From Monday’s Seattle Times:
Earshot | Great American songs, revived
By Hugo Kugiya
Special to The Seattle Times
Now that jazz is the subject of high art and the object of serious, scholarly pursuit, it sometimes seems as if in order to be good, the music ought to be a little uncomfortable to listen to, difficult to grasp, its intent obscured.
And then there is the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, or the SRJO, there to remind us that jazz — before it rightfully earned a place in Lincoln Center, before one could grow up to be a professor of jazz — was an early form of popular music.
That point was hammered home Saturday night at the Nordstrom Recital Hall in the big band’s Great American Songbook IV concert, one of a series of performances featuring thoughtfully interpreted arrangements of songs by America’s greatest popular composers. The popular SRJO concert came in the final weekend of the 17-day Earshot Jazz Festival, which ended Sunday.
Click here to read the entire article.