A Concert of Jazz

This post is weirdly overdue. As such, I am forced to backfill some pretty incredible items from the month of February. I'll do it in separate posts, wrapping up our dedicated month of listening, because each of our pieces of music deserves their own little space.

First, today, now, Gershin. We met at Margaret's home, and got so engrossed in a fine French wine from, according to our translating somalian (that's the term, yes?) , a vinyard called "between two horses". I don't if that's true. I suspect it isn't. But the simple fact is I don't know French well enough to say otherwise and our new friend was very sincere and convincing. But there we were, enjoying wine and conversation and a marvelous meal of roast chicken, pasta with amazing, possibly unpasteurized butter so engrossed in one another and the liveliness of good company and food that we almost missed listening to Rhapsody in Blue altogether. But we didn't. Thankfully.

I managed to track down two important things for the evening. First, I found the New York Times review of Rhapsody in Blue, published the morning after the concert. We read this astonishing review, which looks very little like a review today prior to listening. The concert, Paul Whiteman's "Experiment in Modern Music" was billed as a kind of educational affair, a speculation on the future of Jazz and its role in serious concert halls. At the time Jazz was dance hall music, low music, but it was also beginning to influence both American and European composers. Eric Satie had already begun to explore synchopation, very inspired by jazz, and he wasn't alone. So Paul Whiteman, a music promoter, set up this concert as an exploration of what jazz was capable of and a statement of his belief in the future of jazz. Here's what Paul Whiteman later said:

"I sincerely beleive in Jazz. I think it expresses the spirit of America and I feel sure it has a future - more of a future than a past and present. I want to help that future pan out"

So, "An Experiment in Modern Music" was set up in the concert hall attached to the Aeolian Piano factory. Interestingly enough, just a few blocks away, Duke Ellington was playing the Kentucky Club (a mob joint) and Fletcher Henderson's orchestra was keeping folks dancing at the nearby Roseland (interestingly, just 8 months away from hiring a young Louis Armstrong as his cornet player). That was the landscape. Jazz was on the brink of something, wondering about it's future, and that future was linked somehow to the American character. Olin Downes, the Times reviewer, gets all of this, and gets in February 13th, the morning after the concert. His article is worth reading, and you can find it here:



I think Downes' prescience is interesting, as is Downes flamboyant writing, which seems to take on the character of the concert nicely, at times sounding bouncy and improvisational as the music. But I also reckoned it was interesting to re-assess where jazz has or hasn't gone since 1924. I'm sure a jazz historian could correct me on this, and I hope one will, or perhaps I'll just have to read more about it, but I have the distinct impression that jazz has instead bifurcated itself into very cerebral, philosophic jazz (Thelonious...I'm looking at you) and very watered down directions. There's just not a great deal of series concert jazz that seems to display an evolution from Gershwin's youthful Rhapsody. There is some, and it's noteworthy (Wynton...).

Anyway, I'm rapidly wading in out of my depth to speculate on that, so I'll bring up the second item of the evening.

Maurice Peress re-created the entire 1924 Aeolian concert, and did so very faithfully. He even managed to get (in 1987...so do the astonishing math) some of the original musicians from the 1924 recording. This recording (the 1987 one) was, I think the first recording of Rhapsody in its entirety. The reason for this is an interesting, mechanical one. Paul Whiteman's recording had Gershwin at the piano, but it was recorded to fit on two sides of a 12-inch, 78-rpm record. To do this, cuts had to be made and Gershwin chose to omit almost the entire middle section. The Peress concert, according to Peress, was the first recording to restore it.

Anyway, the recording is interesting, and wildly different than other recordings of Rhapsody in Blue. The principle thing is the banjo. It's really very prominent. Usually recordings downplay this, they smooth everything out, and the piece has become a kind of archetype of smooth sophistication, the wilder themes evened out to a kind of machine efficiency. But Peress' recording is a battle. The bouncing, jittery, banjo driven synchopations of the jazz compete unsteadily with the smooth sophistication of the orchestra. The piece was orchestrated by Ferde Grofe, and it bears the mark of his sense of counterpoint, but I think the essence of the piece, which I'd never quite heard before this night, is one of stark contrasts.

It's easier to see, having listened to that recording, why Downes would be so aware of what was happening on stage. The music makes it fascinatingly plain that there are two worlds in conclict within Rhapsody, the world of sophistication and the world of jazz. So it's still fascinating to consider how this would ultimately play out, and to see the question posed by Gershwin in 1924, as Rhapsody in Blue, quientessentially American in its quest to rise above its class, takes on the world of classical discipline.