| Zodiac Suite | |
|---|---|
| byMary Lou Williams | |
_-_cropped.jpg) Mary Lou Williams with Milt Orent who assisted with some of the arrangements forZodiac Suite | |
| Year | 1945 (1945) |
| Genre | Fusion ofjazz andclassical |
| Composed | 1942 (1942)–1945 |
| Recorded | 1945 (1945) |
| Movements | 12 |
| Scoring | Chamber jazz group or symphony orchestra |
Zodiac Suite is a series of 12 pieces ofjazz music written by the American jazz pianist and composerMary Lou Williams and first performed in 1945. Thesuite makes use of elements ofclassical music alongside jazz, and Williams was influenced bymodernism when writing and arranging it. Each song in thesuite is inspired by anastrological sign and musicians or performers who were born under it. Williams began writing music forZodiac Suite in 1942 and finished the composition in 1945.
Williams first recorded the suite as part of atrio forAsch records and followed this with two notable performances with larger groups. The first performance was with achamber jazz group and the second was with asymphony orchestra atCarnegie Hall in New York City. These performances took such a toll on Williams that she took a break from performing shortly afterwards.
While the Asch recording was well received bycritics, the contemporary reception to the two concerts was mixed.Zodiac Suite is notable as an early instance of the fusion of classical and jazz music. Williams's recording and initial performances of the suite have been recognised as breakthroughs in thehistory of jazz.
Zodiac Suite is a series of 12 distinct but conceptually linked short pieces of music each representing asign of the zodiac composed by American musicianMary Lou Williams.[1][2] Thesuite was originally written for small group performance: six songs for atrio, five songs for a solopiano and one song for a duet of piano andbass.[3] The music has features ofclassical music alongside the musical language ofblues andjazz.[4][5] A demonstration of this is given in "Aries", where the music moves from the sounds ofboogie-woogie todissonance within the first minute and a half of the piece.Suspended chords,whole-tone scales and contrasting use ofmajor and minor are used throughout the suite.[4] Scholar Richard Thompson noted the wide variance of styles in the suite, which included "20th century European pianopreludes, blues boogie-woogie,vamps,ABA sectional forms, which often contrast jazz and classical writing, free pianocadenzas, standard song progressions and forms."[6] Jazz scholar Mark Tucker proposed that the suite is "part of a larger stream of American composition" which encompasses the work ofPaul Whiteman,Ferde Grofé,Peter DeRose,Alec Wilder,Bix Beiderbecke andWillard Robison. American academicFarah Griffin compared the suite to trumpeterMiles Davis's 1959 albumKind of Blue, and wrote thatZodiac Suite "leaps ahead a decade, previewing the sounds that would dominate the late fifties"[7] Williams later created anorchestral score for the suite based on the influence of American composerDuke Ellington's longer works and European composers likeBéla Bartók,Igor Stravinsky andPaul Hindemith.[1][8] The orchestrated rendering of the suite integrated the individual pieces into a more unified work.[1]
Williams began writingZodiac Suite in 1942 after borrowing a book onastrology. She was interested in the idea of writing music inspired by thestar signs of her musician friends. The first three compositions were for "Scorpio", "Gemini" and "Taurus".[9] Ellington's extended jazz pieceBlack, Brown and Beige had given Williams the idea to create an orchestral work that reached outside of jazz music norms. The suite was also influenced by classical composers such as Bartók. Williams explained that theZodiac Suite was "the beginning of a real fulfilment of one of my ambitions".[8]
Williams had hoped to finish the suite for a live performance on the radio stationWNEW in 1945 withAl Lucas on bass and Jack Parker on drums. By the time of the performance, she still only had compositions for three star signs. The remaining nine signs were improvised live on air.[10] The performance received a positive reception and Williams subsequently recordedZodiac Suite with the same trio forAsch records.[11][12]
Most pieces in the suite were dedicated to or influenced by other performers and their star sign.[13][14] "Aries" was forBen Webster andBillie Holiday; "Taurus" for Duke Ellington; "Gemini" forShorty Baker; "Cancer" forLem Davis; "Leo" forVic Dickenson; "Libra" forArt Tatum,Dizzy Gillespie,Bud Powell,Thelonious Monk,Charlie Parker andJohn Coltrane; "Scorpio" forEthel Waters,Katherine Dunham andAl Lucas; "Sagittarius" forEddie Heywood; "Capricorn" forPearl Primus andFrankie Newton; "Aquarius" forJosh White andEartha Kitt; and "Pisces" forAl Hall andBarney Josephson.[13]
While Williams appeared pleased with the recording for Asch, she had ideas for new ways to perform the suite.[15] She began working on arranging the pieces for larger bands in a concert-hall environment. At the time, Williams had a personal relationship with Milton Orent, anarranger for television networkNBC.[16] With Orent, Williams listened to and discussed the work ofmodernist composers likeArnold Schoenberg and Stravinsky. She credited Orent with influencing her musical growth.[17] Orent worked with Williams on the arrangements but the extent of his input is unclear.[16] The revised score gave more opportunities for improvisation.[18]
