Jambase review of JFJO’s world premier of Ludwig
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Words by: Dennis Cook | Images by: Rachel D. Hoefling
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey :: 06.12.10 :: OK Mozart Festival :: Bartlesville, OK
Messing with Beethoven is serious business. Foundational artists like Ludwig Van test one’s mettle and force them to grabble with fundamental structures and attitudes, particularly if one wants to put their own stamp on such a codified composer. Few are better suited to the task than Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, who took their joyously avant sensibilities right into the heart of traditionally snooty classical music by overhauling Beethoven’s 3rd & 6th Symphonies using arrangements by Noam Faingold and JFJO. A longtime coming, Ludwig had its world premiere as part of the OK Mozart Festival in Bartlesville, Oklahoma with the 50-piece Bartlesville Symphony Orchestra melding with the forward leaning jazz quartet in an experience that proved as playful, unpredictable and gently exciting as one might hope.
Brian Haas (piano), Josh Raymer (drums), Chris Combs (lap steel) and new addition bassist Jeff Harshberger looked as squeaky clean as I’d ever seen them, excited in their crisp suits and itching to jump into the fruition of a journey that began years ago. Haas has been struggling to adapt Beethoven for ages, and after a false start in Brooklyn earlier this year they found their ideal creative foils in Faingold and Bartlesville Symphony music director Lauren Green, who both grokked how JFJO isn’t like the other children, even when they are playing with a very known quantity like Beethoven. In a pre-concert discussion, Faingold said he realized some time ago that “a classical symphony with acoustic instruments could be way bigger than a metal band.” It’s this kind of outside-the-box perspective that makes him such a good fit for this particular band; though he admitted he was “initially paralyzed by [JFJO's] approach, which really pushed everyone’s boundaries.”
This last point is vitally important with Ludwig because if classical works aren’t doomed to be artifacts laboriously recreated the boundaries must be pushed. We aren’t reading by whale blubber lanterns anymore, and kings don’t decide what’s appropriate music and what isn’t. We are wireless citizens of the world with whole record collections in our pocket. As such, antiquated modes of interpretation come off as particularly dusty, like the French in Vietnam in the ’60s desperately clinging to their privileged colonial existence before the populist uprising. If Beethoven isn’t going to be a relic studied and admired under glass he needs wild creatures like JFJO to dig their nails into his hide and pull out the meat underneath…..
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