Joe Lovano Followed Gunther Schuller Through Tempo Changes

Part of “Rush Hour” was composed after its larger structures were already on tape. Gunther Schuller’s material came first, with strings recorded on one day and woodwinds on another. Joe Lovano then wrote the duets, trios and other small-group pieces that would sit beside it. “I heard what was there and I wrote my pieces to fit in,” he recalled.

The project had begun with Lovano asking Schuller to orchestrate music by Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus. Original material and a standard entered the discussion later. Lovano imagined roughly forty minutes shaped by Schuller and another twenty in smaller combinations, not as two separate programmes but as one record with a deliberate flow.

When the music moved to Lincoln Center, Schuller conducted material from “Rush Hour,” and Lovano was commissioned to write “New York Fascination” for much of the same instrumental world. The live ensemble exposed individual colours rather than doubling them into sections: one trombone, trumpet and tuba, bass and contrabass clarinets, English horn, clarinet, flute and voice. Each line had to stand on its own.

Lovano’s part moved between written phrases and improvised extensions. He had to remain in tune with the ensemble, hear the independent lines around him and watch Schuller for tempo changes or other adjustments. “That was the biggest challenge, to follow a conductor,” he said. The familiar jazz reflex of responding to fellow players now included a musician whose instrument was the whole group.

That did not reduce improvisation to obedience. Lovano still had to shape the tenor line in his own time and preserve the grain of his sound. The difference was that a persuasive solo could not float above the orchestration as though it were fixed scenery. Written and unwritten decisions remained active at once, and an undoubled entrance left little room for inattentive listening.

“Rush Hour on 23rd Street” makes the arrangement audible. The orchestra supplies motion rather than background colour, while Lovano moves between composed material and open space without losing the larger form. His authority comes from remaining recognisably himself while acknowledging every turn around him, including the one signalled by the pair of hands in front of the band.