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SONOKLECT A Festiva l of Modern Music Terry Vosbein, director PROGRESSIVE JAZZ 2009 THE KNOXVILLE JAZZ ORCHESTRA TERRY VOS BEIN guest conductor Saturday 24 January 2009 8PM WILSON HALL WASHING TON AND LEE UNIVERSITY Departm ent of Music PROGRAM AcTI Artistry in Gillespie Rugolo Afternoon of a Faun Claude Debussy arranged by Rugolo Theme Graettinger Walk.in' by the River Una Mae Carlisle & Robert Sour arranged by Graettinger Cuban Pastorale Graettinger Hambeth Rugolo Crows in Tuxedos Vosbein Don't Blame Me Jimmy McHugh & Dorothy Fields arranged by Rugolo Rhythms at Work Rugolo Interlude Rugolo Ahora es el Tiempo Vosbein A Slow and Fast Blues Vosbein INTERMISSION ACTII Jumping Monkey Vosbein Odin's Dream Vosbein Two Islands Vosbein WildNumse Vosbein The Real Princess Vosbein A Tale of 2 Cities Vosbein Johanna Stephen Sondheim From Sweeney Todd arranged by Vosbein I had tremendous support from the Music Library at the University of North Texas, keepers of the Stan Kenton Archives . My thanks go out to head librarian Morris Martin and his excellent staff for all their assistance. My debt to Kenton scholars Michael Sparke and Edward Chaplin is enormous. Their insight and attention to detail through the years has been tremendously helpful. And without the generous support of Washington and Lee University none of this would have been possible. Stan Kenton's Progressive Jazz After several years of chasing fame, band leader Stan Kenton had achieved it by 1947. His ideals of creative arrangements and compositions had proven to be commercially successful. But in April of that year, exhausted from the journey, and disgusted by the commercial music industry, he broke up his band and sent them home. Rumors of Kenton's plans hit the streets daily until it was announced that he would return in September, presenting what he termed A Concert In Progressive Jazz. Most of the music was written by Kenton's chief arranger Pete Rugolo, who brought to the big band the influences of Stravinsky, Bartok, Milhaud and Hindemith. Rugolo described Progressive Jazz as containing "completely different harmonies, more classical, modern, very contemporary." Also there was Bob Graettinger, who appeared from nowhere and contributed some of the most controversial scores of the era before fading into obscurity a few years later. As experimental as this band was, it was also tremendously popular. In early 1948 fans voted Kenton's aggregation 'Best Band' in both Downbeat and Metronome magazines. In February they played the first of fifteen performances at Carnegie Hall, setting a house record for box office. Their June show at the Hollywood Bowl was the first live televised jazz concert. Sadly, a strike by the musicians union kept the band out of the studio throughout 1948 and their output was enjoyed only by those lucky enough to catch a live performance or radio air check. In December, at the height of his fame, Kenton once again disbanded. This break up would mark the end of the Progressive Jazz era. Ironically, the recording ban ended on 15 December 1948: the day after Kenton broke up his Progressive Jazz band. When he finally reformed in 1950, it was with the 40-piece Innovations Orchestra, and much of the 1948 library was lost to history. At the same time Kenton's California-based Progressive Jazz was reaching its prime, bebop was exploding in New York and elsewhere. The young writers and soloists of Kenton's brood were all avid students of this music. Players such as Art Pepper, Bob Cooper and Conte Candoli absorbed this music and were hungry to play it. But Kenton would have none of it, leaving that to leaders like Woody Herman. However, during these years it was not uncommon for Kenton to turn over the piano and leadership to Rugolo for the last set of the night. It was then that Rugolo was able to call his more boppish arrangements, including Three Bop, Yardbird Suite and ARTISTRY IN GILLESPIE. This tribute to bop great Dizzy Gillespie was first performed on 8 March 1948 at RKO Theatre in Boston but was played rarely and then forgotten. AFTERNOON OF A FAUN , or L'apres-midi d'un faune, as it was titled by composer Claude Debussy, was already a standard of the orchestral repertoire, barely half a century old at the time of this arrangement. It was premiered on 12 February 1946 during a three week stand at Frank Dailey's Meadowbrook Ballroom in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. In a radio interview in mid-1946 Kenton said "I think Debussy was one of the first to be typed and called a 'modernist.' He wrote entirely free. He had nothing to do with the old harmonic rules that had ruled the masters before him. Then