Concert Review: Scofield Scorches the CSO

Thursday, May 21, 2009 - Symphony Center, Chicago

Third Stream music, that quasi-experimental blend of orchestral textures with modern jazz, has had a rocky history, at best. To my ears, when composers or arrangers try to bring so-called classical music together with a swinging rhythm section disaster normally ensues. Neither genre is served well, to the frustration of many listeners and (I can only imagine) the musicians. Some of the music of Gunther Schuller, George Russell, and Stan Kenton falls into this category of good intentions gone awry.

Not so with Mark-Anthony Turnage's Scorched, which received its United States premiere this week here in Chicago. The piece is a collaboration between Turnage, the CSO's Mead Composer-in-Residence, and John Scofield, one of jazz's most enlightened and open-minded guitarists.

Scorched (SCOfieldORCHestratED) is described by the composer as "a European composer's view of an American player". Turnage selected about a dozen of Scofield's tunes and, over a period of five years, re-imagined them for a variety of different sized hybrid groups ranging from a trio (guitar, bass and drums) to full orchestra. What emerges are neither arrangments nor completely original pieces. This music is truly collaborative, depending not only on Turnage's skills as a "translator" (his term) but on the interpretive skills of the members of the trio.

And there was nothing left to be desired by that trio, consisting of the man himself on electric guitar, John Patitucci yo-yoing back and forth between double bass and 6 string electric bass, and the masterful Peter Erskine on drumset. These guys could no doubt make a Barry Manilow medley sound good, but when the material is as eccentric and wonderful as Scofield's, great things will happen.

Scofield was most in the limelight, exuding sincerity and wry in equal measure in both short bursts and extended soloing throughout the evening. The guitarist has carved out a unique style, using his earthy collection of amplified sounds and very personal melodic, harmonic and rhythmic vocabularies. Listen to one phrase and you'll know you're hearing Sco. Like Monk, Coltrane and Haden, there's no mistaking this musician's sound for anyone else's (except for the imitators, who can't touch him). My favorite Sco moment on this occasion was his Cadenza, a halting, touching introduction to Turnage's homage to Gil Evans entitled Gil B643. John Scofield is a guy who knows how to let the music breathe.

John Patitucci is one of my favorite bassists on both acoustic and electric instruments. His muscular tone and great rhythmic feel were the cornerstones for most of Turnage's movements (he got a well earned break once in awhile). He also contributed a couple of nice solos on electric, demonstrating his signature fluid, guitar-like approach to the 6 string ebass.

Drummer Peter Erskine is without peer in terms of flexibility and restraint, no matter what style of music he's playing. His playing is so fresh that it is easy to forget that he played with Weather Report and Steps Ahead in the 80's, and has powered all kinds of jazz and pop groups throughout his prolific career. Erskine helped keep things together between the trio and the CSO, although it seemed that the orchestra mostly didn't need his help. He has a way of keeping things groovy without being stiff, even in this highly structured environment. I'd love to get a chance to play a tune with this man before either of us retires.

Scorched consists of 16 sections (or movements) in all, including a couple of versions of the opening piece Make Me and the two great versions of Fat Lip. The piece would probably benefit from a bit of trimming, though on first hearing I'm not sure what I'd cut. Favorite sections include Kubrick, Fat Lip 1 (scored for pizzicato strings - very exciting), Let's Say We Did and Protocol. The latter two sections featured the work of a friend and colleague Jim Gailloreto, who played the slinky unison melody (on soprano sax) with Scofield on Let's Say and a smoking 8 bars or so of alto sax solo on Protocol.

As for Mark-Anthony Turnage, this concert makes me want to find and listen to as much of his music as possible. Apparently he has spent his career straddling the worlds of jazz and contemporary classical music, having first been a devotee of avant garde composers like Boulez and Stockhausen and then becoming "obsessed" with Miles Davis in the 1980's. This musical schizophrenia might be the reason why Scorched works so well. Turnage isn't "slumming" or dabbling with jazz elements like one could justifiably accuse the likes of Milhaud, Copland, Ravel and Stravinsky of doing in the early 20th Century. He's likewise not a tunesmith who is in over his head trying to stretch songs into symphonic forms ala Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue being the prime example of this). There may well be other contemporary composers who are equally at home crafting concert music that includes both improvisation and groove, but, if so, I am not aware of them.

