Great Falls Symphony Association Presents Mood Indigo

Johnathan Armstrong Photo courtesy of Great Falls Symphony Association Featuring the music of legendary Duke Ellington, it’s all that jazz and more when the Great Falls Symphony Association presents Mood Indigo on Saturday, Feb. 15, in the Mansfield Theater. Jazz music’s journey from its beginnings in New Orleans where it was developed by the African American community, encapsulated the essence of blues and ragtime, while showcasing the elements of syncopation, polyrhythms and the freedom of musical expression, and it continues to adapt and influence musical trends. It's Ellington’s healthy disrespect of genre boundaries in his music that inspired GFSA’s Music Director and Conductor Grant Harville’s choice of program that also features guest artist Jonathan Armstrong’s Voluntary Breath, and Twirl!, a composition by Zach Gulaboff Davis, this season’s winner of GFSA’s Second Performance Project. “While calling Voluntary Breath and Twirl! “jazzy” feels a touch reductive given the directions both pieces go, the jazz influence is undeniable in both cases,” says Harville. “I first met composer/saxophonist/improvisor/all-around-wise-man Jonathan Armstrong as colleagues in Idaho; we (and/or the groups we led) shared the stage several times in the ensuing years, and the idea of collaborating on a concerto for him to perform stayed in my mind thereafter,” says Harville. “I’m delighted that the vision has finally had the chance to take shape.” Armstrong’s composition, Voluntary Breath, is the heart-rending (and heart-warming) story of the music he created for his infant son’s medical journey. “Our son was born frighteningly early, at just 1lb., 5oz. at 23 weeks gestation and he would spend nine months total in the NICU,” says Armstrong. “I would attempt to ‘tune’ his sonic environment by singing simple melodies and drones in the key of the alarm sounds, and to the tempo of the machines that kept him alive.” He is 4 years old now and doing great on supplemental oxygen, says Armstrong. Out of all the complications from prematurity, his son’s lungs were, and still are, the most fragile. He spent his first five months on a ventilator. “Breathing, an involuntary system, is something we do without thinking. But when we sit, and focus on it, it is like a profound act. Liberation via meditation. Anchor yourself to the one true moment and simply be. In these moments of radical presence, our breath is voluntary. Breathing in, hold, breathing out, hold.” While many of Duke Ellington’s compositions became jazz standards, he was more than happy to move beyond big-band conventions. His interest in classical music manifested in various ways, including jazz orchestra arrangements of the suites from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Grieg’s Peer Gynt. He also wrote extensively for symphonic orchestra (with or without jazz performers). His composition The River was commissioned by choreographer Alvin Ailey for his American Dance Theater in 1970. The suite uses generic river terminology as symbols for various features on the human experience—birth (“Spring”), pursuit of adventure (“Meander”), backyard play (“Giggling Rapids”) and hazards (“Vortex”). About the section called “The Lake,” Ellington says, “There it is, in all its beauty, God-made and untouched, until people come—people who are God-made and terribly touched by the beauty of the lake. They, in their admiration for it, begin to discover new facets of compatibility in each other, and as a romantic viewpoint develops, they indulge themselves. The whole situation compounds itself into an emotional violence that is even greater than that of the violence of the vortex to come.” Two years ago, GFSA started the Second Performance Project, an initiative designed to provide hearings of works which received premieres but no further performance. While many groups commission new works, it’s not uncommon for these never to be heard again. Zach Gulaboff Davis, this season’ winner, says Twirl! was the compilation of two main aims. “I set about composing Twirl! (because I wanted to) pen a work that would be engaging for each musician on stage, yet equally so for those in the audience. Opening with an almost unassuming, jubilant melody in the clarinet and English horn, the energy rarely ebbs throughout the work’s four minutes. As the work unfolds, the opening melody grows in complexity, interlocking with other instruments and momentarily morphing into warm quietness before the colorful and virtuosic finale,” he says. “It is my hope the music of this work spreads a bit of joy in our often too bleak world.” New amenities for this season’s concerts, held in the Mansfield Theater in downtown Great Falls, include the availability of beer and wine, a free coat check run by the GFSA’s Youth Orchestra, and a Maestro Lounge reception after each concert. The performance begins at 7:30pm. Tickets for Mood Indigostart at $49 for adults, $43 for seniors, $14 for students, and are available online at gfsymphony.org or by calling the Symphony office at 406-453-4102. Broaden your knowledge and appreciation of music with GFSA’s free Symphony Previews with Music Director and Conduction, Grant Harville. The Mood Indigo preview is at Noon on Friday, Feb. 14, at Great Falls College/Montana State University, Room B-101. A Facebook live option will be available. For more information, visit gfsymphony.org/symphony previews. This performance of Mood Indigo is sponsored by Springhill Suites Marriott; Pacific Steel and Recycling; D/A/Davidson. Zach Gulaboff Davis Photo courtesy of Great Falls Symphony Association