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2005 Season
Saturday, July 2, 2005 Synopsis This event was staged as part of the 25th Ottawa International Jazz Festival. The invitation for this appearance came from Jacques Émond, Programming Director of the Festival after the performance of The Birth of the Cool at The Magic of Miles Davis show in February 2005. Because that show was sold out so early, many people missed the opportunity to hear the nonet. The band was the only Ottawa-based group to appear in the Festival's prestigious Connoisseur Series in the National Library Auditorium. Leader and bassist Adrian Cho brought together a great lineup of players from Ottawa, Toronto, and Montréal with eight of the original musicians from the February 2005 performance including brass players from the National Arts Centre Orchestra. Toronto-based Nick Fraser drummer completed the lineup. Before the performance, Connoisseur Series Host Randall Ware conducted an on-stage interview of Cho that was both informative and entertaining. After a ten-minute break, the band assembled on-stage for a ninety-minute show that began with an encore performance of the complete Birth of the Cool suite. After a brief interlude during which Cho gave away tickets to the upcoming Voices in a Strange Land and Suite Freedom concerts, the show continued with the band playing new arrangements and adaptations of works by Gerry Mulligan, Kurt Weill, and Gil Evans. The finale was a new third-stream “chamber jazz” arrangement by Cho amusing albeit logically titled “Impressions and Fugue in D minor.” This work married the music of (as Cho joked) Johann Sebastian Bach (the “Well-Tempered Klavier”) and “Johann” Coltrane (the “Ill-Tempered Saxophonist”) by incorporating parts of Bach's “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” and the theme and chord changes from Coltrane's “Impressions.” Cho introduced this tune by speaking about the link between classical music and jazz arrangers such as Claude Thornhill, Gil Evans, John Lewis, and Gunther Schuller. This was in fact, a very subtle hint to a future concert in the Impressions in Jazz series. For this finale, Babb played bass clarinet and Magner played soprano sax. The clarinet, and somewhat-oboe-like sax plus the brass quartet were perfect for a little Bach. The piece began with the well-known toccata fanfare followed by parts of the toccata played by the horns against the piano. The highlight was a section where the “Impressions” theme was passed around between pairs of horns while the other four horns played elements of Bach's fugue. When the rhythm section arrived with a crash with all six horns quoting the “Impressions” theme, there was a rousing applause. Each of the the six horns then had a chance to solo over the “Impressions” (“So What”) chord changes and not surprisingly, there was great audience delight at the French horn and tuba solos. Unison horns quoted parts of the opening toccata theme as a background to the piano solo. The closing section quoted elements from Bach's recitativo and ended in a very dramatic, symphonic fashion. Many people asked if the tune had been recorded. Special thanks to Jacques Émond, Programming Director of the Ottawa International Jazz Festival for the opportunity to perform this programme.
Programme
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