Mark Fewer
violin
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Crashing
May 3, 2010, 12:00 am
Foxtrotting Chairman trips over a mostly fine nexus of forms
John McBeath From: The Australian May 04, 2010 12:00AM
MUSIC: Metropolis: Pictures in the Smoke. Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and guests. Malthouse Theatre, May 1.
THIS year's Metropolis series of contemporary music is presented in association with the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, although the first concert didn't really display much in the way of a jazz influence until after interval.
Conducted by Bramwell Tovey, the series opened with The Chairman Dances, from John Adams's 1987 opera Nixon in China. Subtitled Foxtrot for Orchestra, the piece uses marimbas and percussion in a syncopated effect, but the authentic swing style of the foxtrot was missing. Perhaps that's how they foxtrotted in Mao's China.
The second work was another by Adams, The Dharma at Big Sur, for electric violin and orchestra. It was more successful, especially because of virtuoso Canadian violinist Mark Fewer. In part two the soloist gathered speed and power as the orchestra rumbled a bass foundation leading to a crashing climax as wild as the Californian coastline it portrays.
After interval, Tovey's composition Urban Runway gently mocked the strutting of fashionista models and shoppers. The New York-inspired passages were jazzy and brassy with occasional reminders of Gershwin or Bernstein, while the west coast sequences were perhaps slightly over-sweetened in a lyrical ensemble section for violas.
The final composition, Nexus, for orchestra and jazz quintet, written by Australian Don Banks in 1971, was the most successful, incorporating jazz ideas into a Gunther Schuller "third stream" classical concept.
The quintet, led by trumpeter Eugene Ball, slotted comfortably into a rhythmic relationship with the orchestra. The jazzmen's improvisations usually had the orchestra falling silent so the quintet alone carried, at times, quite stunning solos from alto saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass and drums.
The interplay between quintet and orchestra in a concerto grosso manner, plus Banks's deep understanding of the two genres, made this work an outstanding success in the notoriously difficult area of classical-jazz fusion.
Tomorrow and Saturday. Tickets: $55. Bookings: (03) 9929 9600.
The Australian
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