Longmont resident Wil Swindler has been absorbing the work of the celebrated arranger Gil Evans ever since he became serious about music.
“I’ve been listening to ‘Sketches of Spain’ (the recently rereleased 1959 Miles Davis/Gil Evans collaboration) since I was a teenager. He’s a master orchestrator, and his music really stands the test of time.”
Tonight at Dazzle, alto saxophonist Swindler will lead his group, the Elevenet, in a series of Evans-related performances, with an emphasis on the Evans-Davis works, with plush material from “Sketches,” “Miles Ahead” and “Quiet Nights,” all testaments to Evans’ penchant for providing environments of challenging beauty. Trumpeter and flugelhorn player Gabe Mervine will be spotlighted in the Davis role.
“He (Evans) successfully married the kinds of harmonic structures that had been used in jazz up to that point with the new ideas that were coming out of classical music at the time,” says Swindler, who’s quick to point out that his first name, Wil, is not a self-altered tribute to Gil.
Swindler continues to develop a name for himself locally after relocating to Colorado from Austin, Texas. He was the recent recipient of the coveted Gil Evans Fellowship (“every jazz composer under 35 enters this thing,” he says), so he can further his own style while paying respect to his hero. He hints at a new CD, financed by money awarded from the fellowship, in 2010.
On the surface, it might appear to be a surprising decision to leave the bustling music city of Austin and head to Colorado to help establish a creative identity. But Swindler is pleased with the move; he finds more work here, playing jazz and occasionally with the Fort Collins Symphony, than he would in Texas.
“It’s a weird music scene,” he says of Austin. “I’m just a professional musician in Austin. There’s a place for garage bands, for folk singers — but not necessarily a place for someone like me.”
The Elevenet performs The Music of Gil Evans tonight at 7 at Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge, 930 Lincoln St. $10. Call 303-839-5100.
Nesuhi Ertegun download.
Late last year, the Rhino label issued a monolithic tribute to pioneering Atlantic Records producer Nesuhi Ertegun, lovingly assembled by one of his best-known producer-employees, Joel Dorn, who died the day after completing the project. At $150, the cost was prohibitive to people with just a passing interest in the fantastic Atlantic jazz catalog. That was a shame: The set served as the best possible introduction to anyone wanting to understand many of the music’s innovations from the ’50s to the ’70s.
This past week, Rhino quietly released the “Hommage a Nesuhi” box set in downloadable digital form — at a fraction of the original price. Space doesn’t allow for a comprehensive analysis of the more than five hours of music put together here, but the names tell the story well enough.
John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Roland Kirk, Max Roach, Yusef Lateef and the Modern Jazz Quartet, all in their prime, stand with lesser- knowns like saxophonist/eccentric Eddie Harris and pianists Phineas Newborn Jr. and Ray Bryant, a blues-powered personal favorite whose albums are increasingly difficult to track down.
If you’re new to the warm intellectualism conceived by these artists and this label, you’re in for some serious inspiration. And if you haven’t heard these recordings in a long time, you’ll spend hours if not days reliving their glories. It’s $30 on iTunes.
SET LIST. Two exemplary guitarists, Gene Bertoncini (fun fact: He played in Merv Griffin’s TV band in the ’60s) and Colorado’s Dale Bruning (his fun fact: He was once Bill Frisell’s teacher) perform at the Broadway Music School at 7 tonight . . . bassist Michael Friedman plays a free show at Denver’s City Park tonight. Get information from citypark . . . the Ultraphonic Jazz Orchestra is slated for Jazz@Jack‘s tomorrow . . . Tower of Power will likely overwhelm the Boulder Theater on July 8.
Bret Saunders’ column on jazz appears every other Sunday in A&E. His e-mail address is bret_saunders@hotmail.com.
