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Show
Tunes The Oregon Festival of American Music has spent more than a decade proving that American composers have nothing to be ashamed of in their contributions to the world's orchestral, folk and chamber music. Yet history will credit 20th century American music most for three interrelated innovations: jazz, musicals and popular song. Starting last year, OFAM began exploring show tunes and musicals in a big way, starting at the top with delicious Gershwin extravaganzas. This summer, along with Frank Loesser's popular musical, Guys and Dolls, OFAM presents the music of some of history's greatest songwriters from the amazing eruption of popular song in the 1930s, which fueled the jazz explosion of the next two decades and still radiates today; to cite just a few examples: last month at Luna, techno-chanteuse Joy Askew winningly set Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin" and "I Get a Kick Out of You" to an electro beat, and a new Harold Arlen tribute album features Blondie's Debbie Harry, Rufus Wainwright, and other contemporary singers. The festival kicks off on Thursday, August 7 at the Hult Center with music made famous by Fred Astaire, whose acclaim as a suave dancer has obscured the fact that his movies introduced so many songs that became classics: Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek," "Let's Face the Music and Dance" and "Change Partners," Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern's sublime "The Way You Look Tonight," and many more. Never the most powerful of vocalists, Astaire had a rare gift for conveying character songs' vulnerability and nuance. They'll be performed by the OFAM jazz orchestra led by pianist Dick Hyman and the great clarinetist Ken Peplowski, whose deep experience in this repertoire prevents OFAM from being just another nostalgia trip.
The concert also features the John Pizzarelli Trio. Son of the eminent jazz guitarist (and Stephane Grappelli accompanist) Bucky Pizzarelli, John has (like Harry Connick Jr. and his idol Nat King Cole before him) turned in a poppier direction than many jazz critics can abide, but he's a swinging fret- (and front-) man and singer who was born to this music. This opening gala is probably the best bet if you can make only one concert in the festival's first week. OFAM next presents a series of concerts at the Shedd devoted to the great American songwriters and featuring some of Oregon's best musicians — Mike Denny, Alan Tarpinian, Marilyn Keller — accompanying Peplowski, Hyman and OFAM vet Ian Whitcomb. On Friday afternoon, August 8, the festival explores Richard Rodgers, who has lately gotten his due in recent books and TV documentaries as one of American music's great composers, lucky enough to work with two of the finest lyricists. Personally, I swing more toward the jazzier and darker Lorenz Hart masterpieces such as "My Funny Valentine" than Oscar Hammerstein's later songs from Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, and so many other film and stage musicals, but either way, you can hear some of the grandest music ever written for stage or screen. On Saturday, August 9, Hyman promises to play 100 of the finest songs of the first half of the 20th century, starting with a slew by the master, Jerome Kern, whose music for Showboat was the first great Broadway score, and who continued to compose classics from "Ol' Man River," and "Bill," to "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," and many more. That evening, the festival spotlights Cole Porter, America's wittiest chronicler of high society shenanigans, which tends to overshadow the depth he was capable of reaching in classics like "Love for Sale." His songs' lasting value is evidenced by their fascination for great musicians, including Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra. The illustrious white songwriters of this era built their palaces on foundations laid by African Americans, and OFAM's August 13 concert pays tribute to four of the greatest: Eubie Blake, Fats Waller, Chuck Berry, and America's greatest musical hero, Duke Ellington, who wrote standards (e.g. "Satin Doll") as lasting as any, and, of course, also pioneered an orchestral jazz that has never been equaled. Blake composed "I'm Just Wild About Harry" among other classics, and lived long enough to be lauded on Broadway with the show named after him. Waller, not only a songwriter with few peers, but a fabulous pianist as well, composed "Ain't Misbehavin'" among dozens of other standards, but was said to have sold the rights to many more that appeared under others' names — sometimes in return for the hamburgers he was so fond of. I'm not sure why Chuck Berry's music is here, except that it demonstrates that the bridge between the first great wave of popular music of the 1930s and the second — rock and roll of the 1950s — isn't as long a stretch as it might have seemed at the time.
