Nick Rossi presents a band performing music from Duke Ellington’s small combo repertoire.
Nick Rossi – guitar
Patrick Wolff – alto sax
James dunning – Trumpet
Nathan Tokunga – clarient
Kamrin Ortiz – baritone sax
Rob Reich – piano
Mikiya Matsuda – bass
Riley Baker – drums
A lifelong West Coaster, Nick was born in San Diego, raised in Los Angeles, and has spent the past 30 years in San Francisco. He began playing guitar at the age of 13 and started off by studying with the obscure surf/instrumental guitarist Johnny Fortune. After a move to the Bay Area, Nick immersed himself in the local R&B scene and rose to prominence as a member of The Loved Ones and Ron Silva & The Monarchs. He eventually stepped out to front his own group, the Nick Rossi Set, to local, national, and international acclaim, gradually embracing more and more of a jazz repertoire.
In 2007, Rossi refocused his attention on jazz guitar and dedicated himself to the history and development of the instrument from the 1920s through the 1960s. He studied with Calvin Keys (himself once a student of Irving Ashby) and performed in a variety of jazz-based Bay Area ensembles. Over the past 10+ years he has led a number of his own combos, specializing in classic jazz inspired by his heroes. He also fosters an interest in Italian-American string, modern classical, Western, and Hawaiian music from the first half of the 20th Century.
As a musician who believes strongly in actively engaging with the history of the music, Nick has been involved in numerous projects over the years which have tapped into his talents as a writer, historian, and researcher. He was written for magazines such as The Fretboard Journal and Acoustic Guitar as well as record labels such as Resonance, Ace, and RPM. More recently, Nick has participated in a sprawling retrospective of Benny Goodman’s earliest big band legacy, which includes a mini-survey of jazz guitar through the 1930s.
Nick is also an accomplished painter; an enthusiastic, seasoned traveller; and, during normal times, typically well-dressed; all of which reflects his long-standing interests in art, culture, and style.
Saturday 28 October
Ellington Effect Workshop 32: Amad with David Berger
15:00 (EST)
Amad
Fresh from his State Department tour of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent and following on the heels of his recording with John Coltrane, Ellington created this movement from the mistitled Far East Suite. Aside from Ad Lib On Nippon, which was not part of the original suite but added later, Ellington’s musical postcards from his Mideast travels supplemented by a few Strayhorn pieces captures not only the Arabic and Hindu flavors of that part of the world but always through the eyes and ears of Ellington’s American aesthetic.
Such Sweet Thunder was groundbreaking a few years earlier, but Far East Suite now embraced the 1960s jazz innovations introduced by Miles Davis and then John Coltrane: modality, ostinatos, and a looser more interactive rhythm section. At the same time, Ellington being Ellington, did not forsake his own style and especially not the blues. He claimed that he was not influenced by musical developments outside his band, but he wasn’t ignorant or immune to what the new generation of jazz musicians was doing.
The inherent challenge in modal jazz is creating the drama of tension and release and form. The traditional chord progressions bring with them form and tension and release. Staying on one chord for an extended amount of time can feel stagnant.
This entire movement is in Cm and utilizes the built-in augmented 2nds of the harmonic minor mode as well as some added blues chromatics to create the Arabic tone. Aside from the opening piano intro and the following 16-bar melodic statement at B is G7 for four bars and Cm for four bars (this pattern repeats at C), the rest of the piece, although still in Cm, has only one chord: G7 (the dominant of Cm).
The piano ostinato is joined by the bass, who at times walks the G7 and others returns to the ostinato or a variant of it. Following the intro, Rufus Speedy Jones plays an abbreviated ride pattern in his right hand with a Charleston pattern on the bass drum to reinforce the bass/piano ostinato.
We hear roots of this exotic approach going all the way back to Ellington’s first foray into Middle Eastern music—1936’s Caravan. Although Caravan has come to be played with a Latin beat, the origins of Latin music go back to the Moors in Spain Pre-1492 who had brought their music from the Middle East across North Africa, and into Spain. It became a part of Spanish culture and was then transported to Latin America by the Spanish colonists.
Ellington goes one step further by addressing the Mid-East influence imbedded in a context of swing and blues. Rather than imitating the exotic music he encountered in his travels, he finds a place for it within his own music.
Lawrence Brown may seem like an unlikely soloist to feature on such a modernistic arrangement, but he clearly embraces the role, incorporating the Muslim call to prayer and making it (with its augmented 2nds) the focal point of his solo.
The long stretches of G7 harmony gives Ellington ample time to explore interesting modern voicings first in the saxes and then in the tutti ensemble section where the tricky rhythms create their own excitement. Lawrence Brown comes back with a reprise to finish the piece.
The excellent performance should be no surprise since this chart was in the book for two years before the Far East Suitestudio recording. There was a much earlier recording for a small label, but the inclusion in the suite took more time.
Personnel
Recorded December 19, 1966 New York City for RCA Victor
Reeds: Johnny Hodges (alto sax), Russell Procope (alto sax, clarinet), Jimmy Hamilton (tenor sax, clarinet), Paul Gonsalves (tenor sax), Harry Carney (bari sax)
Trumpets: Cat Anderson, Herbie Jones, Mercer Ellington, Cootie Williams
Trombones: Lawrence Brown, Buster Cooper, Chuck Conners (bass)
Piano: Duke Ellington
Bass: John Lamb
Drums: Rufus Speedy Jones
Form
Intro 6 bars
Vamp 4 bars
Cm strain 16 bars (8 + 8)
G7 vamp 8 bars
G7 theme 32 bars aa’bb’
Sax soli 16 bars (8 + 8)
Tbn. Solo 28 bars (14+14)
Vamp 4 bars
Sax soli #2 20 bars (8 + 12)
Shout Chorus Tutti 19 bars (8 +11)
Tbn. Reprise 16 bars (8+8)
Coda 7 bars
Details here.