came Stravinsky, Sibelius, Ravel..." On this piece the band was asked to play as they normally would, with vibrato, in contrast to the straight tone of the solo alto sax. "Straight tone led to Pete Rugolo writing one of my few solo arrangements called Afternoon of a Faun. This was played in a rather legit manner [no vibrato by the soloist] while the band was going like crazy behind me. It had a rather eerie effect." (Saxophonist Al Anthony to Michael Sparke) An eighteen year old Bob Graettinger first approached Kenton in 1941 with some rather amateurish arrangements. Kenton was encouraging, but their paths were not destined to cross again until 1947 when Kenton hired Graettinger as a staff arranger. During the intervening years he played nondescript saxophone and wrote forgettable arrangements for a variety of bands, as he gained experience. But once with Kenton he wrote bold daring scores, full of wild colors and harsh dissonances. The earliest extant Bob Graettinger music in print form was thought to be Thermopylae, his first recorded contributions to the Kenton library in 1947. But I came across a set of parts entitled THEME, hand-copied by Joe Chaddock on 25 March 1946, and crediting Graettinger as composer. Every band had a theme song and I am certain this was to be used in that manner. Graettinger played for several bands during this period, including Alvino Rey's. But for whom this Theme was written is a mystery. WALKIN' BY THE RIVER was a minor hit by Una Mae Carlisle, composed by her with Robert Sour in 1940. This unknown Graettinger arrangement comes from 1948, although the single recorded performance by Kenton surfaced on an obscure LP of a 1951 Hollywood Palladium performance; a recording that captures Kenton saying "we've played it for some time ...it's one of the beautiful melodies that lends itself well to most any kind of treatment." When Kenton finally did record this song in 1957, it was with a new arrangement by Joe Coccia. The LP incorrectly identifies Watkin' By The River as being by Shorty Rogers. It wasn't even listed in the Kenton collection at the University of North Texas. But as I carefully opened every envelope in the archive I found a copy of this score folded up in the back of another envelope (one of many Eureka moments that I had while working on the collection). It was clearly in Graettinger's handwriting and had many of his compositional trademarks, even though there was no name on the score. When I discovered this score, I was not yet aware of the recording. But I was soon able to put all the pieces together and properly credit Graettinger as the arranger. CUBAN PASTORALE demonstrates Graettinger's take on the Afro-Cuban rhythms that absorbed the Progressive Jazz era, his only experiment with the genre. And it is the first of the Kenton oeuvre that utilizes a flute double on the lead alto sax part. The original pencil score is marked "Hollywood, CA, October 1948." By the time the music was copied and delivered to the musicians it could have only been in the book for a month or so before Kenton disbanded. There have been stories of the existence of this composition, but no recordings have ever surfaced. Pete Rugolo, Stan Kenton and Bob Graettinger at a 1948 rehearsal. "The title HAMBETH was supposed to be a joke, indicating that I'm a ham, and the Shakespeare connection with Hamlet and Macbeth was supposed to be the general idea. But I don't think Stan liked it very much, and we didn't play it very often." Those words come from trombonist Milt Bernhart, for whom this work was written. Bernhart 's career spanned four decades including memorable stints with Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton and Frank Sinatra. He joined Kenton in 1946 and his first solo proved to be an important one: the famous trombone melody on The Peanut Vendor. Perhaps his most famous solo comes from the 1956 Sinatra recording of I've Got You Under My Skin. Just as the Hollywood Palladium had become the band's west coast home, New York's Paramount Theatre was their home in the east. They played many extended engagements at both venues during these years. Rugolo's composition Hambeth was first played at the Paramount on 14 January 1948. Eleven months later to the day the band played their final engagement at the Paramount before disbanding for over a year. (An interesting anecdote is that bop bassist Oscar Pettiford played the final three week engagement at the Paramount in 1948, substituting for ailing Eddie Safranski.) DON'T BLAME ME was one of several hits penned by composer Jimmy McHugh and lyricist Dorothy Fields, including I Can't Give You Anything But Love, The Sunny Side of the Street and I'm In the Mood For Love.