New Takes on Old Standards Some years back, the pre-eminent New York pianist/arranger/jazz historian Dick Hyman got a phone call from a distant cousin, a jazz singer named Sandy Stewart. Her 16-year-old son, who'd taken up piano a few years earlier, had blossomed into what she thought was prodigious talent. Would Hyman listen to him play? He did, and, suitably impressed, arranged private lessons for the teen with one of New York's finest piano teachers. Within a few years, Bill Charlap was playing piano for legends like Gerry Mulligan, Benny Carter, and Phil Woods, and winning acclaim from esteemed critics like The New Yorker's Whitney Balliett. I read one of those reviews a few years ago, tried one of Charlap's albums, and was blown away by its concise, restrained yet swinging and original take on Tin Pan Alley classics. Charlap's father was a Broadway songwriter, so he was to the manner born, a suit-wearing throwback like the other neo-conservative jazzers who emerged in the last couple of decades, yet with a lightness of touch, economy of expression (think Ahmad Jamal or Wynton Kelly) and inventiveness that make his takes on standards sound fresh and singing rather than mannered or self-conscious — very different from other takes on standards by piano trios led by, say, Keith Jarrett or Brad Mehldau. Charlap may be the hottest pianist in jazz today, proven with guest stints by the likes of Tony Bennett and Shirley Horn on his recent Blue Note albums covering standards. Charlap's tight-as-a-drum trio will perform in three concerts accompanied by Hyman (OFAM's jazz advisor), Peplowski and Shirley Andress. On Thursday afternoon at the Shedd, August 14, they perform music of the incomparable Harold Arlen, whose "Over the Rainbow" (almost cut from The Wizard of Oz) was recently named song of the century by a panel of experts, and whose other classics ("Stormy Weather," "The Man That Got Away," et al) easily place him in the pantheon of American songwriters. A strong competitor for song of the century was the ubiquitous "Stardust," and Charlap devoted his last album to music by its composer, Hoagy Carmichael. Charlap's trio will play Carmichael's music in a Shedd concert that same evening, featuring evocative hits like "Skylark" and "Georgia on My Mind." The astonishingly prolific Irving Berlin is still considered the grandmaster of Tin Pan Alley; the list of classics he composed — from "White Christmas" on — is as long as anyone's, and Charlap & Co. pay tribute to him on Friday afternoon, August 15. These Charlap showcases will probably be the best Eugene jazz shows of the summer. A fair number of the great American songbook classics sport lyrics by the great Dorothy Fields, whose "The Way You Look Tonight" (set to Kern's music) and "I Can't Give You Anything but Love" were the early bookends on a long career that stretched to mid-century classics like "If My Friends Could See Me Now." Fields is one of the female songwriters celebrated in a concert by Steve Stone and the Emerald City Jazz Kings on Saturday, August 16. Another, Kay Swift, was known as much for being George Gershwin's girlfriend as for being an excellent songwriter in her own right, and eventually wound up living on a ranch in Oregon. The show also features music of Ann Ronell ("Willow Weep for Me") and Dana Suesse, who were featured with Swift and Fields in a recent PBS American Masters documentary. OFAM closes with a Cuthbert concert
featuring Rita Moreno accompanied by Hyman et al. From her Oscar-winning
performance in West Side Story forty years ago to her recent turn
in "Oz," Moreno has collected awards (Grammy, Emmies, Tony, Golden
Globe) and acclaim for her acting and singing. Expect a cross between
jazz singing and cabaret from a singer who puts a lot of personality
into these immortal songs.
The festival also features informative chats by experts like author William Zinsser, who just wrote a book on the subject, Hyman, Whitcomb and Eugene's own music mavens Steve Stone and Carl Woideck. There'll also be free screenings of films that boast many of those great songs — Easter Parade, High Society, Singin' in the Rain. By now we've heard so many schlocky versions of these standards (from lounge lizards to slumming classical divas) that your cheese alarm might be ringing, but OFAM bills these concerts as a "new way of hearing" these grand songwriters. In fact, Charlap and the others restore the old way of hearing — reviving the freshness these masterpieces had when they burst into public consciousness so many decades ago. OFAM's musicians and advisors understand this music and its context so well that this presentation of the Great American Songbook will amount to much more than just light summer reading.
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