Sjo Offers ‘Nutcracker’ With A Little Swing

The Spokane Jazz Orchestra is making something of a tradition of performing “The Nutcracker” for the holiday season. No, the band will not be dancing Tchaikovsky’s ballet, but they will play Duke Ellington’s hip rearrangement of the popular Russian music.

As the Duke said, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” So in 1960 he took some of the hot tunes from Tchaikovsky’s 1892 score and made them even hotter.

For those of you who have not heard Ellington’s version, this is an excellent chance to check out a real ear-twister along with a performance of the Duke’s original “Far East Suite.”

Ellington was always experimenting; even in the 1920s he was more interested in exploring his own musical imagination than just writing music for dancing. He wrote more for individual players than for the instruments they played. He wrote concertos to give his soloists more than a chorus. He conceived pieces in extended forms even before the technology was there to record them.

Ellington’s 50-plus years of productivity produced several large-scale suites (including rearranging Edvard Grieg’s “Peer Gynt”), over 50 film scores, sacred music, an opera, a ballet and incidental music for Shakespeare. Clearly this is a man who did more than just write a couple of pop tunes.

He took to heart early advice from composer and violinist Will Marion Cook: “Find the logical way, and when you find it, avoid it. Let your inner self break through and guide you. Don’t try to be anyone else but yourself.” With this credo, Ellington created his own musical world and harmonic language.

Ellington’s “Nutcracker” is a reprocessing of Tchaikovsky’s material through his own ears, with the assistance of his compositional collaborator, Billy Strayhorn. It is not simply a swing version, but a uniquely Ellingtonian view of the substance of the classical work.

The Ellington band toured the world to great acclaim beginning in the ‘30s and exotic sounds frequently found their way into the work of the band leader. The seeds of the “Far East Suite” came from a 1963 U.S. State Department tour which included Jordan, Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon.

Ellington and Strayhorn first composed the four-movement “Impressions of the Far East,” but by 1966 it grew to the nine-movement “Suite.” These sketches really are impressions, with hints of Asian music and modal melodies filtered through jazz and the blues.

The SJO will perform both Ellington suites along with some other tips of the hat to the Duke and a couple of big band seasonal favorites.

CONCERT The Spokane Jazz Orchestra will perform at The Met on Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.50 ($15.50 for students, seniors or military), available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.