Search - Johann Sebastian Bach, Christian Pezold, David Matthews :: Bach 2000

A handful of musicians, most notably Jacques Loussier and Uri Caine, have successfully adapted the music of J.S. Bach to jazz. Add big band composer and arranger Dave Matthews to that list. With the Manhattan Jazz Orchestra, featuring trumpeters Lew Soloff and Ryan Kisor, alto saxophonist and flutist Bill Evans, bass clarinetist Roger Rosenberg, and bassist Chip Jackson, Matthews reinterprets Bach's music in a swinging way that combines the baroque with the bebop. Recorded as a tribute to the 250th anniversary of Bach's death in 2000, Matthews and company rhythmically reincarnate Bach's "Toccata and Fugue," "Kyrie," and "Minuet (A Lover's Concerto)" into sophisticated no-holds-barred mainstream swing tunes. Matthews adapts Bach's counterpoint to a large ensemble band context on "Invention No. 4" and "Fugue No. 2." The immortal "Air on a G String" retains its atmospheric character in this special Matthews-adapted jazz-ballad form, and "Siciliano" is recast in a Latin-inspired air not unlike Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain. It takes musicians of great depth to successfully pull off the marriage of jazz and classical styles, and David Matthews and his cohorts accomplish it with ease. --Eugene Holley Jr.