Dynamic arrangements by Bienen School of Music students transformed the McClintock Choral and Recital Room into a lively Miles Davis tribute concert Monday night.
Two Bienen Jazz Small Ensembles — the Derrick Gardner and Kevin Fort Ensembles — arranged and performed Davis and his collaborators’ pieces in celebration of his centennial.
Bienen first-year Milo Kaplan, the alto saxophonist in the Kevin Fort Ensemble, said there was a special pressure that came with arranging the music of Davis, who he said is often considered “the greatest jazz musician, if not the greatest musician of all time.”
“To attempt to do something meaningful and unique with this music that’s already so potent was challenging and a bit daunting, but we did our best, and we had a good time with it tonight,” Kaplan said.
Members of the ensembles selected compositions to perform. The concert incorporated decades of music and subgenres of jazz, including bebop and modal jazz, to reflect Davis’ extensive and multifaceted career.
While there was not a lot of homogeneity in the style or era of the arrangements, one common thread throughout the concert was that very few of Miles Davis’ pieces were actually performed.
While introducing their arrangements, the musicians joked with the audience about the lack of original Davis compositions. Kevin Fort, director of the Kevin Fort Ensemble, hypothesized why so much of the music attributed to Davis was not actually written by him.
“He didn’t have to write that much himself because he had these great composers, great musicians, that he played with all the time,” Fort said. “That’s one thing. The other thing is, he tended to put his name on other people’s work when maybe it shouldn’t have.”
The lack of Davis’ tunes did not seem to bother the audience, though. The sold-out crowd gave standing ovations to both ensembles at the end of their performances.
Evanston resident Margarita Redmond said she has been coming to Bienen concerts for years and thought the show was fantastic.
“I’ve been a hardcore aficionado of the student ensemble for a long time,” Redmond said.
Members of the ensembles have, for the most part, been playing together since the beginning of the year.
As the ensemble spent more time playing as a group, Kaplan said they began to learn each other’s musical languages, allowing them to interact more fluidly.
“A big part of jazz is this nonverbal, even nonvisual communication, where we find moments to interact with each other just based on what we hear,” Kaplan said. “That’s only gotten that much easier over the course of playing together for a year.”
Bienen junior and Kevin Fort Ensemble drummer Calvin Simmers said he enjoyed arranging music for the performance because he felt Davis’ vast discography enabled creativity.
Simmers added it felt great to perform music honoring Davis’ legacy.
“Jazz is all about catching fire,” Simmers said. “I felt like there were some nice moments today where we caught fire.”
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