LA Phil’s UPbeat Live! Pre-Concert Talk
To listen to the talk, press play below:
Transcript of the pre-concert talk given on December 4, 2022, at Walt Disney Concert Hall
Good afternoon. My name is Marc Gaspard Bolin. I'm a musician, arranger, and ethnomusicologist; and, I teach Jazz in American Culture at UCLA. My students call me Dr. Gabo, and my wife calls me Professor Fabulous, but you can call me Marc.
I'd like to thank Mariam Kaddoura, Samantha Rosas, and the LA Philharmonic for inviting me here today to talk to you about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's famous ballet and subsequent suite, The Nutcracker, along with Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's arrangement of the work.
The Nutcracker premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on December 18, 1892; it's the last of Tchaikovsky's three ballets, the others--as you are most certainly aware--being Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty.
The Nutcracker is based on E.T.A. Hoffman's story "The Nutcracker and the King of Mice." E.T.A. Hoffman was a German Romantic poet and the subject of Jacque Offenbach's opera, The Tales of Hoffman.“
The story of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King was transformed into a ballet by Tchaikovsky and choreographer Marius Petipa, which—along with hot chocolate, string lights, and Home Alone—has become a Christmas-time favorite. The basic plot tells the story of a young German girl who dreams of a Nutcracker Prince, and a fierce battle against a Mouse King with seven heads.
Tchaikovsky and Petipa based their version of The Nutcracker on Hoffman's revision by Alexander Dumas, a well-known French author [are you with me?]
It’s their version reflects what we have come to love as The Nutcracker Ballet.
A bit like a Tchaikovsky “Toy Story,” the enchanting ballet is full of wonderous characters, a Christmas party, a battle scene with mice, and a journey through an enchanted Land of Sweets.
[ACT II]
As the curtain rises, it's Christmas Eve at the Silberhaus family home, where they're hosting their annual Christmas party. The family have gathered in the parlor to decorate a most beautiful Christmas tree in preparation for the party. Once the tree is finished, they welcome the arrival of their family and friends, and the children are summoned. The Silberhaus children, Clara and Fritz, are dancing and playing as they welcome their friends. The party begins.
Herr Silberhaus orders the music begin as presents are given out to the children.
As an owl-topped grandfather clock strikes eight, a mysterious figure enters the room; it's Clara's godfather, Drosselmeyer—a bizarre character in characteristics and appearance. He’s a talented clock and toy maker and who always brings wonderous gifts for the children, including—this year—four life-size and lifelike dolls.
The dolls are wound up, and to everyone's delight, THEY DANCE, each child taking a turn to dance with them. After which, Drosselmeyer has them put away for safekeeping.
The children begin to open their gifts and Drosselmeyer presents two special gifts to his god children, Clara and Fritz. Although his gift to Fritz is quite nice, he gives Clara a wooden nutcracker carved in the shape of a little man, which the other children ignore. As you might predict, Fritz becomes jealous and grabs the Nutcracker from Clara—accidentally breaking it in the process. Clara is heartbroken, but Drosselmeyer fixes the nutcracker with a handkerchief he magically draws from the air.
As the evening grows late, the guests depart and the Silberhaus family retires for the evening. After everyone else has gone to bed, Clara sneaks back to the tree to check on him, falling asleep with the nutcracker in her arms.
Just as she's fallen asleep, the clock--now hosting Drosselmeyer atop it--strikes midnight; she wakes, as strange things begin to happen.
The Christmas tree grows high above her, and the toys around the tree come to life while the room fills with an army of mice, led by the fierce Mouse King.
The nutcracker grows to life size to lead his army of toy gingerbread men and tin soldiers into battle with the mice. As the battle ensues, Clara, afraid, finds protection where she can.
The Mouse King corners the Nutcracker and battles him one-on-one. The Nutcracker seems to be no match for the Mouse King, so Clara throws her slipper at him--as one does--and hits him square on the head, distracting him just long enough for the Nutcracker to stab him. The Mouse King drops to the floor, and the mice run away, carrying off their leader's lifeless body.
As the mice retreat, the nutcracker is transformed into a handsome Prince and takes Clara on a journey to the LAND OF SWEETS, an enchanted forest wonderland where they are welcomed by dancing snowflakes.
The image made real, today, by the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus singing the wordless Waltz of the Snowflakes.
The first act ends.
[ACT II]
The music, thus far, will sound familiar to you, as it is—note-for-note—exactly as Tchaikovsky wrote it. It is here, in the Land of Sweets, that our journey takes a more than subtle turn from the tradition.
The second act opens with an Overture as the Prince escorts Clara to the Land of Sweets.
