January 12, 2007 7:30 pm
Oster Regent Theatre, Cedar Falls
Tom Barry, saxophone
Weill – Threepenny Opera Suite
Copland – Music for the Theater
Milhaud – La Création du Monde
CFSO performance adds pizzazz to classic jazz
By Harvey Hess
Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
January, 2007
'All That Jazz,' the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony chamber concert at the Oster-Regent Theatre Friday, lived up to its name and then some.
If Horace’s 'to educate and delight' still applies to how art makes good, music director Jason Weinberger and the orchestra made it pretty darn good. Taking the jazzing up of European music in the 1920s to heart, programming included Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera Suite; Darius Milhaud’s La Creation du Monde and Aaron Copland’s Music for the Theatre.
Weill jazzed up the libertine hysteria, violence, psychosis, decadence and resignedly lugubrious sense of political sell-out in a music manifestly nihilistic, albeit satirical, and cogent … thanks to jazz. No strings: abrasive orchestration and topical satire honk, snarl, thump and rag on the audience, which may have accounted for Weill’s well-nigh, unique triumph in having this work 'take over' the music scene in Berlin, a musical 'night of long knives,' and even folks who went home whistling (in the dark) its catchiest tunes.
Milhaud’s Creation took the idea of orchestra-as-cosmos to a great conclusion. The orchestra outdid itself with timbre, flute flutter-toungueing, blues, you name it, helped by woodwinder Ton Barry (over and over), and top-end musicianship throughout.
Weinberger’s glosses talk up the art yet talk down to the audience not at all. Long may he talk, and even longer conduct … HERE!
Wonderful!
Note: All reviews are edited for length and spelling.