Jazz Merges with Classical at Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute

By Michael Jackson I Jun. 27, 2023

Winners, judges and members of the supporting octet at this year’s Bridges Composition Competition.
(Photo: Michael Jackson)

The Ravinia Steans Music Institute, based in Highland Park, Illinois, has been committed to cross-pollinating the disciplines of classical music and jazz for decades, offering personal tuition, master classes and concertizing opportunity to more than 1,600 talented musicians. Originally the brainchild of Ravinia’s executive director Edward Gordon in 1988 as means to connect young musicians with the artists performing at Ravinia, it became known as the Steans Institute thanks to a generous donation from trustee Harrison Steans. To celebrate its 30th year, the RSMI inaugurated The Bridges Composition Competition, which solicits young composers internationally to write new music for two integrated classical string/jazz quartets in pursuit of the David Baker Prize, named in honor of the composer/educator/cellist/trombonist from Indianapolis. Baker (1931–2016) was the lead visionary for the jazz program inaugurated by himself, Rufus Reid and Nathan Davis in 2000.

The fifth annual Bridges awards concert was presented at Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall on June 6, presided over by bassist Reid alongside fellow judges Billy Childs and Steve Wilson.

The three winners of the award, which comes with a $2,500 check and an opportunity to workshop the composition for a week with mentorship from the three judges in collaboration with a supporting jazz-meets-classical octet, included two alumni of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz — trumpeter Julien Knowles and drummer Benjamin Ring — plus Chilean violinist and Berklee alum Brian Urra.

The first half of the concert allowed each of the two quartets to shine separately within their idiom. Cellist Alexander Hersh, in the company of violinists Claire Bourg and Rannveig Narta Sarc and violist Robert Switala, introduced Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in G minor as perhaps the composer’s most experimental of his 68 pieces in the oeuvre. The irregular phrases, dramatic stops and starts in each movement, prefaced by Hersh, were manifested in parenthetical pauses and intense eye contact between the violinists in particular during this exquisite performance.

The second composition showcased the jazz quartet of saxophonist Greg Ward, pianist Glenn Zaleski, bassist Dan Chmieinski and drummer Kenneth Salters, each an RSMI fellow from past years. Ward’s pugnacious but fleet piece “The Contender “ stems from his sessions performing boxing drills with a personal trainer and was featured on his group Rogue Parade’s 2019 release Stomping Off From Greenwood (Greenleaf Music). With its duck-and-dive 5/4 bass line moving like Sugar Ray Robinson, “Contender” ended with querulous final exertions from Ward’s alto, climaxing with a knock-out saxophonic shriek. Ward switched to soprano, his playing still quicksilver though more chaste, for Urra’s composition “Faro de Luz,” an iridescent, impressionistic piece.

DownBeat communicated with Urra after the concert about his classical and jazz influences. “One of the jazz violinists that has influenced me the most in composing is Zach Brock [of Snarky Puppy fame] and from the classical side [Belgian violinist/composer/conductor] Eugène Ysaÿe,” he commented. The ebb-and-flow of Faro de Luz, which came to a scurrying climax, reflects Urra’s background in dance in Chile. “Our traditional dance ‘cueca’ definitely influenced the way I think about music in terms of rhythm. The traditional 6/8 of the dances in my country helped me understand the tradition of my culture and [how to] apply that to my music, as feeling the dance is very important to me.”

“Faro de Luz,” or beacon of light, bespeaks the chiaroscuro of life, where joy and peace can be borne out of darkness. The checkered history of Chile but also the pandemic played their part in Urra’s development. “Political turmoil in my country has for sure affected my generation,” Urra reflected. “My parents and grandparents experienced the dictatorship of Pinochet. Even my grandma and mom were once arrested for being on the street after curfew. The social outbreak of 2019 affected me, too … from far away in Boston it made me feel strange, as I really wanted to be there to experience that deep discomfort united with [my compatriots]. … But I found a way to meet Chileans in Boston and to compose music to pour [out] all those feelings during that time.”

Urra’s piece included antiphonic elements that kept both the classical and jazz musicians engaged. “One of my favorite segments is the section that happens after the exposition and solos,” he remarked. “I decided to leave the piano alone, only with simple chords adding hits on the strings, drums and bass. While this is happening, the drums join with a pattern of 16th notes with brushes. This section is a three-layer ostinato in rhythm and melody. All this happens simultaneously without the hit on ‘1,’ which made it so hard to rehearse and to come across together. This was for sure one of the most challenging part of the piece.”

Icelandic-Slovenian violinist Rannveig Marta Sarc, an RSMI fellow in 2019/2020 and member of the string quartet assigned to interpret the winning compositions, said of the rhythmic complexities of working with the jazz musicians, “We had to count, but not look like we were counting.”

Benjamin Ring’s episodic composition “Mental Gymnastics” connected with Urra’s concepts about overcoming obstacles to reach greater understanding, his music seeking to exemplify peaceful common discourse beyond radical perspectives. As he stated upfront, “It is not just the music, but the hope that it represents.” Despite mention of the “convoluted logic often used by those with extreme and harmful social views, transforming simple ideas into increasingly complex structures,” his score exhibited seamless and transparent logic and featured flutist John Wojciechowski, elsewhere known for tenor saxophone virtuosity. Pianist Zaleski’s consummate keyboard skills, which were evident on his eponymous dedication to the late Wayne Shorter during the first half of the show, were given more space to unfurl during “Mental Gymnastics.”

Prior to Ring’s finale, trumpeter James Davis joined the ensemble to perform Knowles’ “Tempest Quake,” perhaps the most atmospheric composition of the three, since it dealt with the elements, specifically, according to Knowles’ introduction, relating to his being trapped in a blizzard in Reno, Nevada. Mentored by Herbie Hancock, Knowles said Hancock had suggested he pen a meditation about the everyday world or natural phenomena. Ominous tension in the strings, mallet rumbles, whole-tone piano cascades, pedal bass and cymbal scrapes counterweighted the bleak trumpet melody as the tempo rapidly gathered; high descents from the strings preceded a passage of unnerving serenity.

“It was singular experience,” Knowles said as he came offstage, referring to the competition in general. “Amazing mentors in Billy, Rufus and Steve; eight world-class musicians to work with. I will carry this experience with me for the rest of my career.”

Reid was visibly proud of how the competition has gathered momentum since 2018. “For the first we had only 10 entrants, and now, despite the pandemic years which didn’t work so well, we had 35 competitors,” he said. “I have been involved with the RSMI now for 23 years, and it’s great to see the organization getting more widely noticed.”

At a reception following the concert, during which 15 new inductees to the following week’s RSMI jazz course were introduced, Childs summarized to DownBeat: “An extraordinary evening, merging two classical art forms, American classical music and European classical music, from hybrid jazz to Haydn.” DB