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At the end of 1945, Williams performedZodiac Suite atTown Hall withEdmond Hall'schamber-jazz group.[19] Williams had to borrow money to stage the concert. The work required to prepare for the concert was so extensive that Williams took leave from her job atCafé Society to work on it full-time.[20] The performance on 31 December was to a half-empty venue. The musicians were under-rehearsed and struggled with the music's improvisational nature. Williams' piano playing lacked its usual vibrancy, and Orent, who was conducting, lost a page of music which confused the musicians.Critical reaction to the concert was split. Williams herself was severely upset with the performance, and was ill for the following week.[21][22]
The concert was recorded but the tapes were missing when Williams went to retrieve them. They are suspected to have been stolen by the Danish jazz enthusiastTimme Rosenkrantz for use onpirate records in Europe.[23][24] JournalistChris Albertson noted that Rosenkrantz released music fromZodiac Suite on the Selmer record label using different song titles. Williams was never paid for this release.[25] The concert was eventually released in full in the 1990s.[26]
In June 1946, Williams performedZodiac Suite with a 70-membersymphony orchestra at New York'sCarnegie Hall after being approached by the concert promoterNorman Granz.[27][28] Because of the expense of a concert on this scale, Williams again had to pay for some of the organisational expenses.[27] The German jazz criticDan Morgenstern considers the Carnegie Hall concert to be the first time a symphony orchestra performed jazz compositions.[9] Williams was happy with the performance. However, the string section performed poorly, and, according to William's biographer Linda Dahl, the suite "collapsed under the weight of a full orchestra".[29]
The concert was taped, and Williams took precautions to avoid losing the recording as before. She arranged for Rosenkrantz, whom Williams at the time did not suspect of the Town Hall theft, to guard the tapes. The tapes went missing with Rosenkrantz again suspected of purloining them.[30] Working on theZodiac Suite took a physical and emotional toll on Williams, and she subsequently took a break from performing.[31]
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Williams performed parts ofZodiac Suite with a trio in 1947 for anNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People benefit concert atSyracuse University.[32] She had initially been invited by a Syracuse student to perform a symphonic version of the suite, but her fee for this was too high for the university's budget.[33]
In 1957, she performed with the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie at theNewport Jazz Festival a medley of three songs from the suite ("Virgo", "Libre" and "Aries") that was included on analbum of the concert.[34][35] This was one of Williams's first public performances in many years.[36] With the jazz arrangerMelba Liston, Williams planned an arrangement of the suite for the pianist Thelonious Monk but the project never materialised.[37] In 1969, Williams performed music from the suite onVatican Radio.[38]
Pearl Primus, Katherine Dunham andTalley Beatty allchoreographed dances to sections of the suite in the 1940s.[31] The American musicianGeri Allen, who played Williams in the filmKansas City, recordedZodiac Suite Revisited with the Mary Lou Williams Collective in 2006.[39][40][41] In 2021,Zodiac Suite was performed by theNew York Philharmonic, conducted byTito Muñoz, and by theKansas City Jazz Orchestra.[11][39][42] The same year, the pianist Chris Pattishall released an interpretation of the suite calledZodiac.[11][43]
Zodiac Suite was considered novel in jazz music when it was first performed, both thematically and musically, due to its references to and use of classical music.[9][44] The work'ssymphonic nature makes it a precursor to thethird stream genre which combines jazz and classical music.[2] Writer Richard Lawn described the combination of jazz and classical as "unique and groundbreaking".[5] The black community viewed the suite as an accomplishment when it was first performed, and one journalist said the Carnegie Hall concert "completely eroded the whites-only barrier to the Carnegie Hall stage."[45] Both Lawn and theEncyclopedia of African American Music view the suite as a breakthrough for women composers.[1][44]Ben Ratliff calledZodiac Suite "beautifully coherent" and noted the strong feminine expression in the "unmacho" music.[46]
Jazz reviewers had an overall positive response to Williams's Asch recording.[47] The album was chosen byThe Record Review as their record of the month and was one ofMetronome's albums of the year.[37][47] In his review of the reissue of the album, Tucker wrote that the recording highlights Williams's ability "not just as composer but as improviser".[48] In 2020, the album was inducted into theGrammy Hall of Fame.[37] At the time, the Town Hall arrangement received encouraging reviews from jazz critics, but classical music critics were mostly less sympathetic.Paul Bowles described the performance as "neither fish nor foul" in its attempt to marry American jazz andFrench impressionism.[49] A review inThe New York Times called the suite "rather ambitious" and "scarcely a jazz piece at all".[50]Barry Ulanov deemed the concert a "brave try, a partial success" as well as the "music of the future".[24] The Town Hall performance is placed byThe Penguin Jazz Guide as a "key moment in the recognition of jazz as an important twentieth-century music".[51] Williams said thatZodiac Suite earned her "the name of musician's musician instead of the Boogie Woogie Queen".[52]
Zodiac Suite is composed of
Time lengths given above reference the original 1945 Asch recording.[53]
Chris Pattishall:
Mary Lou Williams:
The Mary Lou Williams Collective (a group consisting of Geri Allen,Andrew Cyrille,Billy Hart,Buster Williams):
Jeong Lim Yang
Umlaut Chamber Orchestra