A Jazz-Orchestra Combo: Looking for Adventure

The American Jazz Philharmonic was one of the Southland’s great but sadly under-recognized musical blessings. Commissioning dozens of new works, it explored the rich creative linkage between jazz and orchestral music.

When conductor Jack Elliott became a founder of the Henry Mancini Institute, there was hope that his efforts would continue via the HMI Orchestra, and, to a considerable extent, that hope was realized in the years before Elliott passed away in 2001.

On Sunday at UCLA’s Royce Hall, the debut concert of a new entity--the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra--revived the possibility that this compelling musical exploration would move into even more adventurous areas. Founded by Mitch Glickman, a former Elliott associate, and veteran saxophonist-composer Tom Scott, the SJO is a full-sized orchestra, supplemented with enough saxophones, trumpets and trombones to possess big-band jazz potential within its instrumentation.

The opening half of the program lived up to the promise, with some reservations. All three of the works--”Rivers of Destiny,” by Lesa Terry (featuring the composer on violin); “Bossa, Ballad & Kinda Blues,” by Scott; and “Bela & Bird in B flat,” by Don Sebesky--effectively employed the orchestra’s full forces. Soloists Pete Christlieb and Jeff Clayton on saxophones, trumpeter Frank Szabo, fluegelhornist Warren Luening, pianist Frank Cox, bassist Dave Carpenter and drummer Peter Erskine added impressive improvisational supplementation.

But the works of Terry (orchestrated by Dan Weinstein) and Scott, appealing as they were, too often fell prey to a problem that has plagued jazz and symphony combinations since the Third Stream efforts of the ‘50s and ‘60s: the potentially intrusive sound of jazz drumming. Too few composers in this genre acknowledge that the standard jazz drum kit evolved as the propulsive center of the big jazz band format, an instrumentation for which it was well suited. Using it in the same fashion within a symphony orchestra tends to blow away most of the ensemble’s potential for musical subtlety.

Sebesky’s well-conceived work was the exception. Employing Erskine’s drums in a style that maximized their tonal range, he juxtaposed sweeping string sections against jazz passages. At one point, justifying his title, he balanced rapid-fire bebop lines from the jazz horns with fleet, Bartokian string lines.

The program’s second half featured the Yellowjackets and singer Phil Perry, whose astonishing vocal flexibility is a marvel to hear.

Actor-comedian Tommy Davidson, serving as host, added some wickedly funny musical impressions. But one hopes that the next SJO program will manage to devote more time to its core mission.