Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Claude Bolling, Tthe Supereme Crossover Artist

There is no way for me to ask my readers for a show of hands that would be visible to me, but I will ask my questions anyway:  How many of you are jazz lovers?  Now-   how many of you are classical music fans?  Do the same hands go up in both instances?  I feel confident that for many of you that is the case.  So how would you particular folks like to have both in the same package?  If you would, the name of Claude Bolling should be familiar to you, though it may not be.
    
Nothing amazes me more than the fact that so many music lovers I have talked to, even a few professional musicians, confess that not only is the work of this man unfamiliar to them but that the very name itself is equally so.  How can this be?  He is a six-time winner of the Grand Prix du Disque and has received international acclaim as a composer as well as a conductor, arranger and pianist.  He has been celebrated mainly for his own compositions.  A musicologist named Bobby Finn describes his work with these words: “There is great fluctuation of  mood. . .caused by the constant dialogue between the jazz and the classical elements, which seem to fight, to interrupt, to stimulate, to mimic and even to embrace each other.”  He is the supreme crossover composer – betwixt the two musical traditions.  Duke Ellington, among others, greatly admired Bolling’s achievements and encouraged him in his work. 

What makes my difficulty in finding other music lovers who know of him even more amazing is that his compositions are not hard to locate.  It is not as though he is some relic from some stone age.  He is alive and functioning in the twenty-first century, a modern master.  His recordings, over thirty in number and covering a space of almost forty years, all do a mighty business and are easy to obtain.  They can be ordered on line, and one is likely to find some of them in the remnant of the record stores that have not succumbed in their competition with the Internet.    

He was born in Cannes, France in 1930 and studied at the Nice Music Conservatory.  He has also written scores for over one hundred films, mostly French, and he played a big part in the revival of traditional jazz music in the 1960s.  But he has also worked with classical musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman and Maurice Andre. 

Two of Bolling’s discs are especially exciting to me, both of them on the order of modern day chamber pieces.  One of them has the word in its title – Suite for Chamber Orchestra and Jazz Piano.  The other is entitled simply Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano, but it fits the mold just as surely.  Their content may be modern and “loose”, but the form in which they are set is chamber classical.  Bolling himself is at the piano, and you have never heard any better musicianship on the keyboard than he renders.

What is meant by Chamber Music?  The current definition is: music written for and performed by a small ensemble of instruments with just one performer on each separate part in the score.  A chamber piece ranges on the average anywhere from two to seven or eight musicians.  Quartets, quintets, trios, duets, sextets, etc.!  That is now – the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  The term, however, has undergone considerable evolutionary change over the last four hundred years.  During the 1700s orchestras were very small compared with the 1800s and 1900s.  They were not much bigger than some of our chamber ensembles are today.  It was not until the orchestra grew to a certain sweeping size that the smaller ensembles took on the distinction of being a separate genre of musical construction. 

In the pre-Baroque era there was hardly such a thing as a concert orchestra.  Instrumental music was generally not played in large auditoriums, except perhaps to accompany choral presentations.  Apparently the word “chamber” came to be attached to the small ensembles as a reference to the restricted environments in which they were performed.  Sometimes it was the court or private chamber of a king or prince; at others it was the private residence of a nobleman (so-called).  Sometimes the music was not meant to be given studied attention but served as background for social gatherings.  We have all been to parties or social affairs at which the stereo is throbbing in the corner somewhere.  The people present hear it and relax in the ambiance that it creates but focus on each other and engage in conversation, the music just barely on the edge of consciousness.  The recording only adds a certain color or mood to the occasion.  The guests rarely ever sit down and listen intently.  Somewhat like that it was on occasion, when chamber was all that was.

Of course, most chamber music now – by our definition – is played on a stage or in a setting where an audience does give it full consideration.  There are no more “chambers” as such.  Quartets and trios and the like are given the same respect as orchestral works, even if they do not usually generate the kind of sound swell or size of audience or prestige that the larger works do.

Bolling’s Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano, 34 minutes in running time, comprises seven movements with a solo flute (the flutist being the equally world renowned Jean-Pierre Rampal, another study himself) accompanied by piano, percussion and string bass.  This is a chamber work not only in terms of its reduced instrumental size but with regard to its suitability as background music at that party or social gathering.  It contains some of the most arm flapping, hip gyrating and feet scrambling music you are ever likely to hear as well as some of the coolest and sauciest and most torrid.  Moods vary greatly, as they would have to for this to earn the designation of “suite.”  In the last four minutes we hear something akin to a foot-pounding Native American or African tribal dance rhythm, with the flute providing the melody in a ceremonial solo fashion.  On the tail end of this, the recording comes to a stomping, wild, frenzied finish.        

Suite for Chamber Orchestra and Jazz Piano runs 48 minutes and consists of five movements.  In this one, Bolling may use a so-called “chamber orchestra,” but at the core this too is a genuine chamber piece, the extra instrumentation in no way detracting from the intimate, small-room setting.  The suite begins like a formal early 19th century ensemble rendition and by gradual sleight of hand deftly transforms itself into something for which there is no easy pigeonhole.   By the time he has pranced and promenaded and swung and swaggered his way through the three quarters of an hour, you will appreciate something the famous Bobby McFerrin once said.  He recalled what his mentor/maestro Leonard Bernstein had taught him – “that it’s all jazz.” 

The contrasts in this suite are phenomenal.  Everything from a crawl to a mad rush, from old style courtliness to contemporary hoof beats, from fox trot to ballroom grace can be savored, and he moves from one to the other in one breath.  There are no seams.  By the time it ends, you will not know for sure where the classical has left off and the jazz has begun or vice versa.  His left hand may know what his right hand is doing, but each gives unfailing respect to the other.  What a payload!  As you listen, watch your blood pressure and remember to breathe. 

Other recordings of his in the same jazz/classical vein are: Concerto for Guitar and Jazz Piano; Suite for Violin and Jazz Piano; Picnic Suite for Guitar, Flute and Jazz Piano; and Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano.

As a crossover listener I have been into Bolling’s music for years and have delighted immensely in everything of his I have heard.  I invite you to make his acquaintance, if you have not already.  He is a universe unto himself.  Google him, if you must.


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

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