pops go jazz / jazz go pops

July 15, 2003 performance review by Dave Conlin Read

What a difference a year makes! Last year's Boston Pops BSO Pension Fund benefit concert, coming in the wake of Ozawapalooza, set the all-time attendance record at 24,270, and featured James Taylor trying out his jazz singer act with John Pizzarelli's splendid (and seated) accompaniment on guitar.

This inter-regnum year (with guest conductors Masur, de Burgos and others delighting audiences), attendance down to 10,359, 3 weeks after Taylor's sold-out concert (in familiar rock star mode), the BSO laid down dance flooring in the Shed and brought Pizzarelli back for All That Jazz, a program described as "America's favorite dance music from ragtime to contemporary."

Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart's introductory remarks included a cursory definition of 'jazz,' primarily describing it as an amalgamation of numerous musical genres. During intermission, I told my 13 year old nephew Matthew about that aspect of jazz where soloists improvise on choruses, challenging one another by trading licks in a competitive fashion.

By way of illustration, I referred to I've Got Rhythm from the first set, when John Pizzarelli did the improbable of trading licks with himself, matching his tasty guitar playing with impressive scat singing (and thereby also adding 'scat' to Matt's jazz vocabulary).

The concert got off to a rousing start with the lithe Lockhart leading the Pops in John Williams' jazzy overture, Swing Swing Swing, which borrows its basic beat from Sing, Sing, Sing, the Louis Prima composition that closed the concert, with Pizzarelli's drummer Tony Tedesco very nicely wrapping things up.

The Pops swung as hard as such a big group can throughout the evening. To replicate the classic New Orleans combo of jazz' early days, they begat the "Tanglewood Seven" for a winning rendition of Gunther Schuller's transcription of Jelly Roll Morton's Black Bottom Stomp. Before the Pizzarelli Trio came on stage, the Pops delighted the audience on Artie Shaw's Clarinet Concerto, with the BSO's Thomas Martin demonstrating his fine jazz chops.

The talkative Pizzarelli didn't tell us why his four man group is called a trio, but he did tell us he's debt-free because of his familiar tv spots that tout the wonders of casino-patronage. He even played the infectious tune, with a slight revision so it ended "Meet me at Tanglewood."

Just as when we have heard them during the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, Pizzarelli's trio play jazz in demo mode; superb players all, their solos seem rehearsed note for note. Instead of cutting loose and pushing solos to any edge, their ad libs are carefully scripted by the personable Pizzarelli, who owes a big debt to jazz.