Cleveland Jazz Orchestra @ Fairmont Temple 3/26
A fresh way of hearing and playing will be in full operation Saturday night when the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra presents the rarely heard, severely underappreciated music of George Russell. The 8PM concert at Fairmount Temple Auditorium in Beachwood, the fifth in the CJO World Class series, will be an audacious one, even by the standards of a group synonymous with pushing the cultural envelope. Not only will it showcase the best jazz group in Cleveland, it will present works by a retiring, elderly jazzman many consider one of the most influential composers of the last 50 years.

Born in Cincinnati in 1923, Russell is the son of an Oberlin College music professor. He grew up in Ohio, attended Wilberforce University High School and left for New York in the 1940s, where he became enmeshed in the nascent bop movement. In 1953, he published the fruits of a study he conducted in the mid-‘40s when he was sick with tuberculosis. His book, The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, suggested playing based on scales rather than chord changes. It a system of composition “based on grading intervals by the distance of their pitches from a central note,” according to The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Russell’s theoretical work paved the way for the modal experiments of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and others in the latter part of that seminal decade.

"One of the things that makes his music sound so different is that it's got kind of a pandiatonic nature," says Jack Schantz, CJO Music Director and a professor of jazz studies at the University of Akron. "The key centers aren't as clearly defined, and the harmonic progressions and resolutions aren't standard. Standard harmony is very goal-oriented, but in this, those goals are kind of obscured.”

In the late '40s and early '50s, Russell composed works including the influential “Cubana Be/Cubana Bop,” one of the first pieces to blend Afro-Cuban influences and jazz, for trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, along with “Ezz-thetic” and “Odjenar” for saxophonist Lee Konitz. In the middle to late ‘50s, he released a series of small-group jazz recordings on the Riverside label that are as witty, timeless and angular as the paintings of Marcel Duchamp. In the '80s and '90s, he released albums on various European labels.

Full of musical puns (and wacky titles like “The Stratus Seekers” and “The Outer View”), they featured remarkable musicians including under-heard trumpeter Don Ellis, underrated trombonist Dave Baker and the startling, idiosyncratic saxophonist Eric Dolphy. Russell’s elegant, unpredictable melodies also sparked big-band albums like Time Line and The African Game.

Like his contemporary Gil Evans, Russell is a colorist. Unlike the better-known Evans, however, Russell never hooked up with a star like Miles Davis or John Coltrane, and his music is less accessible if no less exciting. His best-known composition may be the wistful “All About Rosie.”

On Saturday night, the CJO will perform most of “New York, New York,” Russell’s 1959 tribute to the city that stimulated him so much in his heyday. The original recording, on Decca, featured a stellar band including saxophonists Coltrane, Phil Woods and Benny Golson; trombonists Jimmy Cleveland and Bob Brookmeyer (another Schantz favorite and a great arranger-composer in his own right); and pianist Bill Evans. It’s an exciting blend of originals and standards like “Autumn in New York.” The CJO will perform all of “New York, New York” except the poetic narrative delivered by Toledo native Jon Hendricks. The CJO also will perform two selections from the 1958 composition “All About Rosie,” and two George Russell Sextet pieces, “Concerto for Billy the Kid” and “The Ballad of Hix Blewitt.”

Russell is known for being “hyperprotective” of his music. “One of the reasons George Russell is not better known is he's been very stingy about letting his music out," says Schantz. “Maybe it's because he's a curmudgeon. He's famous for picking up his music from the stands after rehearsals."

Schantz hasn’t communicated with Russell himself but has been in touch with Russell’s wife, who finally gave him permission to perform her husband’s closely held work. Schantz e-mailed Alice Russell a year ago at their home in Boston and “told her, ‘Look, I'm one of the biggest George Russell fans in the world and I'm the leader of this jazz orchestra and it's one of my lifelong dreams to play this music,’” he recalls. “I think it touched her. I think that maybe they're changing their mind a little bit about getting some recognition at this late stage in life."

“I started listening to his music when I was probably 20 years old," says Schantz, who is 50, “and when something knocks me out, I want to own it, to play it myself. That's been the impetus of everything I've ever done with the Jazz Orchestra. I just call up all my heroes and say I want to play their music. In the 12 years since I've been musical director of the orchestra, this is the one concert I've always wanted to do." For information on the event, visit http://www.clevelandjazz.org

from Cool Cleveland contributor Carlo Wolff CWolff7827@aol.com

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