Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra celebrated the 50th anniversary of their pivotal recording of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the soloist on that original recording, Jeffery Siegel, taking the solos at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on Sunday, January 21 – and somehow that wasn’t even the most remarkable aspect of this concert.
The first half of the program ended with a dual SLSO premiere: of the Aaron Diehl Trio and of Mary Lou Williams’ Zodiac Suite, her 1945 blending of jazz and classical music that Diehl revived with a new recording last year. Williams took the temperaments attributed to the various Zodiac signs seriously and based each movement on people she admired born under that sign (Franklin D. Roosevelt for Aquarius, Lena Horne for Cancer). Sometime between when the Playbill (which promised “Selections” from the suite) was printed and the concert itself, Slatkin decided also to perform the three movements he had planned to exclude – he told the audience he didn’t want to “insult” anyone of us born under those signs (Gemini, Libra and Pisces).
That was a good call. Though the complete suite clocks in at 30 minutes, nearly twice the length of the Gershwin rhapsody that named the concert, “Pisces” is its final movement, and it needed to be performed in this setting. It’s a jazz waltz for solo piano, and it was fitting to end the performance with just Diehl at the piano. Throughout the performance of the suite, whenever Diehl or his trio performed without the orchestra, Slatkin relaxed and leaned against the rail on the conductor’s podium. Seeing Leonard Slatkin take five onstage during an SLSO performance was an astonishing sight to behold.
Zodiac Suite brought other uncanny moments. It brought a drumkit to center stage of the SLSO, staring the conductor right in the face. One of the movements started with the pianist stomping his foot. I have never seen that at the symphony. Diehl’s bassist, David Wong – who studied with New York Philharmonic bassist Orin O’Brien at The Juilliard School – played along with the orchestra too. I have never seen someone within a jazz trio join the orchestra’s double bass section. SLSO principal double bass Erik Harris, also a Juilliard alum, surely appreciated the help; I saw him grinning from the wings at one of Wong’s jazz bass solos.
After the performance concluded came more unexpected treats. Featured guest artists typically wait for a third curtain call before they play an encore. With these jazz cats, they jumped back in after the first ovation, like they were not about to miss their chance to jam in front of Slatkin, a symphony orchestra and its audience. Diehl, who was kept plenty busy during Zodiac Suite, if only for the nerve-wracking assignment of wrapping up an orchestral composition playing solo, gave his sidemen, Wong and drummer Aaron Kimmel, all the tastes in the encore. The audience at the Touhill proved perfectly hip in code-switching to jazz audience protocol during the jazz trio encore, applauding within the composition after the drum solo and then again after the bass solo, though not one of us would have been caught dead applauding after any movement of Zodiac Suite except the last one.
That was all so much to experience that I have not yet begun to take into account either Williams’ artistry or performances within the orchestra. Listening to Williams alternate between jazz trio and (intimate) orchestra, color a jazz trio with orchestra, and full-blown blend all of the elements made me check when Gunther Schuler minted the term “Third Stream.” It was every bit of 12 years after Zodiac Suite. Williams wrote shrill violin drone parts that played off the piano in ways contemporary composers (St. Louis’ own Christopher Stark comes to mind) are still exploring. She uses strings as lush beds for and jagged off-sets to the jazz trio. She flies harmonies on winds high above the piano. When she wants the trio to become a quartet, she has a wide pallet of soloists to choose from – even bassoon, played by associate principal bassoon Andrew Gott. Gott followed Diehl in a piano/bassoon duet that made me wish that were more of a thing, the piano/bassoon duet.
All of that – and Slatkin directing SLSO performing Rhapsody in Blue on the 50th anniversary of their recording of the piece – with the soloist from a half-century ago, Jeffery Siegel, in the house! Slatkin said he and his soloist are “a combined 161 years old,” which makes Slatkin (79) the spring chicken to Siegel’s 82. I am not sure science can explain how a pair of 82-year-old hands can cover that much ground on the piano or conjure such a rich sound. On more than one occasion, during what I thought was a solo piano run, the sound was full I would look around for accompaniment (a brass instrument must be filling out this sound) – and there would be none. After the performance, Slatkin all but pounced on Siegel with a hug. On a night of bravura ensemble musicianship, when Slatkin kept asking for the entire orchestra to rise all at once, the conductor pointed out principal clarinet Scott Andrews, who brought the SLSO into the rhapsody with the most famous clarinet line in the history of music.
The two shorter pieces that opened each half of the program were memorable and delightful in their own ways. Both have fascinating SLSO pedigrees.
Slatkin first led the orchestra in A Joplin Overture by Paul Turok in 1974, only a year after it was composed, making the orchestra a very early adopter. SLSO performed it again in 1977 – and had not since before Sunday. It was too much fun. Turok did not write for Joplin’s instrument, piano, but he gives everyone a taste of Joplin’s syncopations; my favorite was the staccato trombone and tuba interplay. Something was going on in the percussion section – I heard and saw xylophone and glockenspiel – that sounded agreeably like steel drums. I can’t imagine why St. Louis audiences are not hearing this homage to one of the greatest composers associated with our city more often.
John Alden Carpenter’s Krazy Kat: A Jazz Pantomime has an even crazier SLSO performance history. SLSO’s first performance of it was February 9, 1923, one year after its premiere in New York, and its most recent performance was the next night, February 10, 1923. This thing is as crazy fun as its title suggests, with snare rolls, what sounded like a polka band, trombone slides, sarcastic soprano saxophone asides, and trumpet plungers that spread chuckles and guffaws throughout the house. I thought of an ice cream shop with a bewildering variety of flavors, way more than 31, and we got to sample every single one.
I had an out-of-body experience when Slatkin introduced this composition. There he was standing up there – the first person I ever saw conduct a symphony orchestra, the first conductor I ever heard talk to an audience about music – talking about cartoons and the relationship between classical music and cartoons. I grew up in Granite City, which has no symphony orchestra. No one I knew growing up listened to classical music or went to the symphony. It was Loony Tunes that got me into this game. Every time I write about classical music, I have to chew on my tongue to avoid talking about cartoons.
And there was Leonard Slatkin standing on the concert stage talking about cartoons! I felt – so – seen. Happy 50th anniversary, maestro and orchestra. Thank you, and Bugs Bunny, for everything.