Everything Clara could see was made of sugar. There are trees laden with sweets, and a gleaming palace built out of jellybeans with a shiny white roof made of icing. They are greeted by the Sugar Plum Fairy. The Prince tells her about their daring battle with the army of mice and how Clara saved him—[remember the slipper to the head maneuver?]
The Sugar Plum fairy rewards them for their bravery with a celebration of dances, including a "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," the now infamous "Tea Dance," a "Trepak," a Russian/Ukrainian folk dance, we can think of today as a celebration of the bravery of the Ukrainian people, the, there's the lovely “Waltz of the Flowers,” and the beloved "Pas de Deux."
Maestro Dudamel utilizes the 1960 arrangement of the Nutcracker Suite arranged by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Ellington's long-time writing partner, to aid in painting the picture.
The Nutcracker Suite is an album by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn recorded on Columbia in May and June 1960 – The album consisted of nine jazz interpretations arranged by Ellington and Strayhorn of the 1892 ballet The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky.
Now, for a little background on this arrangement.
The album, The Nutcracker Suite, represents Ellington’s first album-length project devoted to the work of another composer. In this case, two composers: Tchaikovsky and Billy Strayhorn.
We all know Tchaikovsky and Ellington. But, who was Billy Strayhorn?
Some of you might know him as a pianist, or composer and arranger, composing hits like "Life Is Lonely" (later renamed "Lush Life"), "Take the 'A' Train", and "Chelsea Bridge." Ellington met Strayhorn one night after a show in Pittsburgh. Ellington, asked him to play for him. Strayhorn began to play “Sophisticated Lady,” at first, mimicking exactly how Duke performed it during his set. Then, Strayhorn said, “Well, this is the way I would play it.”
Needless to say, Ellington was impressed. Strayhorn went on to became Ellington’s longtime collaborator of nearly 3 decades!
The equality of billing is not the only thing that makes this recording a standout in Ellington's discography. The arrangement of The Nutcracker Suite was Strayhorn's idea! Strayhorn pitched the idea for the project during a meeting here, in Los Angeles, that included Ellington, producer Irving Townsend, and several band members (trumpeter and violinist, Ray Nance, clarinetist, Jimmy Hamilton, and long-time friend and bandmate, baritone saxophonist and bass clarinetist, Harry Carney).
Now, it's easy enough to imagine why such a project found receptive ears. As a complete LP jazz version of a treasured classic had the potential to generate great crossover appeal (cross-over recordings were fairly new at the time). But, there were very pragmatic reasons why the Nutcracker seemed like a good fit. You see, neither, utilizing the musical form of the suite (that's a group of self-contained instrumental movements of varying character) nor writing in long-form were not new for Ellington.
Suites were an established favorite of the composing partners and made up an appreciable number of pieces within their creative output, such as The Far East Suite, New Orleans Suite, The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, the Latin American Suite, The Queen's Suite (written for the recently deceased monarch of England), Sweet Thursday, based-on John Steinbeck's novel of the same name, and his three Sacred Music concerts, to name a few.
Moreover, as orchestrators and harmonists, Ellington and Strayhorn found inspiration in Claude Debussy, James P. Johnson, Maurice Ravel, William Grant Still, and Harry Lawrence Freeman—the first composer to write a jazz opera, the first opera in the US to be produced by an all-Black production company, and the first opera by an African American to be presented on Broadway.
It is my relationship with Ellington and his fixation on long-form jazz and with jazz opera, in particular, that I find myself here today—even if that relationship is from afar, separated by nearly 50 years.
In the early fall of 2007, I received A commission to complete Duke Ellington's unfinished opera Queenie Pie for the Oakland Opera Theater. I completed the work in 2008, and it's since been performed by the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, the Long Beach Opera, and Chicago Opera Theater. And earlier this year, the Lexington Philharmonic Society commissioned a 15-minute suite of music from the opera to be premiered by the Lexington Philharmonic in collaboration with the University of Kentucky Opera Theater.
Now, I first became aware of The Nutcracker Suite while living and playing music in San Francisco, California; this is the early 2000s. We played a holiday concert featuring Ellington and Strayhorn's Nutcracker Suite with the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra and the Savage Dance Company. It was from this strange meeting, that I became aware of Ellington's breadth as a composer that led me to his unfinished opera.
