SONOKLECT '00-'01 a Concert Series of Modern Music TERRY Vosbein, DIRECTOR

SONOKLECT '00-'01 A Concert Series of Modern Music TERRY VosBEIN, DIRECTOR The Music of Stan Kenton & Terry Vosbein featuring Mike Vax & The Knoxville jazz Orchestra conducted by Terry Vosbein Washington and Lee University Keller Theatre • 8:00 p.m. • 18 September 2000 PROGRAM The Music of Terry Vosbein Movin' On Terry Vosbein Updream Terry Vosbein What I Did For Love Marvin Hamlisch arr. Terry Vosbein The Music and the Mirror Marvin Hamlisch arr. Terry Vosbein Late Night Rendezvous Terry Vosbein Parading Down South Rampart Street Terry Vosbein Washington and Lee Swing Robbins, Allen & Sheafe arr. Terry Vosbein INTERMISSION 2 The Music of Stan Kenton Here's That Rainy Day Jimmy Van Heusen arr. Dee Barton Theme Stan Kenton Vax Attacks Lennie Niehaus IfI Could Be With You H. Creamer & J. P.Johnson, arr. Pete Rugolo A Little Minor Booze Willie Maiden A Theme of Four Values Bill Russo Invention for Guitar and Trumpet Bill Holman Intermission Riff Ray Wetzel arr. Pete Rugolo Artistry in Rhythm Stan Kenton 3 PROGRAM NOTES by Terry Vosbein Movin' On was originally composed for a recording session at the Eastman School of Music during the summer of 1987. The tide comes from a Stephen Sondheim song, Move On. In this song the character sings of changes and challenges. As I was also going through some persona1 changes during that summer, I wrote this song as an upbeat happy indication that I was movin' on. The composition Updream began it's life as an arrangement of chat great film noir song, Laura. I set out co create an arrangement that barely hinted at the song it really was. When it was completed I realized chat the only clear statement of Laura's beautiful melody that I left intact was the first eight measures. By rewriting this melody I left the portrait of Laura hanging on the wall in her apartment and turned it into an original composition. The title refers to the last line of the lyric" ... it was Laura, but she's only a dream." This dream, taken at a rather "up" tempo, does have one remaining tip of the hat to Miss Laura towards the end when chat last melodic line appears amidst the excitement. During the mid 1970s ChorusLine was the new smash on Broadway that everyone was talking about. One summer, at a Kenton music workshop in Maryland, I cold Kenton that he should do an album of the music from this show, as he had with WestSide Story and even Hair. I further suggested that I was the best choice to write the arrangements. Well, I'll never know if he was humoring a kid or encouraging an emerging artist (probably some of both), but he said, "Sounds great. Do it." I arranged What I Did For Love and The Music And the Mirror, but that was all I was to do before Kenton passed away. From the first time I heard sensuous trombone solos accompanied by lush romantic harmonies I was in love with the sound. Soon after moving to Nashville in 1982 I composed Late Night Rendezvousfor a rehearsal band I led at Opryland. The melody is perhaps one of the more romantic lines I have composed. And the climaxes are my tribute to those overpowering sounds that inspired me so much the many times I sac in front of one of the Kenton sound explosions. 4 I was born a short walk from South Rampart Street, a hustling street on the edge of che French Quarter in New Orleans. In January of 2000 I had the opportunity to spend most of a week back in my hometown in chat same vicinity. Daily I scrolled chis famous screec and daily I felt its rhythm. There is an old New Orleans song called South Rampart Street Paradechat played through my head that week, much like Nae King Cole sings in my head at the Louvre and Tony Bennett cells me of his loss whenever I am in the city by the bay. As I took my daily scrolls, full of cafe au lair and beignecs, I felt the parade still going on almost a century later, but the beat was newer. Lace at night in my hotel room in che Big Easy I worked on putting chis beat down on score paper. In Parading Down South Rampart Street I cook advantage of the presence of two baritone saxophones on chis concert by featuring them throughout. What can I say about The Washington and Lee Swing? It is our song. I wrote this arrangement in 1998 while in Paris. It jumps! It shouts! It swings! Enjoy! The first time I saw the Scan Kenton band was in Columbia, South Carolina in 1972. My life was changed. Never before had I experienced the sheer excitement that was created by chat awe-inspiring group of musicians. The first notes that came from chem were the almost inaudible soft unison of the trombones in