Review | Outstanding in the Fields, with Jazz-Colored Lining

The Latest Appearance by the Joshua Bell–Led Academy of St Martin in the Fields Orchestra Featured a World Premiere by Jazz-Inclined Composer Vince Mendoza

By Josef Woodard Tue Apr 09, 2024 | 04:26pm

A funny thing happened at The Granada Theatre last week, when the renowned Academy of St Martin in the Fields orchestra closed out the CAMA “International Series” season. An impressive and full-blown drum kit was perched on center stage. Needless to say, this might be comprehensible at a jazz-oriented show, but is anything but standard practice in orchestral culture.

Soon enough, the audience realized that the “what’s wrong with this picture?” scenario was something very right. Said drum set was expertly played by one Douglas Marriner, a soloist in the world premiere of the fascinating composer-arranger Vince Mendoza’s Flight of Moving Days. Commissioned by the orchestra to honor the centennial of the late, great founder-leader Sir Neville Marriner, Mendoza’s piece featured leader Joshua Bell and Marriner (grandson of Sir Neville) in a felicitous marriage of classical and jazz manners.

It is exceedingly rare to have an actual world premiere by a prominent world-renowned orchestra in our town, and strangely, CAMA didn’t stir up proper promotion or ado about the coup. Last May at the CAMA finale concert, we heard a pair of intriguing premieres — from Gabriella Smith and Ellen Reid — presented as a later part of the L.A. Phil’s weekend. Last week, as impressive as the “straighter” portion of the program was, bolstered by the trusty standard stuff of Brahmss’ Violin Concerto in D and Schumann’s Second Symphony, it was Mendoza’s music that owned this night and made it most memorable.

Mendoza occupies a special position in the music world, as a veteran and respected jazz-centered artist with roots in the classical world, a Los Angeleno who teaches at USC but has developed a strong link in Europe — and is something of a phenom in England, apparently. (Check out last year’s lustrous album Olympians, with longtime associates the Dutch Metropole Orkest.)

That genre-crossing aplomb is clearly evident in Flight of Moving Days, which basks in the spirit of freedom and flight in jazz, but with the structural elegance of a classical sensibility, and echoes of Copland and Ravel in the harmonic palette. On the whole, Flight is an atmospheric piece, steeped in an aura of suspended, probing graces, with protagonist moments for Bell and Marriner the Grand-Younger, the latter of whom dispensed with impressive and subtle improvisatory statements, as the score requests. Count this as one classical-jazz melding which worked wonders.

Joshua Bell on violin with Academy of St Martin in the Fields closing out the CAMA “International Series” at the Granada | Photo: David Bazemore

In his program note, Mendoza writes, “Think of the drum soloist as the uninvited party guest, who in the end changes the direction of the party, to a new and exciting mood.” Duly noted and manifested at the Granada on this significant night.

Following the world premiere, Bell and the always refined Academy then proceeded on its more typical course as a purveyor of deep-dish standard fare. The Brahms Concerto elicited that dreaded noise — applause between movements — but was a forgivable sin, given Bell’s spectacular cadenza (Bell doesn’t seem to have much interest in living composers, but he certainly nails the warhorse-y goods).

After intermission, Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 effectively delivered this orchestra’s measured ensemble mastery, with Bell now joining the lofty rank-and-file group while lending his leading bow in this “conductor-less” outfit.

More broadly, last week’s Academy orchestra concert served as a fitting climax for another fine CAMA season, both via its orchestral “International Series” (the L.A. Phil, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with new maestra Nathalie Stutzmann, and Bell/Academy) and its chamber-sized “Masterseries” roster (mandolinist Avi Avital and accordion virtuoso Hanzhi Wang, pianists Stephen Hough and Hélène Grimaud, and the Sphinx Virtuosi).

And did we mention that CAMA actually hosted a world premiere last week? Suffice to say, Santa Barbara is fortunate to have CAMA in its cultural midst.