Northeast Wisconsin Music Review

Performance: Big Band Jazz

Birch Creek Music Performance Center

Egg Harbor , WI

July 27 and July 28, 2007

Benny and Some Other Big Band Boys

The final two nights of Jazz I at Birch Creek brought renewed validation of the stellar quality that suffuses every aspect of musical life at the institution. From the charming campus (looking as attractive as ever) to the student ensembles and on to the faculty band which knows no superior anywhere – and we mean anywhere – the exultant lift that each visit produces is a gift worthy of the most famous of world venues. The experience is consistently top-drawer.

First on Thursday night, the 27 th, was the accomplishment and enthusiasm of the student combo performing the pre-concert honors in the gazebo outside. Shortly after, the program inside brought forth both student bands, the Studio and Lab ensembles. The Lab Band we had heard the previous week and were thoroughly impressed by its crispness, unrelenting fervor and sheer power. This was an edition that had much of the weightiness that sets the BC faculty bands apart from all others these days. This particular night, the Studio Band nearly matched the excellence of the senior student band, just as it did again in the session’s final night. Exceptional soloists populated both bands, further adding heat to the arrangements (all of which were original charts, not reduced-difficulty student versions). Gil Wukitsch, directing the Lab students, and Jim Stombres, overseeing the Studio group, held high Birch Creek standards in astute leadership and unfailing encouragement. These two gentlemen, BC veterans both, give lavishly of themselves in efforts that place the institution well ahead of other summer music schools.

As to the Academy Band, that august troop gave no quarter as it blazed and bristled. As much as any other big band we’ve heard, it cohered completely, running with machine-like precision – though with nothing mechanical about its intensity and loose-limbed rhythmic drive. Friday night was a Benny Goodman-based program, spun into orbit with “Flying Home,” featuring superlative tenorman Mike Lee and trumpeter Lenny Foy (who would be given the Woody Herman Award the next night in recognition of his exemplary spirit and commitment to the program). Foy was also featured in a lovely “Memories of You” before “King Porter Stomp” prompted fine solos from Mike Lee, Foy and trombonist Ton Garling.

Highlights in the second half, included a spunky “Don’t Be That Way” with sharp solo moments from lead alto Anton Denner and Mike Lee as well as Bill Holman’s arrangement of “Stompin’ at the
Savoy ” with an exciting piano solo from Mike Stryker. Two Benny Goodman sextet themes, “Slipped Disc” and “Rachel’s Dream,” brought together the rhythm section, Anton Denner playing a fluent, smoothly-articulated Goodman replication on clarinet (very difficult) and BC counselor Mike Truesdale on vibraphone. The complexity of these charts may escape the casual listener, but musicians appreciate how much attention is required to bring these off. Here, they were consummately presented, much to the audience’s delight. In the concert-closing “Sing, Sing, Sing,” Bob Chmel’s powerful drumming and stinging work from the trumpet section made for a resolute finish (though the encore, another of BC’s head arrangements, drove the temperature still higher, fired by solo turns from trombonist Audrey Morrison and Mike Lee – and Joey Tartell’s scorching topping-out of the trumpet line).

The session’s finale brought the outstanding Ambassadors to the pre-concert event, and two more appearances by the impressive Studio and Lab bands, sealing our conviction that this gathering of students at Birch Creek was the most capable, most motivated yet. The institution’s rising reputation has brought increasingly fine young people; the results prove the hypothesis.

Under the banner, “The Big Band Heritage,” the faculty band coursed through an evening of popular charts, mixing original arrangements with updated perspectives from outstanding newer jazz figures. From Oscar Peterson’s “Hallelujah Time” to “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” “Like Someone in Love” to “Black bottom Blues” and a superb original by Tom Garling, this was as fine and invigorating a romp as one could desire.

The Birch Creek Academy Bands are great ones because of technical excellence and brave hearts of their members, devoted musicians who return year after year to dedicate themselves to their students and to share their unending passion for performing with each other, for the audiences and before those young players in their care. There is not a whiff of falseness in anything these artists undertake. Their art is pure and unfettered, incandescent and imbued with an integrity that cannot be breached. All who come within their orbit feel this and carry away something abiding and uplifting.

Too effusive? We don’t think so.

Among the treasures brought by this soft summer night were trombonist Audrey Morrison’s deliciously droll “Makin’ Whoopee” in which tone and phrasing were all of an impossible-to-resist piece, and a joint venture by Steve Fulton (flugelhorn) and Anton Denner (alto), cunningly woven, mellow in tone and temperament. Tenor saxophonist Danny Norton was a source of strength in “Grove Merchant” and Tom Garling was galvanizing in his own “Metamorphasis,” unfurling his burnished trombone tone with absolute authority; this man is a decidedly gifted composer/arranger. A roistering “Rockin’ in Rhythm” from the Duke Ellington book had Bob Chmel powering his way through the chart with shuffle-footed momentum that was quintessentially Ellington in style.

