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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jazz Group Gives Life To Decades-Old Music

Don Adair Correspondent

Spokane Jazz Orchestra Saturday, Sept. 21, The Met

If jazz fans seem obsessed with the past, it’s because in jazz there is no past.

The great musicians never really die - their spirits live on in later generations - and great music never grows old.

That point was driven home Saturday night as the Spokane Jazz Orchestra opened its new season with a tribute to Charlie Parker starring Parker disciple Lannie Morgan.

Parker died decades ago, and none of the music made Saturday could be described as contemporary, at least not in pop music terms.

Even so, the music pulsed with an urgency that hasn’t diminished a whit since Parker revolutionized jazz in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Parker’s solos were endlessly inventive, and his compositions introduced harmonic concepts that still inform jazz. Both were evidenced Saturday in Morgan’s bold playing and the inventive charts that have been written to frame Parker’s compositions in bigband setting.

Led by trumpeter/music director Dan Keberle, the SJO got off to a shaky start but settled in after two or three tunes and played the heart out of some terrific charts. Changes at key positions in the rhythm section means the SJO will spend some time finding its legs, but by show’s end Saturday, all the cylinders were pumping.

Morgan has enjoyed a durable and sometime stellar career as a Parker interpreter and Saturday played with vigor and great style. His show-closer was “Cherokee,” and Morgan played the Parker solo fingers flying, accompanied only by the rhythm of his chattering key pads.

But Morgan is a multidimensional musician, and his playing on such tunes as “Morgan’s Organ,” his signature tune from the Maynard Ferguson band, was stirring in its own right. The evening’s most compelling piece was a Bill Holman arrangement of Parker’s”Lover Man” that featured an aching Morgan solo.

Vocalist Charlotte Carruthers and her father, Arnie, on piano, joined the SJO for three tunes, the highlight of which was Dizzie Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia,” in which Morgan played beautiful counterpoints to Carruther’s vocals.

Another turn of note was a Dave Stultz trombone solo on the evocative “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.”

, DataTimes