Search - New Friends of Rhythm :: 1939-47 Performances

Shoot the Schubert to Me Hubert!

Elaine Fine | Charleston, IL | 09/06/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD made of New Friends of Rhythm 78 r.p.m. recordings and radio broadcasts from 1939-1947 could be classified as a jazz recording, but the arrangements by Alan Shulman, the group's cellist, use orchestration techniques he gleaned from a lifetime of experience as a classical musician, composer, and arranger, thereby making this just as easy to think of as a recording of contemporary classical chamber music. The members of the New Friends of Rhythm were members of Toscanini's NBC Symphony who, through the work of Shulman, were able to combine the charm and rhythmic levity of jazz with the tonal beauty and disciplined technical mastery associated with performances of classical chamber music. There is nothing at all stuffy or mannered about the way these musicians approach jazz-influenced adaptations of melodies by Schubert, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Bach, and several other classical composers. It definitely swings.



The group combines a string quartet (the Stuyvesant Quartet) with harp and clarinet (allowing the ensemble to draw from instrumental combinations and colors found in Ravel's "Introduction and Allegro"), and a rhythm section consisting of guitar and bass. The clarinet often plays the lead voice, especially in Shulman's own composition "Mood in Question," which we get to hear played twice: once by Buster Bailey and once by Hank D'Amico; but the harp is really the centerpiece of the ensemble. I imagine that every harp player who hears these magnificent performances by Laura Newell would want to get hold of these arrangements and learn them.



There's something about the spirit of these arrangements and the way that they are played that reminds me of Marx Brothers movies. Like the Marx Brothers, the Shulman brothers (the leader of the ensemble is Alan Shulman's brother Sylvan) combine opulence, precision, and zany humor in a way that is distinctive, and enduring. Throw a fiddle player named Zelly (Zelly Smirnoff) into the mix, put a glowing harp in the center of it all, and it is hard not to make the comparison. And couldn't you just imagine Groucho saying a line like "Shoot the Schubert to me Hubert?""