Waterbury Symphony Heads into the Jazz Age

In Wednesday’s (2/19) New Haven Register (Connecticut), Tracey O’Shaughnessy writes, “F. Scott Fitzgerald memorably described the 1920s as a time when ‘the parties were bigger, the pace was faster, the buildings were higher, the morals looser.’ And the music that became its soundtrack was ‘frenetic,’ said Waterbury Symphony Orchestra Musical Director Leif Bjaland. On Sunday, the WSO will indulge in some of that jazz age music in Newtown’s Edmond Town Hall at 4 p.m., its second production of the season in the historic structure. For Bjaland, the music epitomizes the wild, profligate sophistication of the age. ‘For those who survived World War I and the Spanish Flu, it was like, “I can’t believe I’m still here. I just dodged a bullet. At this point, I’m just going to celebrate the fact that I’m still on earth.” That was the fuel that piloted the 1920s and the exuberance of that age. The 1920s is just a bubbling caldron of creativity.’… Fitzgerald described the Jazz Age as a time of ‘nervous stimulation’ and anxiety, which Bjaland said fed into the music of composers like Gershwin, Duke Ellington, [and subsequently] Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus…. The WSO concert will feature vocalist Stephanie Harrison.”