Maine guitarist/composer Richard Nelson and the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra join forces on Saturday, Sept. 12, at Bowdoin College in Brunswick to celebrate the release of Nelson’s new CD, “Deep River,” as well as Aardvark’s 43rd season. The program, titled Jazz Americana, features Deep River, a multifaceted jazz suite that Nelson composed for the Orchestra, in a re-imagining of American traditional songs from the 1920s and 1930s.
“Deep River” showcases Aardvark vocalist Grace Hughes and guest vocalist Timothy Johnson, who serves on the faculties of Bowdoin College and University of Maine at Augusta. In addition, the band pays tribute to the resilient city of New Orleans a decade after Hurricane Katrina with two staples from the Crescent City, arranged by Mark Harvey: “Down by the Riverside” and “St. James Infirmary Blues.”Aardvark also marks the Billy Strayhorn centennial with his “Chelsea Bridge.”
In many ways, “Deep River” builds upon Nelson’s 2011 album “Pursuit,” which features the 13-piece Maine-based Richard Nelson Large Ensemble and centers on a striking five-movement suite. While he explores similar structural and textural concepts on “Deep River,” he composed the suite specifically for Aardvark.
“(Aardvark is) a very established and stable group with a long and distinguished history,” Nelson said. “Mark Harvey has taken an Ellingtonian approach to leading the band and holding it together for more than 40 years, and I’m informed by that continuity myself. As with Ellington’s band, the personnel has remained remarkably consistent, and I know the group so well that I’m writing specifically for the sound of, say, Jeanne Snodgrass’s trumpet or Bob Pilkington’s trombone.
“I’ve been engaged with music across a wide stylistic spectrum my entire life, and here he was so passionate about this particular slice of it,” Nelson continues. “I was familiar with a lot of these pieces but playing them with my son meant I was living with them in a much more intense way than I would have otherwise. When the opportunity arose for me to do a large-scale piece for Aardvark, with vocalists, I saw that this was my chance to process this music through my own creative sensibility.”
A professor of music who teaches composition and jazz improvisation at the University of Maine at Augusta, Nelson grew up in the East Bay suburbs of San Francisco. He studied music at Sonoma State and UC Berkeley, where he was a member of the UC Jazz Ensemble backing guest masters like Joe Henderson, John Handy and George Duke. A few years after graduating from UC Berkeley in 1977, he headed east to study composition with Donald Erb at Indiana University. The eastward trek continued when he made the move to New York City for doctoral work in composition at Columbia with Mario Davidovsky, while also studying with Bob Brookmeyer and Manny Albam in the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop.
Running through his entire career since settling in New England in the late 1980s is his relationship with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. Founded in 1973 by trumpeter and music director Mark Harvey, the band is known for wide-ranging repertoire featuring original works by Harvey, music of Duke Ellington and diverse concerts spanning jazz, folk, popular and classical traditions. Across its 40-year history, Aardvark has given premieres of more than 170 works for jazz orchestra by Mark Harvey and many other composers. The group appears on twelve CDs, including seven discs from Leo Records. Over the past quarter century Nelson has contributed several pieces to the band’s book, while performing on all of their albums. A core member of the ensemble, he’s maintained his affiliation with Aardvark since moving up to Maine and considers the band to be a vital part of his creative pursuits.
The show, free and open to the public, starts at 7:30 p.m. in Bowdoin’s Studzinski Recital Hall, South Campus Drive, Brunswick. For more information visit www.richardnelsonmusic.com/calendar or call (207) 725-3747.
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