It was the way Ellington and Strayhorn's arrangements gracefully married Tchaikovsky’s enduring melodies with Ellington's unique musical universe. By unique, I'm referring specifically to Ellington's use of musical color, known as timbre, or tone color, refers to all of the aspects of a musical sound that do not have anything to do with the sound's pitch, loudness, or length. You see, Ellington always had an interesting view toward color, whether visible—color—or audible—timbre. He studied art in high school and in 1916, turned down an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute. He continually experimented with new and interesting ways to create colors through orchestration. Ellington had quite a large sound palette. His compositions are laced with microtonal dissonance, black and blue timbres, falling glissandi or smears and moans—an orchestral sound language that Strayhorn called the “Ellington Effect.” But, in the Nutcracker, there are numerous examples where we can hear Tchaikovsky pushing the writing team into new spaces.
Before we go further, I'd like to take a moment to define a few words or concepts for you: overture, swinging, and arrangement.
An overture is an orchestral piece at the beginning to an opera, play, oratorio, or other, more substantial work; in this case, a Suite. This tradition dates back to the 17th-century when composers wrote short instrumental pieces called a sinfonia or sonata to precede their operas.
Jazz has many characteristics that define it as a genre. One of the most recognizable features is a rhythmic feel known as swing.
Is a highly stylized performance practice by which a musician plays unequal subdivision of the beat, as opposed to an equal subdivision—which is stylistic of the Western classical tradition. It's as much a feel as it is anything else. [SING EXAMPLE OF SWINGING EIGHTH NOTES]
An arrangement in music, in music, is an adaptation of a composition. Arrangements, then, are new works, based upon pre-existing music. They may or may not retain the general character of the original and are often rendered with different instrumentation.
I use the term RE-arrangement here, to denote Ellington and Strayhorn's reworking of material: such as the new and different harmonies, or reharmonizations that are evident throughout the work; their ability to extract entire musical structures for use for the basis of improvisation; the creation of smaller motific fragments as horn riffs to support a soloist or to provide fodder for soloists to interpret; and even flipping beloved melodies on their head—that is, using melodies as a sort of counter-point underneath an improvised solo.
Ellington and Strayhorn's adaptations ciritque the assumed high/low aesthetic hierarchy that was central to the practice of "swinging the classics," like Chappie Willet's arrangement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata, op. 13 ("Pathétique"), Hazel Scott's Two Part Invention in A Minor based on the opening strains of Bach's Invention in A Minor, or Jack Fina's "Bumble Boogie." Ellington and Strayhorn consciously eschewed straightforward jazzed-up renditions and instead virtually recomposed the ballet, using a wide array of techniques, they alter Tchaikovsky more than Stravinsky did Pergolesi for the Pulcinella ballet.
In other words, the writing team don't just put a jazz beat behind Tchaikovsky’s ballet suite. Nor do they simply view Tchaikovsky’s work as a vehicle for exploring extended form in jazz. It's jazz—for sure—but they extend Tchaikovsky's basic ideas and harmonies in new and surprising ways transforming the Nutcracker into something new and strikingly personal.
I'll play examples of each of these in just a bit.
Ellington brought players together from all parts of the nation and incorporated all of their regional styles into his own. Ellington composed for the distinct tonal characteristics of each of the players in the orchestra. His compositions—and in this case, arrangements—were tailor-made for that player's aesthetic personality.
The players you see listed here are the performers that recorded Ellington and Strayhorn’s Nutcracker Suite. Some of whom played with Ellington for the whole of their career: baritone saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinetist Harry Carney and alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges played with Ellington for over 40 years, valve trombonist, Juan Tizol for over 30 years, and Lawrence Brown for nearly 20…
Now, back to the overture.
Ellington and Strayhorn brilliantly channels the jovial formality of the Christmas dance through a more-or-less familiar, highly stylized, medium swing tableaux. Relocating Tchaikovsky to an urban, cosmopolitan, and multicultural space.
Soloists are Paul Gonzalves, "Booty” Wood on trombone with plunger—yes, the common household toilet plunger…it's very common in jazz writing [LOOK UP WITH A SMILE]—to effect the sound in such a wonderful way—and Ray Nance, playing a beautiful solo on open horn. The ensemble’s last chorus gives a first taste of the kind of driving band sound that characterizes the Ellington version of The Nutcracker.
"Toot Toot Tootie Toot" (originally titled "Caliopatootie toot toot tootie Toot"—I kinda wish they'd stuck to that one [LAUGH]) is the closest to its source material, although the innovations set the tone for what is to come. It begins with some absolutely brilliant writing for solo winds and finger cymbals, none of which comes from Tchaikovsky. When the theme appears, Ellington and Strayhorn throw in extra tasty dissonances and unique counterpoint, in the form of rich voicings. Making up what Srayhron called “the Ellington Effect.”