Chmel, who has such respect and affection from his students, has the full panoply of drumming literature at hand, plus a burning urgency in making each performance special. He is, undeniably, one of the great ones. Mike Stryker has become, during just a half decade, one of our favorite jazz pianists, often pursuing oblique figurations to bring freshness to his work and illuminate each piece even as he offers extraordinarily apt support to the colleagues with whom he collaborates. Completing this memorable rhythm section were guitarist Will Chapin and Program Director Jeff Campbell playing bass – magnificently (he’s a pretty engaging and amusing host as well!).

Each member of the band deserves credit for both personality and performance. We’ll just mention again two members of the reed section: Mike Lee and Anton Denner. The former can now play himself into, through and out the other side of absolutely anything, showing all the while complete mastery of harmonic elaboration and technique (no one has greater ease and effectiveness in the highest register). Denner is a section leader and soloist of rare skill, playing with imagination and handsome tone – a real asset to Birch Creek’s program.

And so, once again, the perennial question: Can Birch Creek really be as terrific as we have led ourselves to believe?

Yes, yes and, again, yes. (Erik Eriksson) Years of experience in listening to music often results in an increased measure of pleasure from hearing young musicians, budding artists, encounter the great traditions in classical music and jazz. Not infrequently, they bring a fresh enthusiasm to music too frequently executed with dull routine by established figures whose enthusiasm has fled, chased by a constant diet of the same thing night after night. The phenomenon of discovery enables Birch Creek to hold out to audiences performances filled to overflowing with the art’s vital juices, substantial and undiluted.

This is, after all, the essential stuff of music – discovery and adventure. Absent that, music dries to powder and vanishes in the wind.

To offer its students maximum opportunities for growth and exposure to audiences, Birch Creek several years ago established the Ambassadors, an elite student combo which is kept busy performing all over Door County during each two-week jazz session. This year’s first edition was one of the best yet, talented and well-integrated.

They listen to each other closely.

At a cabaret-type setting in Sister Bay , the sextet could be heard and observed closely; proximity only added to one’s appreciation for what they had to offer. The members were alto saxophonist Alex Weitz from Tucson, Arizona; tenor man Blake Deibel of St. Louis, Missouri; trumpeter Andrew Panzer of Prospect Heights, Illinois; bassist Beau Knippel of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; drummer Bryan Butelefski of Neenah, Wisconsin and pianist Jacob Dupre of Baton Rouge, Louisiana . When we heard them for their Thursday evening’s concert, they had played together only since Monday.

Under the supervision of Steve Fulton, one of today’s finest trumpeters and an involved, knowledgeable instructor, the group tackled a long list of basic jazz standards, sometimes in arrangements close to those which have achieved fame, sometimes in strikingly different takes. As happens in jazz clubs, each player was given the space to create a solo statement that had a logical beginning, a building middle section and a logical conclusion. Each player had the wherewithal to accomplish much of what he desired. Technical security, familiarity with many of the great players on their respective instruments and a palpable conviction about what they were undertaking provided the impetus and incentive for performances that were remarkably satisfying.

Alex Weitz plays with much of the edgy passion that marks the best alto artists. His grasp of glissandi and slurs provides momentum to his phrasing and he articulates his lines with notable drive and conviction. We understand that he also plays tenor, but believe that his is a real alto temperament; he well may find his true pathway with that instrument. On tenor, Blake Deibel offers firm, focused tone and a more laid-back persona. He, too, improvises easily around the changes and shapes his phrases with unruffled authority. Trumpeter Andrew Panzer (who also served as spokesmen for the ensemble), played well on Flugelhorn with a handsome sound and the occasional inclination to step outside home-base tonality to explore parallel harmonies. Bassist Beau Knippel laid down lines that aided the front-line players while maintaining good intonation and crisp fingering. Bryan Butelefski has a considerable arsenal of drum figures and is a propulsive percussionist. Sometimes too loud for the soloists he was accompanying, he simply may have been caught in the resonances emanating from the two walls close to his set-up.

The sixth member of the Ambassadors was in another category altogether. Jacob Dupre, barely 15 years of age, played piano with a fullness that engendered disbelief. Although compact in size, he already has a huge technique, able to encompass the most intricate passagework and the reach to summon large chords, often adding an affecting tremolo a la Oscar Peterson. An uncanny gift for arresting modulation imprints his solo work with a sovereignty given to the very few. His imagination is as vast as his technical means, never stalling out even in the most complex intricacies. When we spoke with him as intermission, he told us that his current teacher has urged him to listen to more contemporary pianists, among them Chick Correa. We replied that we felt he was destined to be a far finer artist than that gentleman. His ability right now is almost Tatumesque – and that’s not stretching things one bit. Oh, and he swings with absolute ferocity. One of the most gifted young artists we’ve encountered in a number of years.

Running through such tunes as “C Jam Blues” “Perdido,” “Blue Monk,” “Chasin’ the Bird,” “When Your Lover has Gone” and “Billy’s Bounce,” the Ambassadors pulled together a double set that would have done credit to many professional combos.

Never discount the young; they can surprise us again and again in ways we cannot always anticipate – and for that we can be glad. (Erik Eriksson)