Often, he used hand gestures and body language to direct collective, free jazz improvising by the entire unit.

In his own newly written tribute to the terrible events of September, tentatively titled “9-Elev”--Newton employed sharp-edged dissonances and cross-cutting rhythms to make his emotional points.

In more familiar numbers--a pair of themes from the Ellington/Strayhorn suites, Mingus’ “Goodbye, Porkpie Hat” (in an arrangement by Buddy Collette), Strayhorn’s “Chelsea Bridge” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Pasarim” (newly orchestrated by pianist Lanny Hartley)--the soloists stood out. Among the highlights: alto saxophonist Ann Patterson’s vocalized blues phrasing; trumpeter Carl Saunders’ fluidly mobile lines; tenor saxophonist Bennie Maupin’s break-down-the-walls soloing on everything he touched; trombonist George Bohanon’s passionate preaching on “9-Elev”; and trumpeter Bijon Watson’s airy high notes on the quirky Ellington train song “Daybreak Express.”

Risk-taking, of course, also raises the potential for stumbling on a higher bar. And the Luckman Jazz Orchestra (in residence at Cal State L.A., where Newton leads the fledgling jazz department) is still working on its basic ensemble articulation, as well as its internal connectivity.

Still a long distance from matching the smoothly functioning qualities of the somewhat comparable (in terms of goals, if not financial resources) Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Newton and his players nonetheless are already in the vanguard of cutting-edge ideas.