Where Tchaikovsky had piping flutes and bassoons over a quiet string ostinato, Ellington utilizes a split reed section, divided into clarinets and saxes in close alternation, over a relaxed groove in the rhythm section, with forceful interjections from the brass. The melancholy, resonant English horn solo becomes a series of broad smears in the trombones.
I’ll sing it, you respond with a melody or the title, whichever you feel most comfortable doing aloud. Okay? …ready???
[SING] toot toot toot—ie toot…
"Dance of the Reed Pipes," …
Rusty Aceves, a drummer and writer working in the San Francisco Bay Area, wrote, "What-ever Floreadores are, they are not waltz lovers, and this one-time waltz now jumps." "Danse of the Floreadores" turns the lush string writing of Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" into a kaleidoscopic exploration of various wind and brass combos.
Trombonist Booty Woods, bari saxophonist Harry Carney share duties playing the melody, while Booty uses his plunger again [SMILE]
You'll also here clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton and then Ray Nance adding soloistic expressions. But the tremendous trombone solo played by trombonist Lawrence Brown near the end of the piece is my favorite part ….
It's here that Tchaikovsky's Sugar Plum Fairy becomes Ellington and Strayhorn's Sugar-Rum Cherry. Sugar-Rum Cherry sounds like a musical simulacrum of a dramatic noir film where the femme fatale slowly and slyly seduces her victim . . . or a smoke-filled opium den. Maybe both. The piece opens with a delicious sax solo from baritone saxophonist, Harry Carney.
The writing team paints an otherworldly aura over a slow vamp from the drummer with evocative toms, which adds a patina of “cool,” to the mix; moaning saxophones, and occasional smears and growls in the brass are added to induce a pseudo-heroine daze.
Again, you'll hear melodic flipping underneath improvised solos—this time underneath the subtle, husky sounds of Carny and Gonsalves, and smaller motific fragments as accompaniment.
The piece ends with a two-bar melodic fragment borrowed from the opening theme, which is repeated seven times. The effect is a written-out fade-out; yet it imbues the close with the character of a jazzy fantasia.
“Peanut Brittle Brigade (March)”
Here, Ellington and Strayhorn turn a rather plain and perfunctory march, into a scorching stomp. After the ensemble introduces the familiar melody, Ray Nance and Jimmy Hamilton take solos (trumpet and clarinet respectively). Remember me mentioning how Ellington and Strayhorn flip melodies on their head—using main melodies as a sort of counterpoint underneath an improvised solo? You'll hear that technique employed brilliantly here.
Then there is a piano solo slash interlude, one of the few in this Suite, taking the piece to unexpected places, sonically. The ensemble following the piano interlude is a blistering shout chorus that features a five-octave sax figure from the bottom of Harry Carney's baritone to the top of Jimmy Hamilton's clarinet, a hard-charging, off-beat melody by the brass follows… that you should all recognize. The March ends with Paul Gonzalves' tenor sax solo to an ending that should make Tchaikovsky jump out of his grave and dance.
Now, you’ll hear a couple of divertissements—or light confectionary delights—sprinkled throughout this Act as well, such as the infamous tea and candy dances . . .but Dudamel ends the concert today with Tchaikovsky’s original work serving as the finale. It begins with flowers waltzing around the shimmering Dew Drop Fairy before the radiant Sugar Plum Fairy and her elegant Cavalier dance their grand pas de deux.
And ends with the entire Kingdom bidding Clara farewell joins in the final waltz, as she returns home in a magical boat that sails through a glittering night sky. The curtain falls on a final tribute to Clara.
There are several things I’d like you to keep in mind while you listen to the Nutcracker this afternoon:
The Nutcracker is, at its heart, a dance piece. Both the forms Tchaikovsky used to write the Nutcracker and jazz derive from dance; they are both intended for people to dance to the music.
And as such, one tool that Tchaikovsky utilizes better than most, is repetition.
You take a step with your right foot you follow it with your left and then you take a step with your right and you follow it with your left, then right then left, right, left…you get the point.
But, repetition helps create symmetry. It helps to unify a melody. A short melody is repeated.
A new fragment is created for the third phrase, followed by a repeat of the first phrase. It's the melodic equivalent of a steady drumbeat, and serves as an identifying factor for listeners.
Sometimes Tchaikovsky uses it for dramatic effect, taking a short melodic figure and repeating it repeatedly, over and over again.
However, too much of a good thing can get annoying. If a figure is repeated too often, it will start to bore the listener.
I challenge you to listen for and try to predict the repeats, when they will resolve, when large sections will repeat, etc… and, depending on how well you know the piece, it can serve as a focusing tool and quite a fun game to play.
Thank you all so very much.
Do we have time for questions??