![]() “For the past couple of months, we have been in talks with the ‘Charlie Brown’ people and the Vince Guaraldi people to get the rights to all of that music,” Ashlock said. Lee Langston will be the vocalist in “The Music of Vince Guaraldi.” Ashlock says they’re planning to give a warm welcome to Charlie Brown and his friends on Dec. Jazz pianist and composer Vince Guaraldi made an immortal contribution to music to the holiday season when he composed the score for “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” First shown on TV in 1964, the show has been a holiday staple ever since. “Certainly we’ll do some older stuff, but I also wanted to think about Bobby Watson and Pat Metheny and Logan Richardson and some of those other figures from contemporary Kansas City.” “For that particular concert I’m planning on diving into music that represents the 100 or so years of Kansas City jazz,” Ashlock said. 27 to 28, the group has a program planned for the Folly that will almost certainly include more Julia Lee. In addition to their regular venue, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, the group will also perform in the Folly Theater. That puts her in that icon status.”Īshlock says this is the first year the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra will be performing in two locations. “She had hits like ‘Come on Over to My House’ and ‘Snatch and Grab It.’ Her songs told a lot of the story of Kansas City. “She was the queen of risqué lyrics and double-entendres,” Ashlock said. Lee said that she specialized in “the songs my mother taught me not to sing.” Lee, born and raised in Kansas City, was a pianist and vocalist in her brother George Lee’s band, which at one time included Charlie Parker. Eboni and I have also talked about doing some Julia Lee songs.” “We’re calling it ‘In the Key of KC,’ which is also the name of our new album,” Ashlock said. “The idea is we’re going to highlight how jazz music is a conversation, both musically and artistically, but also how it’s an ongoing dialogue that we have in Kansas City.”Ī concert featuring Fondren, a wonderful vocalist with quite a local following, will open the season on Sept. “The overarching theme of the season is conversations in jazz,” said Clint Ashlock, the orchestra’s artistic director. Vocalists Eboni Fondren, Lisa Henry and Deborah Brown, pianist John Beasley and saxophonist Bobby Watson will all make an appearance, and there’s a special treat for lovers, like myself, of “ A Charlie Brown Christmas.” The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra celebrates this aspect of jazz with its just-announced 2023-2024 season. All rights reserved.Like classical chamber music, jazz is a conversation between musicians. The politically corrupt context in which these bands flourished, the time of the Pendergast machine, is given a good deal of consideration by the authors, some of which might've been devoted to musicians' accomplishments.Ĭopyright © 2023 Austin Chronicle Corporation. Not enough attention is paid to acknowledged greats like tenormen Don Byas and Ben Webster, let alone admirable but underappreciated stylists, including trumpeter Shorty Baker and tenor saxophonist Dick Wilson. The structure of the book makes sense, as Kansas City jazz was at its height during the big-band era, and most of the top KC soloists and arrangers had connections to these bands. ![]() ![]() These were black outfits, but, happily, the authors include a section on KC's white Coon-Sanders band, which did some early third stream experimentation in the Twenties and early Thirties. The authors concentrate on the Kansas City scene from the ragtime era to the early Forties, building their narrative mainly on the histories of the area's prominent big bands, those of Basie, Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk, Harlan Leonard, and Jay McShann. His band played with unusual grace, his charts airy, informal, and often made up on the spot. Listen to Basie's recordings from that time. During their ascendancy beginning in the Thirties, KC bands were looser, more laid back than East Coast bands like Fletcher Henderson's. Lester Young, Count Basie, and Charlie Parker, among the greatest influences in jazz history, helped distinguish the Kansas City scene. Kansas City has been cited, along with New Orleans, Chicago, and New York, among the most important early jazz centers, but one which, according to authors Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix, has received less attention than it deserves.
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