"These boys," said the visiting professor, "are hot. They are brilliant. They are right on top of the heap." The oddly unpedantic judgment was prompted by a concert last week in Rome's isth century Palazzo Pio. Performing were four young men who make up the American Jazz EnsembleĀa group that has set avant-garde beards to wagging the length of Italy.
Headed by Clarinetist Bill Smith and Pianist Johnny Eaton, the Jazz Ensemble prides itself on being "bilingual," e.g., mixing cool jazz with rigorously difficult modernist works by Roger Sessions, Darius Milhaud, Eaton himself. Whatever it plays, the ensemble likes to force its...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