Here's That Rainy Day. By the time of the first climax I was sold ... by the second even bigger climax my life was changed forever. In 1941 Stanley Kenton took the band stan d at the Rendezvous Ballroom on Balboa Beach in Southern California playing an exciting form of big band music that represented the fast-paced decade just as the sounds of Count Basie and Duke Ellington had spoken of the swing era. For his theme he composed a short twelve-measure melody chat was at first simply tided Theme. Though some would find similarities with Ravel's Daphne et Chloeor Romberg 's Softly,As In A Morning Sunrise, to his many fans it became famous as Artistry in Rhythm. I discovered this early radio arrangement of the Kenton theme while doing research in the archives of his music at che University of North Texas. 5 No one was more intimately involved with producing scores for the Kenton band than Pete Rugolo. During the late 1940s he almost single handedly moved the band into a highly charged, wildly experimental modern music ensemble . To the Kenton mix he infused his knowledge of such contemporary composers as Stravinsky and Barcok. Whether a dissonant tone poem or a vocal accompaniment co a standard, Rugolo always brought a freshness to the band. His arrangement oflfl Could Be With You is a typical example of his handling of popular tunes during his early years with Kenton. There is solo space for several instrumentalists, as the chart builds in intensity cowards its conclusion. Colorful orchestration, atypical rhythms and soaring brass are some of Rugolo's hallmarks during this period chat Kenton termed Progressivejazz. This arrangement is also a result of my research in the Kenton archives. Lennie Niehaus played alto sax and arranged for the Scan Kenton Orchestra in the lace 1950s. His wonderful swinging arrangements filled several albums during this period. VaxAttacks, an original composition of Niehaus's from 1994, was not composed for the Kenton Orchestra, but rather was commissioned by tonight's soloist, Mike Vax. One of the favorite compositions in the Kenton book of the seventies has co be Willie Maiden's A Little Minor Booze. A favorite of both audience and band members, it never failed to create a stir. A hard-swinging minor blues (hence the tide) that mixes fat bone section work with sinewy sax lines and plenty of screaming swinging excitement. According to Bill Russo, the title of his composition A Theme of Four Values "refers co valuesin the sense of color, as used in painting." A series of contrasting tonal colors first recorded in 1954, chis composition demonstrates Russo's innovative role chat he inherited from Pete Rugolo. Bill Holman's compositions for the Kenton band are distinctive for the hard-swinging feeling he achieved in a band that many critics and even fans agreed was not a band that swung very hard. Another prominent feature to Holman's writing was his superb use of counterpoint . Perhaps no one in jazz composition so excellently wove contrapuntal melodies together. Invention for Guitar and Trumpet is the epitome of his contrapuntal writing. Originally pitting the artistry of guitarist Sal Salvador and young trumpet virt uoso, Maynard Ferguson, this is a masterpiece of melodic weaving. 6 Intermission Riff began its life as a head arrangement of a Ray Wetzel tune. Always a favorite for featuring rhe many ralented soloists, it remained in Kenton's repertoire from the mid- l 940s co his last band. In spite of ics tide, ir was nor used co signal intermission. The arrangement played ronight was also discovered in the Kenton archives, with arranging credit given to Pete Rugolo. The mighty Kenton theme song Artistry in Rhythm was recorded many times during the various periods of the Kenton band. From the short version heard earlier in the concert and the Production on a Theme recorded a few years later, to an arrangement for string orchestra and even a bossa nova version, the theme was always changing. The version with which we conclude tonight's concert was one that Kenton enjoyed rhapsodizing on before bringing in the band. Each time I saw his tall lanky figure hunch over the piano keys and begin the swirls that would evolve into that familiar F-minor melody I, along with everyone else present, would start to feel the goose bumps. In his playing, in his body language, one could not help but to feel some very strong emot ions. In his playing the "old man" spoke of a life of single-mindedness, a life of following a dream, a life full of the peaks and valleys that always challenge great peop le.

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