Jazz Legends

Miles Davis once said all musicians should set aside a day each year to honor Duke Ellington. This year, the Jazz Evensong Quintet has set aside two.
It’s not hyperbole to state that this man contributed as much to jazz and American music as anyone living or dead, his legacy as a composer, performer, and band leader is undeniable. His band featured many of our greatest musicians as well, a great many staying with him for the bulk of their careers.

Saxophonist/composer Joe Henderson (born April 24, 1937) was an eclectic performer, recording over thirty albums on Blue Note records, raging from straight ahead sessions with Horace Silver to more avant-guard outings with Andrew Hill, always sounding like himself in every setting. He recorded with Herbie Hancock and even spent a period of time with Blood, Sweat and Tears. The bulk of the material we’ll play is drawn from the seminal recordings he made with trumpeter Kenny Dorham in the 1960s, many of the tunes this group recorded have become jazz standards.

Henry Mancini (born April 16, 1924) was one of the most prolific and successful songwriters of all time. His film scores won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. He had a lifelong affinity for jazz and jazz musicians, hiring many of Hollywood’s greatest jazz players for his recordings and film scores, and his tunes have been embraced by jazz musicians worldwide for their melodic lyricism and intriguing harmonic structure. We’ll perform many of his best loved tunes, Days of Wine and Roses, Two for the Road, Moment to Moment, Dreamsville, and of course The Pink Panther.

Bassist/composer Charles Mingus (born April 22, 1922) was one of the most prolific composers the music has produced. Over his decades long career, he collaborated with many of our music’s greats, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Eric Dolphy to name a few. He was one of the first artists to attempt to control the recording and distribution of his own recordings, founding Debut Records in the 1950’s, and was a vocal proponent for equal rights, many of his compositions are social commentary on the injustices perpetrated on black people in America. On Sunday, April 14th, we'll be performing many of his tunes that have become jazz standards, including Goodbye, Porkpie Hat, Duke Ellington’s Sounds of Love, Better Get It In Your Soul and many others.

Trumpeter, composer/arranger Thad Jones born March 28, 1923, was the middle son in a family that also produced younger brother Elvin Jones, perhaps best known as John Coltrane’s longtime drummer, and pianist Hank Jones, who performed and recorded with almost everyone in his long career, as one of the first black musicians to have a long and fruitful career in the New York studios. Thad first made his mark on the national scene as a soloist and arranger/composer for the Basie band in 1954. When he moved to New York City in the 1960’s, he founded a big band he co led with drummer Mel Lewis that still plays weekly at the Village Vanguard, still playing much of the music Thad wrote. In 1979 he moved to Copenhagen, Denmark where he lead the Danish Radio Big Band, and taught at the Royal Danish Conservatory. In 1985 he took over leadership of the Basie Band, but tragically passed way in 1986 of cancer.

In addition to being one of the denizens of the NYC 52nd St scene, pianist/composer Lennie Tristano was an influential and pioneering teacher of jazz improvisation. He had prodigious technical abilities as a player, and his pedagogical approach to teaching improvisation eschewed learning “licks” in favor of creating fresh original improvised music. His many compositions exhibit this somewhat stream of consciousness approach, uniquely original, often angular lines based on standard chord progressions. His linear approach to playing was championed by his best known students, saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, who utilized his concepts for their entire careers. 

Ornette Coleman set the jazz world ablaze with the release of his first recording “Something Else” in 1958. Ironically, so many of the innovations he introduced to the music have become so ingrained over the passing years, it’s difficult to believe his music was so controversial at the time. His conception of free jazz influenced mainstream jazz musicians like Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Jackie McClean, to name just a few, who adopted parts of his so-called “harmolodic system” to their own music. We’ll play many of his compositions that have become jazz standards, including "Lonely Woman", "The Blessing", "Turnaround" and many others from this creative artist.

Alec Wilder and Harold Arlen are both composers in the great American Songbook tradition. Chances are good you've never heard of Alec Wilder, even if you’re familiar with some of his popular songs, like "I’ll Be Around" or "While We’re Young." He was also a prolific composer of chamber music, many of the best known virtuosos of the day were personal friends of his, and he wrote most of his chamber works with them in mind. Frank Sinatra was so enamored with Wilder’s chamber music that he released a recording of several of his instrumental works as “conducted” by Sinatra!
Harold Arlen is perhaps best remembered for his score for The Wizard of Oz and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is one of the most recorded songs of all time. It’s easy to overlook the fact that he wrote over 500 songs during his career, a large number of which became standards, about which Irving Berlin said "He wasn't as well known as some of us, but he was a better songwriter than most of us, and he will be missed by all of us."

Tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon was one of the most quintessential performers on that instrument for over 40 years. Born in Los Angeles on February 27, 1923, he was initially heavily influenced by Lester Young, but soon developed his own bebop vocabulary and a room filling sound befitting his 6’6” frame, his playing heavily influenced Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. He was one of a number of American jazz musicians to become an expatriate, spending 14 years in Copenhagen and Paris. His bravura performance in the film Round Midnight earned him a best actor nomination, in 1986. On Sunday, the Jazz Evensong Quintet will perform a selection of his compositions from his over 90 recordings as a leader.

This week, the band talks composer, arranger, and pianist Tadd Dameron as they prepare a setlist in his honor for Sunday night.