Alvin Batiste: Joining the Jazz Band On an Exotic Journey

It's not often that one gets to hear an extended composition in the jazz context, so when the Harvard Jazz Band under the direction of Tom Everett performed not one but two fully composed jazz suites last Friday night, it was a truly rare treat. Last Friday night's concert featured popular New Orleans clarinetist Alvin Batiste playing alongside the students from the band. Batiste's performance capped off a week in residence at Harvard, the latest in the series of internationally-acclaimed jazz musicians who have worked with students through the Office for the Arts's "Learning from Performers" program. In recent years, such geniuses as Steve Lacy, Don Byron and Andrew Hill have cooperated with Harvard students in workshops and rehearsals for concert performances like that of last Friday night.

Despite a squeaky reed, Batiste lent an aura of majesty and lyricism to the concert with his finely crafted melodic lines and stately tone. It is interesting to compare the sound of 63-year old Batiste with that of last spring's guest, fellow clarinetist Don Byron, who is only in his 30's. While Batiste's sound is not physically as strong as Byron's, his clean, well-trained lines call attention to themselves nonetheless. In introducing the Thad Jones waltz "A Child Is Born," Batiste played into the guts of the opened grand piano and used the Steinway's vast sounding board as a natural amplifier, thus creating all sorts of lingering overtones. This experimental technique might have been expected more of the younger Byron than of Batiste, the elder statesman, but Batiste showed that he is more than a traditionalist throughout the concert.

The first set of the evening ended with the performance of excerpts from Batistes Late Suite. This fascinating piece of music sets the basic harmonies and pulse of traditional New Orleans jazz in the full orchestral context in which it rarely appears. This particular performance strung three of the suite's movements together and incorporated a poetic sermon by the composer's wife. Edith Batiste, into the musical table. As Mrs. Batiste declaimed her verses about the disunity of man and similar themes, the members of the rhythm section created a suitably dramatic background out of freely placed notes and rhythms. John Capello and Bruce McKinnon were exceptionally flexible in responding to the dynamic and tempo changes in the poetry and Batiste shadowed his wife elegantly on clarinet. At one point, Michael Schwartz rose from the sax section and played keening half-bent notes, breathy whispers and other soulful sounds on his alto. This solo moment lent a new degree of subtlely-pitched emotion to the reading.

The highlight of Friday night's concert was undoubtedly the band's performance of Duke Ellington's challenging Far Fast Suite (1966, recorded on RCA-Bluebird). As anyone who has listened to the suite knows, the places referred to both in the titles of the movements and in the music itself are not in the Fat Fast at all, but rather in the Middle East Iran and India-places such as Amad, Istahan, Agra and Delhi. Only the last movement. "Ad Lib on Nippon" is a musical reaction to an East Asian region. Geographical discrepancies aside, the synthesis of Duke Ellington's traditional sound with the musical emanations from the Middle Last and India is a glorious one. The band on Friday night was able to bring out some of the richness of Ellington's masterwork without even approximating the infinitely intricate shades characteristic of the Ellington orchestra. All things considered, the band did an admirable job in performing this suite for the public. Such challenging parts as the piano once played by Duke, the lead trumpet once played by Cat Anderson, the baritone saxophone once played by Harry Carney and the lead alto saxophone of Johnny Hodges were handled well by McKinnon, AlMoffett, Rachel Flkins and Justin Wood, respectively.

The band was clearly well-rehearsed and inspired by the music. These factors turned the rate performance of an Ellington masterpiece into an excellent opportunity to appreciate America's greatest composer and orchestrator of the 20th century.