After I reached Marcus Shelby on the cellphone at his house in San Francisco he was immersed within the music of Duke Ellington. Actually.
“I’m surrounded by big band charts,” he mentioned, whereas taking a brief break from methodically organizing sheet music despatched to him by pianist Jason Moran in preparation for his or her four-night run within the SFJAZZ Heart’s Miner Auditorium Feb. 6-9.
“These Ellington charts that Jason got his hands on, some are well known and some are rarely played,” Shelby mentioned. “Some we play traditionally, and some are more experimental. In all of them Jason has found interesting episodes where we go off into different vamps or tangents or extensions.”
One in every of jazz’s most influential and restlessly inventive figures, the Houston-raised, Harlem-based Moran has been a bracing presence on the SFJAZZ Heart because it opened. He’s accompanied skate boarders navigating a half-pipe constructed on stage and reinterpreted the joyous music of Fat Waller whereas adorned with a large papier-maché head of the ebullient pianist and composer.
For Moran’s first collaboration with Shelby, who introduced the pianist in a solo recital final week at Healdsburg Jazz’s inaugural Winter Competition, he’s taken a full-spectrum method to the Maestro’s canon. He’s an artist given to large-scale, traditionally knowledgeable productions, however on this case the one guideline was to keep away from a usual-suspects set listing.
“Ellington’s body of work is a vast ocean,” mentioned Moran, whose numerous hats embrace director of jazz programming on the Kennedy Heart. “Too often people will reduce his catalog to seven songs. What?! I’m just choosing the shore that I like, approaching these songs with my love of Ellington. He so deeply informed me as a pianist, partly because of his impact on Thelonious Monk.”
Along with his duties as inventive director of Healdsburg Jazz, Shelby works repeatedly as a sideman and leads a number of ensembles, just like the 14-piece orchestra he’s bringing to the SFJAZZ Heart. However not all of his inventive endeavors get seen within the Bay Space.
He was simply on the East Coast renewing his collaboration and offering musical enter for the singular actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, who commissioned him to create the rating for her 2015 Off Broadway manufacturing “Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education.” She’s creating a brand new theatrical work specializing in the struggles of younger girls on reservations and in interior cities.
Whereas that is his first time sharing the stage with Moran, they independently got here to the identical conclusion that the time was ripe to introduce the Bay Space to a superb younger vocalist who not too long ago completed graduate work on the prestigious Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Efficiency at UCLA.
When Shelby talked about the identify Darynn Dean to Moran he was already properly acquainted with the singer, who hails from an illustrious jazz household because the granddaughter of Les McCann drummer Donald Dean Sr., the daughter of drummer Donald Dean, and cousin of pianist Jamael Dean. The truth is, she’d been one in every of his college students at New England Conservatory.
“We grew very close and I watched as she developed her sense of composition and arranging,” mentioned Moran, whose preparations for Dean embrace the requirements “Come Sunday” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” and the lesser identified “My Heart Sings” and “I Like the Sunrise,” the opening piece from Ellington’s 1947 “Liberian Suite.”
“She moved onto the Hancock Institute, and I’m at a point now that I’m checking in on former students, seeing what opportunities some of them need,” Moran mentioned. “This is my first time working with her on stage, and I’m excited. She doesn’t take any syllable or word for granted.”
She’s not the one rising expertise featured on this system. Shelby’s orchestra options lots of the high gamers within the area, like alto saxophonist Tony Peebles, reed professional Patrick Wolff, trumpeter Mike Olmos, trombonist Joel Behrman, and Melecio Magdaluyo on baritone sax and clarinet. However he’s at all times bought his eye out for younger standouts, like Riley Baker on trombone and tuba.
The son of Clint Baker, a multi-instrumental specialist in early jazz types, and former KCSM-FM “Desert Island Jazz” host Alisa Clancy, the 24-year-old was weaned on jazz rising up in San Bruno.
“I remember the day he was born, talking to Alisa not long afterwards,” Shelby mentioned. “He’s been working with us for the last year, and he’s a complete musician. He’s another one definitely carrying on the family trade.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
JASON MORAN
Presents music of Duke Ellington, with Marcus Shelby Orchestra
When & the place: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6-8, 1 p.m. Feb. 9
The place: SFJAZZ Heart’s Miner Auditorium, San Francisco; $30-$115; www.sfjazz.org
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