Oakland-based
keyboardist-composer Steve McQuarry has long been in love with the unique music
of Gil Evans, the late, largely-self-taught Toronto-born composer, arranger,
and keyboardist best remembered for his numerous collaborations with Miles
Davis.
"The
whole way he thought about orchestrating using instruments and also pushing
those instruments in different ranges is really fascinating," McQuarry
says of Evans. "I remember talking with Maria Schneider about this. She
said he would write the trombone parts really high and things like that, which
academically trained arrangers are told not to do, and how that changed a lot
of textures and tone quality in the sound."
For
a program of a dozen Evans arrangements drawn from his early days with the
Claude Thornhill big band through his later work with Davis, Kenny Burrell, and
his own ensembles, McQuarry has expanded his 19-member Mandala Orchestra to 25
pieces to accommodate instruments Evans sometimes used to enrich his voicings,
including French horn, English horn, oboe, bassoon, and cello, as well as
downsized it to nine to play three pieces from Davis's legendary 1949-1950
"Birth of the Cool" sessions.
McQuarry's
Evans concert will take place on Saturday, March 4, at the SFJAZZ Center's
Miner Auditorium, the scene of his highly successful tribute to Carla Bley in
June of last year.
No
transcriptions from recordings will be performed. The musicians will instead
play from original Evans scores -- some written in pencil by the composer
himself -- supplied by composer Ryan Truesdell. An associate of Maria
Schneider, Truesdell had gathered arrangements from Evans's family, musicians
who had worked with him, and from the archives of bandleaders for whom he had
worked, among other sources, and recorded 10 of them for his critically
acclaimed 2012 CD Centennial: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans.
The
earliest Evans composition on the program is "The Troubadour," first
recorded by the Thornhill orchestra in 1947. Another Evans composition in the
set is "Dancing on a Great Big Rainbow," written for Thornhill in
1950 by not recorded until 2012 by Truesdell. The Mandala Orchestra will also
perform "Blues for Pablo" and "The Maids of Cadiz" (both
from Davis's 1957 album Miles Ahead) and "Greensleeves" (from the
1964 Kenny Burrell album Guitar Forms), as well as "St. Louis Blues,"
"La Nevada Blues," "Punjab," and "Eleven," all
from various albums made by Evans's own bands. And the Nonet will play
"Budo," "Israel," and "Boplicity" from Birth of
the Cool.
Although
born in Canada, on May 13, 1912, Gil Evans resided in the United States from
the time he was a boy. He became enamored of the music of Louis Armstrong and
other early jazz greats while living in Berkeley in the mid-1920s and formed a
nine-piece swing band in Stockton a few years later. He spent most of the 1940s
as a staff arranger for the Thornhill band, whose distinctive style greatly
influenced that of the Miles Davis Nonet that made the sessions that became
known as Birth of the Cool. He recorded in subsequent years with various
vocalists and instrumentalists and with bands of his own, but it is the four
classic Columbia albums he made with Davis -- Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and
Bess (1959), Sketches of Spain (1960), and Quiet Nights (1963) -- that Evans's
reputation most strongly sits in the minds of many. He died on March 20, 1988.
Steve
McQuarrySteve McQuarry, who was born in Denver on August 17, 1959, took his
first arranging class at age 17 at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester,
NY, with Oakland-born
composer and arranger Russell Garcia, renowned for his work Louis Armstrong, Ella
Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, and many others. McQuarry also studied
at the University of Colorado at Denver, Berklee College of Music, UC San
Diego, and Alexander University. An Oakland resident for the past decade, he
has performed as a pianist at Yoshi's San Francisco with his own trio and with
flutist Gerald Beckett's quartet and has broadcast with his chamber octet
Resonance over KPFA in Berkeley and KKUP in Cupertino. He currently records for
his own label, Mandala Records, with his piano jazz trio and the jazz ensembles
Resonance, Steve McQuarry Organ Trio, Art-Jazz-Rock group, Echelon; Afro-Cuban
Latin Jazz band, Tribu the electronica group Synsor; and the new age group
Agharta.
"I
named my record label, the octet, and the orchestra Mandala after meeting the
Dalai Lama and some Tibetan monks drawing mandalas on Shattuck Avenue in
Berkeley some years ago," he says.
The
Mandala Orchestra members are pianists Steve McQuarry and Laura Klein;
trumpeters Justin Smith, John Worley, Niel Levonius, and Henry Hung;
trombonists Keith Yee, Tim Phelan, Joshua Sankara, and Christian Manzana;
French hornist Winston Macaraeg; tuba player Portia Njoku; flutist Gerald
Beckett; saxophonists Ruben Salcido, Amelia Catalano, Corey Wright, Georgianna
Krieger, and Hermann Lara; oboe and English horn player Glenda Bates;
bassoonist Wendell Hanna; cellist Nancy Bien; guitarist Mason Razavi; double
bassist Ted Burik; drummer Greg German: and tabla player Jim Santi Owens.
Steve
McQuarry Presents Mandala Nonet & Orchestra
Performing
the Music of Gil Evans
Saturday,
March 4, 8:00 p.m.
SFJAZZ
Center, Miner Auditorium
201
Franklin Street, San
Francisco