There's a live recording of Scorched, featuring the same trio with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, which was released in 2004.

Akio and Harvie S Jazz Video

I just got back in touch with an old friend and colleague, jazz guitarist Akio Sasajima (thank you Facebook). He sent me a link to this clip from his forthcoming DVD, which contains a beautiful arrangement of the famous Concerto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo. In addition to Akio's marvelous playing, the clip also features masterful playing by one of my favorite bassists, Harvie S. He plays some of the theme arco and sounds wonderful.

The collective sound of the classical guitar and the double bass is a hugely satisfying texture, and when the music is being played by the likes of Akio and Harvie, it is quite a treat.

Jazz Poetry by Paul Freidinger

This image by Ann deLorge is available at Jazz Art Paintings


There are intimate connections that exist between jazz and poetry. I've written a little about this HERE. Sometimes the poet will use the music or its makers as the subject or in a fleeting image. Sometimes the rhythmic idioms of jazz are used structurally. Illinois poet Paul Friedinger brings his love of modern jazz into his work in all of these ways and more. He has given me kind permission to publish his work on this blog. Here are two pieces related (at the very least) by their invocation of Miles:


All Blues


In Antarctica, the ice is blue
due to extremes of light.
An entire continent composed
of light that bends through a prism
of cool to cold curled to pure burn
at one end of the world. Miles knew
about the poles and the need for seasons
to flip over, after having been fed up
in St. Louis as a teen in humid summers,
and hot for more than a decade—
until lifted aloft by Bird. In ’59
he released Kind of Blue with its own sizzle
of dry ice, blowing “Blue in Green”
and “So What,” the sober result of logic
tunneling through the ear to find that
mind was at the end of its tether.
If any of us listening then would have peered
around the corner, we should have intuited
Miles would let the world go
at the first sign of global warming.
He rocked across the electric stage the rest
of his career, more about a flashpoint
than any hint of new direction.
Last year, a chunk of ice the size of Texas
spliced from the Antarctic shelf and drifted
the Southern Ocean like a giant cloud
shifting into northern climes. Over time
Miles moved, too, with little love
and less notice. He grew thinner
and cantankerous. In his last days,
Miles’ eyes turned a curious shade
of turquoise against his grizzled skin.
His world had flipped in and broken off,
prepared to flood the land with the kind
of sea it deserved. An aqua-vision
of a planet, viewed from the moon,
retrospective light all blue again.

*italicized line is by H.G. Wells


Your Turn
In memory of Paul Chambers


The jazz is existential, angular
in the dimly lit clubs,
away from the snow,
the killer cold that creeps in.

In the city
Monk still matters.
Sonny still matters.
Trane still matters.

The city rusted and ruined,
in tatters.
The homeless huddled
on a corner under a street light,
sipping a half-pint of Ancient Age,
passing the bottle in a ritual
back and forth like a chalice
in the chaste breath of winter.

Inside the sax is a knife
that severs the heart
and finds the inside surfaced
with another inside
waiting for the blade.
We can slice forever
and never touch the core.

In the trumpet’s blue glare,
a cymbal crash is symbiotically
ice and ember.
Wind roars across Chicago
in December, the lake
a metaphor of deeper chambers.

The bassist plucks his way
up the ribs of space.
In memory, Miles nods
to him and mutters,

Your turn, Sucker.

Jazz Video Guide

Musician and educator Brad Sharp has spent some time scooping up links to jazz videos at YouTube. His Jazz Video Search page has a ton of links, organized by instrument and then by musician. He's got the musicians listed chronologically by date of birth, a very interesting way to view the history of jazz. I don't remember ever seeing a list that includes both Buddy Bolden and Chris Potter.

Warning: Only go there if you have some time to burn, because there are many hundreds of jazz videos represented on that page. And you WILL get mesmerized, I guarantee.

Here's some rare footage of Charles Mingus' Quartet I found via Brad's list: