Predictive Programming For the Future of Big Band Jazz From the MSM Jazz Orchestra

Last night at Manhattan School of Music, the MSM Jazz Orchestra and a slightly smaller ten-piece unit played an all-Jim McNeely program worthy of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the group the composer pretty much singlehandedly vaulted into the uppermost echelon of big band jazz. When they’re playing for a grade (or for their peers), student orchestras can be spectacular. This performance was often poignant, aptly sleek and symphonic, in keeping with McNeely’s sensibility. To what extent these musicians will grace the stage beyond academia is not a function of talent but of more pressing current unknowns.

Introducing the show, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen said this would be a “Michelin star sampling” of McNeely’s compositions. He began at the podium for the night’s first number, Thad, a plushly swinging, characteristically shapeshifting Thad Jones tribute from the VJO’s first album under that name. McNeely wove innumerable Jones riffs into the piece, resulting in a comfortable trad familiarity. It was clear that this crew were out for honors credit: perfectly synchronous brass, seamless execution of unexpected syncopation and bursting accents, a long, genial Bruno Tzinas trombone solo, a jubilantly articulated alto sax solo from Erena Terakubo and an expansive, expressive Kellin Hanas trumpet solo that dipped to a striking flicker of unease. Special guest trumpeter Scott Wendholt took it from there steadily, choosing his spots to punch in or flurry upward.

McNeely moved to the piano and Mike Holober took over conducting for The Tightrope Walker, which imagines Paul Klee’s solitary highwire artist getting some company out there. A momentary, pensively looping intro brightened with the brass, dipping for a pointillistic, bubbling Jonah Grant bass solo in contrast to the persistent, airy gloom. McNeely then brought the sunshine in with his own solo, mirroring what the bass had done before bringing the song full circle. Such is this guy’s conceptual artistry: if Del Bigtree wants a more ambitious theme, this would work.

McNeely then switched the big band out for a tentet, beginning with Lost, a catchy, steadily syncopated tune fueled by cheery call-and-response, a piano solo pulling against the center before breaking loose with a gritty insistence. A balmy Maxwell Bessesen alto sax solo rose from balmy to brightly articulate, the brass joining with drummer Christian McGhee’s vaudevillian theatrics.

Group Therapy, true to its title, was full of brief individual features, taking a turn from sweeping majesty to modal moodiness and wryly chattering exchanges. The full orchestra returned with a mighty string section for In This Moment (a world premiere of this symphonic arrangement), McNeely establishing a hauntingly wintry mood with his opening solo, Jensen moving unexpectedly from sheer devastation to a unassailable triumph. McNeely led the orchestra out with a distantly contented quasar pulse.

Big Red Thing made a good segue with its brisker, punchier pulse and a brassy vigor punctuated by moments of starriness and stark string accents. Trumpeter Grace Fox racewalked and rippled; guitarist Ryan Hernandez added bite and more spacious accents over the lush symphonics. The bordering-on-frantic parade out was irresistibly fun.

Amanda Addleman sang The Lost and Found, a Dayna Stephens/Gretchen Parlato tune, with nuance and calm disquiet echoed with understated impact from alto saxophonist Mackenzie McCarthy.

McNeely explained to the sold-out crowd that he’d written Threnody as a requiem for victims of the plandemic. Woundedly if methodically, the group moved from an airy, stately, baroque-tinged theme to a somber pedalpoint with tense, troubled riffage throughout the ensemble as a Messiaenic chill drifted into clearer focus. Notwithstanding general somberness and a viscerally plaintive Bryan Cowan alto sax solo, Team Humanity seemed to win.

They closed with Extra Credit, a gusty number with equal hints of New Orleans and latin jazz, a suave tenor sax solo and a lithely tumbling piano break. Fox, Wendholt and Jensen took it out in a jauntily triangulated blaze.

The next public concert at Manhattan School of Music is this Friday night, Feb 10 at 7:30 PM at Neidorff-Karpati Hall, 130 Claremont Ave, with special guest conductor Leonard Slatkin leading the MSM Symphony Orchestra in George Walker’s Lyric for Strings and Shostakovich’s venomously sarcastic Symphony No. 5. Admission is free; early arrival is a good idea. Take the 1 train to 125th and then walk back uphill (Claremont runs parallel to Broadway, one block to the west).

A Vivid, Original, Brightly Tuneful Debut Album From Jazz Singer Alyssa Giammaria

Alyssa Giammaria has a soaring, warmly mapled, crystalline voice and writes ambitious but similarly translucent jazz songs. Her debut album Moments is streaming at Bandcamp. It’s always a treat to discover vocal jazz as imaginative and individualistic as this: we hear all kinds of cliches about “fresh new voices,” but Giammaria is the real deal.

The album’s first track is Beginning and End, a wistful contemplation of impermanence, whether in relationships or otherwise, “tracing darkness,” as Giammaria puts it. Leighton McKinley Harrell’s starkly bowed bass behind the vocals expands to a lustrous brass arrangement over a steady sway. Pianist Jen Lo plays an elegantly ornamented solo with unexpected peaks as drummer Jacob Slous edges toward a shuffle.

The horns – trumpeters Evan Dalling and Christian Antonacci and trombonist Nick Adema – build bright harmonies to introduce the album’s title track, Giammaria revisiting a hopeful/downcast dichotomy. Adams’ bubbling solo over Lo’s three-on-four and Harrell’s dancing bass raise the optimism even as Giammaria confides that “I won’t stay the same.”

“How many times do I have to start over?” she muses over Lo’s spare resonance in Understand, a pensive but brightly lyrical duo ballad. “I learn to leave all the things that don’t find me.”

Harrell scrambles uphill by himself to kick off For Myself, a darkly clustering, soul-infused modal ballad. This time it’s a trumpet solo that pushes the clouds aside, setting up the bandleader’s guardedly cheery scatting. The contrast between the band’s polyrhythmic intensity, and Giammaria’s self-admonition to think for herself in the most pivotal moments, is visceral.

“There is an answer to the emptiness of now,” she asserts in the album’s final number, What About. Yet, there’s an inescapable vulnerability and woundedness in her airy vocalese over the group’s lively, altered shuffle. What a breath of fresh air this is: let’s hope there’s more where this comes from.