Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Walter Gwardyak is the music director and pianist for the New England Jazz Ensemble.
(Photo: Lee Everett)In 1936, the Moscow Children’s Music Theater commissioned composer Sergei Prokofiev to write a symphonic fairy tale to help young audiences learn the instruments of the orchestra. In his opus Peter And The Wolf, the unique sounds of the different instruments conjure up the many characters of the story, serving as mnemonic devices for children.
Now the New England Jazz Ensemble has released its own commissioned version of the Prokofiev work, this time using the instruments of a jazz big band and multiple jazz grooves to tell the classic tale. The eponymous self-produced recording, which contains four other Peter-related compositions, is more than an educational tool. It’s a masterful work of art in its own right.
Arranger/pianist Walter Gwardyak, a founding member and musical director of the NEJE, took on the task of translating Prokofiev’s classical composition into a Third Stream setting. As the musical tale progresses, the players utilize swing, waltz, blues, bossa, salsa, Dixieland and cool jazz. Each character has its own feel, as well as its own instrument, a compositional nuance that “just happened,” Gwardyak said. “I wanted to retain Prokofiev’s melody, because without it people wouldn’t recognize [the piece]. But I took a lot of harmonic and stylistic liberties.”
Taking such liberties is, of course, what jazz musicians always have done. The surprise here is the visceral cohesion of Gwardyak’s arrangement. Flitting about the trees, the bird (represented by a soprano saxophone) warbles in modern jazz. The duck, a muted trumpet, slips into the water to a silky bossa. But when these two argue, their respective voices face off in a heated samba.
Singer Giacomo Gates does for the narration what Gwardyak does for the music. Using Prokofiev’s traditional tale as the source, Gates moved the text into the hipster vernacular, an idiom that comes easily to him. “Working with Giacomo is a dream,” said Gwardyak, who first collaborated with the jazz vocalist two decades ago. “I thought this would be a really great opportunity for him to put his gifts to work.”
The four additional tunes—two treatments of Prokofiev melodies and two thematically related originals—stand in contrast to Gwardyak’s through-composed big band piece. Trumpeter Jeff Holmes and reedist/flutist John Mastroianni both approach the material from a jazz perspective, emphasizing distinctive harmonic developments, melodic extrapolations and improvised solos. “This added color to the album,” said NEJE president and bassist Steven Bulmer, the project’s producer.
From conceptualization through final mastering, the recording, which documents the first American performing arts organization to cast Peter And The Wolf in a jazz setting, took four years to produce. The album was finalized in the last quarter of 2017, strategically timed for Grammy voters’ consideration. “We’re pursuing [a Grammy] in both the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album and Best Children’s Album categories,” Bulmer said. “We’re one of the few jazz ensembles to ever be able to do that.” DB
“What I got from Percy was the dignity of playing the bass,” Buster Williams said of Percy Heath.
Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
The Free Slave, Cosmos Nucleus and Sunset To Dawn: three classic Muse albums being reissued this fall by Timer Traveler Recordings.
Aug 26, 2025 1:32 PM
Record producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman has launched his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler…
This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
Aug 26, 2025 1:31 PM
The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over…
Trio aRT with its avalanche of instrumentation: from left, Pheeroan akLaff, Scott Robinson and Julian Thayer.
Sep 3, 2025 12:03 PM
Trio aRT, a working unit since 1988, shockingly released its very first studio recording this summer. Recorded in…
