Composer celebrates 'progressive jazz'
BY OWEN CORDLE (Newsobserver.com)
"Progressive Jazz 2009" (Max Frank Music), produced by composer and Washington and Lee University music professor Terry Vosbein, celebrates the late bandleader Stan Kenton's self-described "progressive jazz" period of 1947 and '48. By employing Pete Rugolo as chief arranger, and to a lesser extent, arranger Bob Graettinger, Kenton at the time began to emphasize concert jazz over dance band jazz.
Vosbein uses both familiar and rarely heard Rugolo and Graettinger charts from this period plus several of his own arrangements on this album, recorded earlier this year in concert at the University of Tennessee. The excellent Knoxville Jazz Orchestra conveys the excitement and drama of a Kenton road band.
The group's sound is rich in trombones, true to the grandeur of the Kenton identity. Vosbein's writing for the occasion is steeped in the Rugolo tradition, with unison saxophone lines breaking into full-depth harmony while the brass swap rhythmic figures and counterlines and build to giant climaxes. Bongo drums appear at times, echoing the Kenton flair for Cuban rhythms.
Critics charged Kenton with a weighty, non-swinging sound, claims that have subsided with time and the multiple rhythmic directions of jazz today. There are plenty of examples of swing throughout this album (Vosbein's "Crows in Tuxedos," Rugolo's "Artistry in Gillespie," et. al.) and many thrilling examples of the harmonic scope that only Kenton's band could produce in its day. A masterful and emotionally rewarding tribute.
