Lenox — Jazz pianist and composer Ted Rosenthal will perform at Tanglewood’s Linde Center on Friday, September 6, with his own trio, augmented by three celebrated saxophonists, playing a set of tunes that are linked with, or were written by, Leonard Bernstein.
Rosenthal has released 15 CDs, including Great American Songbook standards, jazz classical compositions, and his own compositions. In addition to leading his own band, he has performed internationally with such jazz greats as Jon Faddis, Bob Brookmeyer, Phil Woods, Art Farmer, and Gerry Mulligan. He holds faculty positions at the Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, and The New School.
Pretty much any band Ted puts together can be considered “All-Star,” and the one he is working with on September 6 is a perfect example. In a phone call this week, Ted gave us the scoop on all of the players, along with the names of songs on Friday’s program. Plus a whole lot more. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
EDGE
The title of your show at TLI suggests the possibility of two different styles of music.
ROSENTHAL
It’s actually a compound title, “Bernstein and Bop, a Saxophone Colossus.” So, basically, the musical part is, Leonard Bernstein songs, in jazz form of course, jazz arrangements and approach, and then some bebop classics. And I can tell you a bit about some indirect or even direct relationships to those bebop songs that we’re going to play. So it’s “Bernstein and Bop.” You can find it on the Tanglewood website as well, with that title.
Colossus refers to the band, a sextet. We’ve got the trio: my great rhythm partners, Noriko Ueda on bass, who’s played with me for a long time, and a drummer that I have played with, on and off, for many years, Dennis Mackrel. And then we have three great saxophonists: Gary Smulyan, who’s a perennial Downbeat poll winner on baritone sax. And he also plays with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, which I play with from time to time. In fact, we’ll be at the Village Vanguard together tonight because they play every Monday night. And Dennis Mackrel, the drummer, has also played a good bit with this band, so that’s one of the touch points we all have.
And then on tenor sax, Scott Robinson, who is really considered a multi-instrumentalist because he plays all the saxophones, from the tiniest to the largest bass, contrabass sax, which, reaches up to the ceiling. So he’s quite an interesting musician. He’ll be playing tenor.
On alto sax we have a young, recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music—which is one of the schools I teach—named Erena Terakubo. She’s young, very talented, and already out there doing many, many good things. We played together in a concert with the Jon Faddis All-Star Big Band. And she’s got her own band that tours both locally and also in Asia. So, yes, we have alto, tenor, and bari saxophone. That’s the Saxophone Colossus.
EDGE
Wow.
ROSENTHAL
And then we have Bernstein and bop.
EDGE
When I hear the word “bop,” I think of some pretty wild stuff.
ROSENTHAL
It’s just bebop—classics. One of the songs we’re going to play is called “Groovin’ High,” which is a well-known bebop classic by Charlie Parker. Nothing terribly wild.
And then, what I was going to say about some connections that Lenny [Bernstein] had to the bebop world is in reference to another Lennie, Lennie Tristano, who was a real pioneer of both bebop and even of free jazz. He was also a teacher and had kind of a whole school of disciples that studied and played with him. He wrote some very interesting music. I wouldn’t say it’s wild necessarily, but complicated (maybe a little wild). So we’re going to play one of his pieces, called “Lennie’s Pennies.”
EDGE
How did you settle on your repertoire for this performance?
ROSENTHAL
Well, I’ve been in discussions with the people at the Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) and the Linde Center about doing some jazz events that are primarily performances but with a bit of education injected into the performances—if only just a little background, so people, having context, can really enjoy what they’re hearing.
So this came about both through my TLI connection—in the hope developing a series with them—and also through Berkshires Jazz, with the September 6 show serving as the opening event of their annual Lenox Jazz Stroll, sponsored by The Mill Town Foundation.
Andy Wrba, who works for the Mill Town Foundation and is also a fine bassist and big part of the jazz community in the Berkshires, approached me about headlining a concert. We had talked many times about organizing something together, and we both like the idea of themes. So we thought of Leonard Bernstein, of course. He has strong connections to Tanglewood, as we all know, and has many connections to jazz. And we came up with Bernstein and Bop. That’s the genesis of the program.
EDGE
Can you share some song titles?
ROSENTHAL
Sure. Of the Bernstein, it turns out we’re doing three from “West Side Story” and three from “On the Town.” We’re going to do “Jet Song,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “Somewhere” from “West Side Story,” and we’re going to do “Lucky to Be Me,” “Lonely Town,” and “Some Other Time” from “On the Town.” The way Bernstein wrote, some of his pieces fit a little more easily into the jazz world than others. And these six certainly do.
I mentioned “Lennie’s Pennies” and Lennie Tristano, and “Groovin High,” by Charlie Parker. We’re planning to close with another Charlie Parker song called “Ornithology,” which is a play on words, because Charlie Parker’s nickname was “Bird.” So “Ornithology” was one of his tunes. And these bebop songs—the tradition of many of them is that they were written on the chord changes to older Great American Songbook standards. Then the beboppers wanted to improvise on the chords, but wrote new, modern melodies.
So Bird wrote “Ornithology” based on a classic song called “How High the Moon.” Lennie Tristano also wrote a song based on that called “Lennie Bird.” So we’re going to do what used to be called a medley but now might be called a mashup. We’re going to play “Ornithology” but put in a little mashup of “Lennie Bird” in between. So that’s our program.
The concert is going to have an opening set by Wanda Houston. We’re really trying to get the whole Berkshire jazz community involved, and she’s a mainstay of that community.
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Hear Ted Rosenthal’s All-Star Sextet perform their program “Bernstein and Bop: A Saxophone Colossus” at Studio E of the Linde Center for Music and Learning, Hawthorne Road, Lenox, MA., on Friday, September 6, at 7 p.m. Tickets are available here.
