1:00 p.m. CST, December 3, 2013
Photo: (Peter Thompson/Chicago Tribune / November 6, 2002)
The world has yet to take the full measure of Chicagoan William Russo, whose life's work proved – among other things – that jazz, classical and blues languages are not natural enemies.
These sounds, and others, converged in Russo's compositions and rang out in concerts he led with the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, a splendid repertory band he founded at Columbia College Chicago in 1965. That's decades before the great Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in New York or the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra in Washington had been conceived.
Ten years have passed since Russo's death at age 74, and his jazz orchestra has been on hiatus since 2012, due to financial constraints at Columbia. But if these unfortunate events have dimmed awareness of the man's enormous contributions, this weekend's "Celebrating William Russo" soiree – presented by Columbia – could go a long way toward turning things around.
With a Friday night screening of an animated film featuring a score by Russo, a Saturday afternoon panel discussion exploring the impact of his work and a Saturday night concert featuring such major figures as alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, trumpeter Orbert Davis and harmonica whiz Corky Siegel playing Russo's music, "Celebrating William Russo" will bring the musician's art and philosophies back to the forefront, where they belong.
"Bill was completely fearless," says Siegel, who ought to know.
In the 1960s and '70s, Russo penned the groundbreaking "Three Pieces for Blues Band and Symphony Orchestra" for the Siegel-Schwall Band plus symphonic musicians and the follow-up "Street Music" for Siegel and orchestra. Siegel performed both works around the world with conductor Seiji Ozawa and recorded them for Deutsche Grammophon with Ozawa leading the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
"Fearlessness is not a goal," adds Siegel. "It's a tool in order to be able to do what you really feel you should do.
"But Bill was fearless in approaching this really scary idea of offering something (musically) for each person to not like."
Russo, of course, was not the first to mingle jazz and the classics. Works such as Darius Milhaud's "La Creation du Monde" ("The Creation of the World") and George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" bridged that divide as far back as the Roaring Twenties. And starting in the early 1950s, the Modern Jazz Quartet began to convey a classical sensibility within jazz language.
But Russo's methods were uniquely his.
"What really made (Russo's works) different was the compositional approach – the idea was to maintain the character of the blues and the character of classical music and (have) them work side by side," says Siegel. "And, in fact, not to fuse them, not to blend them, but to have them as much as possible highlight their characters, without dissolving them into each other.
Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-jazz-william-russo-20131204,0,1977749.column
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