Though the American record industry persists in dividing music into distinctly marketable genres, some performers and composers defy easy categorization.
Yet the ambiguities of the haunting music that saxophonist Branford Marsalis and a superb group of collaborators performed Monday evening at the Ravinia Festival only added to its appeal. Whether one termed the evening’s repertoire jazz, classical, cabaret or Latin was beside the point.
Indeed, the scores of the Argentine Astor Piazzolla and the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos drew equally from the European classical tradition and the improvisatory flavor of its jazz-tinged, Latin American counterpart.
Finding musicians who can address both idioms, and then some, is not easy to do. But the Ravinia Festival, which excels at this kind of cross-cultural programming, chose well in engaging Marsalis, Chicago harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy, Chicago Symphony Orchestra principal oboist Alex Klein and others of comparable musical caliber.
Here were artists who could summon a level of musicianship and virtuosity one expects of classical performers, as well as the creative freedom more commonly associated with the jazz club and the cabaret. The result probably shattered many listeners’ assumptions about the nature of music for the concert hall and the nightclub, with each camp surely learning a great deal about the other.
Though Marsalis has appeared frequently in the Chicago area in a variety of musical ensembles– from jazz duo to quasi-funk band–his work this time around was by far his most persuasive.
The improvisational blandness one recalled from duets with pianist Ellis Marsalis, his father, was nowhere to be heard; the unabashedly commercial gestures of his Buckshot LeFonque ensemble had no part in this affair.
Instead, Marsalis played the solo in Villa-Lobos’ Fantasia for Saxophone with a felicity to the score that the composer might have appreciated, but also with a subtlety of tone and phrasing that only the finest interpreters can attain. Throughout this work, there was no escaping the fluid lyricism of Marsalis’ playing, the easy dexterity of his technique and, above all, the utterly authentic way the soprano saxophonist addressed folkloric rhythms and idiosyncratic turns of phrase.
If Marsalis’ work proved difficult to resist in the Villa-Lobos, it was ineffably poetic in Piazzolla’s “Oblivion.” Marsalis’ melancholy tone, long-lined melodicism and tautly controlled but thoroughly expressive vibrato found a fitting match in the work of the accompanying string ensemble.
Levy, an accomplished musician equally conversant with piano and harmonica, played both instruments with characteristic aplomb. His harmonica solos in Piazzolla’s “Five Tango Sensations” not only attested to Levy’s ability to extend the expressive range of the instrument but also underscored Piazzolla’s importance as composer.
Piazzolla, after all, is best known as a composer of tangos and little more. To Levy, Piazzolla’s best work transcends the limitations of the tango dance form and stands on its own as carefully constructed concert music. Or at least Levy eloquently made that case throughout this suite, emphasizing the unusual harmonic turns and the perpetual evolution of melody lines rather than the tango backbeats that drive much of Piazzolla’s music.
That Levy also accompanied himself during certain passages at the piano, all the while coaxing exquisite phrases from his harmonica, underscored the man’s protean gifts as performer.
CSO audiences know Klein as the orchestra’s principal oboe chair, but he sounded no less authoritative in Piazzolla’s Suite for Oboe and String Orchestra.
The concert, under the deft direction of violinist-conductor Arnold Roth, was recorded for release next February on the American Gramaphone label. The CD could strike a blow against artificial boundaries that separate musical genres.
