In Tuesday’s (4/23) Wall Street Journal, Larry Blumenfeld writes, “Derek Bermel recalled the moment things went awry in 2006 during rehearsals for his composition ‘The Migration Series.’ Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis had commissioned the piece, which paired the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. … ‘The orchestra was going with the conductor, and the jazz band was going with the rhythm section—piano, bass and drums. … Right then, I began to think about how a composer builds hybridity into a piece of music,’ he said. Those are among the challenges addressed by the second class of the three-year-old Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, which connects composers working primarily in jazz with symphony orchestras to seek a deepened context for such collaboration. The JCOI will present the first of three public readings of new symphonic works by these composers on Tuesday and Wednesday at Kleinhans Music Hall, in Buffalo, N.Y., with the Buffalo Philharmonic (there will be readings with the ACO at Columbia University’s Miller Theater June 3 and 4, and with the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, Sept., 19 and 20). … The JCOI, created in 2010, grew from conversations between George Lewis (then head of Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies) and Michael Geller, the ACO’s executive director.” Symphony magazine reported on the growing interactions between orchestras and jazz composers in its Summer 2011 issue.
Posted April 24, 2013
