Lenox — Classical music is OK, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough. Nobody knew this better than Leonard Bernstein—unless you want to count Ted Rosenthal, who has got all of Bernstein’s classical chops, plus a virtuosic facility for jazz that Lenny would have envied. But a lot more than Ted’s keyboard chops were on the menu Friday, September 6, at Tanglewood’s Linde Center for Music and Learning.
As emotionally satisfying as classical music can be, its rigidity—which is what makes it reliably enjoyable—constrains its expressivity in ways that make jazz music a natural place to go if you like to hear highly expressive music that virtuosic wizards pull out of thin air in real time. Witnessing this spontaneous act of creation at such a high level as we heard on Friday evening is a thrill like no other.
All of the players on Friday were of a musical stature sufficiently immense to boggle the mind. (Who knew such tone was even possible from a tenor saxophone?)
- Ted Rosenthal — piano
- Noriko Ueda — bass
- Dennis Mackrel — drums
- Erena Terakubo — alto saxophone
- Scott Robinson — tenor saxophone
- Gary Smulyan — baritone saxophone
All of Ted’s charts—he called some of them “mashups”—were smart, musically inspired, and perfectly suited to the venue that served for a time as one of Bernstein’s summer homes. Needless to say, the Bernstein-Bop theme played very well here, and the band was so tight you could feel it in the first two measures of Ted’s “Jet Song” mashup. Everything that followed lived up to that promise. It was Ted’s crowd before he played a note, judging by the venue’s online “sold-out” notice several days earlier. By the end of the evening, his solo rendition of Bernstein’s “Somewhere” had the crowd in tears. Now he owned them.
The program included six Bernstein songs: three from “On the Town” (“Lucky to Be Me,” “Lonely Town,” and “Some Other Time”) and three from “Westside Story” (“Jet Song,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “Somewhere”). But they were not listed on the printed program, an omission which was, perhaps, Ted’s way of encouraging us to consider all of the selections together as a cohesive whole, because interwoven between Bernstein’s tunes were popular pieces from such leading bebop practitioners as Charlie Parker, who wrote the evening’s first bebop selection, “Groovin’ High.” Lennie Tristano’s “Lennie’s Pennies” came next, followed by Charlie Parker’s song “Ornithology,” mashed up with his “Lennie Bird.”
Wanda Houston opened the show with a voice as big as Mount Washington. Some know her for her blues and soul stylings, but make no mistake: She is a jazz singer, and her performance on Friday will help us remember that. Eugene Uman joined Houston on piano, with Tarik Shaw on bass, and together they are known as the Convergence Trio.
The mission of Berkshires Jazz is to preserve jazz music. Mill Town’s mission (in a nutshell) is to preserve the Pittsfield community’s quality of life. And the mission of the Tanglewood Learning Institute is—we hope—to preserve its original vision of what it aspired to be in 2019: of the Berkshire Community.
When the Boston Symphony Orchestra dedicated the Linde Center for Music and Learning in 2019, its mission was stated clearly:
More than a building, it is a symbol for the important role of art in our society. It serves as an incubator for creativity where people can engage with each other and with art, and reinforces Tanglewood as a destination and a landmark for music and learning. Even more, it is a tangible symbol of the BSO’s dedication not just to being in the Berkshires community, but more importantly, being of the Berkshire Community.
At the close of Friday’s performance, I spoke with Jeremy Yudkin, professor of music at Boston University and the author of “The Lenox School of Jazz,” among many other books. He called the level of the players’ music making “phenomenal.” “These people—every one of them—are at the top of their game. And Ted Rosenthal’s leadership and arrangements are nothing short of brilliant. Let’s hope that this example of cooperation between Tanglewood and Berkshires Jazz extends far into the future.”
