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Everett Symphony Orchestra

ESO performs Dvorak and Brahms May 29 at Everett Civic Auditorium. For tickets, visit www.everettsymphony.org or call 800-595-4849.

CONTACT THE ENTERPRISE Jocelyn Robinson, News editor jrobinson@heraldnet.com

ESO's 'Night' celebrates American music

By Dale Burrows
For The Enterprise

They called it "A Night of Jazz." I call it a night of firsts: the first night I heard, really heard jazz; and the first night I heard Dr. Paul Elliott Cobbs come alive, I mean really alive, from the tip of his baton to the toes in his shoes. The man was on fire.

Duke Ellington, maybe. But who'd call Ira and George Gershwin and Cole Porter jazz composers?

Not I, not before last Friday night's "Night of Jazz" at Everett Theatre. Before then, I would have called Ellington, the Gershwins and Porter composers of early American pop. Everett Symphony Orchestra moved them into a much bigger category: Jazz; which is to say, the one music this country exports to the rest of the world. Jazz is American music. The time is right. Jazz is us.

Think of the ever-shifting touchiness of a wealthy, moody socialite who smokes, drinks and parties like there was no tomorrow. ESO's sensitive rendering of excerpts from Ellington's "Sophisticated Ladies" shaped that movie stereotype with marvelous, elusive devil-may-care. It was the same likeable, laid-back, take-it-as-it-comes everyone associates with Bourbon Street and Satchmo but touched with Ellington's elegance; a blockbuster concert-opener.

And what's more basic to our notions of romantic love than the Gershwins' "Embraceable You" and "'S Wonderful?" From Ray Charles to LL Cool J, the African-American experience has shaded the same idealism with its own detailed perspective. Porter's "You Do Something To Me" and "Night and Day," same thing.

To that idealism, add Judy Garland's resurrection in the singing style of featured guest artist, Trish Hatley; and presto, you have it. ESO located the roots of Tin Pan Alley and the cotton fields on planet Earth; which is to say, in Jazz; which is to say, in American music.

It's a pity Cobbs didn't show Hatley a little hospitality, the lady sang her heart out. However, that aside, watching the maestro and his orchestra, their give and take, was pure pleasure. No wonder, the man was jazzed being at home.