feature photo: Frank Jerke
Michael Leonhart is first called a trumpet player but in reality, he’s an all-around musician who is quite good at a number of things musical. Whether it’s playing that horn, playing other instruments, composing, arranging or producing — he was practically Donald Fagen’s co-equal partner on Fagen’s Sunken Condos LP — Leonhart can do it all. That all said, his latest solo release The Painted Lady Suite reveals for the first time his chops as a composer of major, thematic works and a leader of his own large band. Painted Lady is, in fact, credited to the ‘Michael Leonhart Orchestra.’
Most big band jazz projects are familiar sounding. That might be a polite way of saying, “boring.” There are some contemporary exceptions, of course — Maria Schneider, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society and Satoko Fujii’s large ensembles come to mind — and I’m happy to state that Leonhart’s Orchestra falls into the exceptions category.
Growing up in a musical household, Leonhart has been rather aware early on of the great big bands of the postwar era: Gil Evans, Nelson Riddle, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis, and so on. Arranging and conducting the orchestral backing on Nels Cline’s 2015 Lovers album stoked up his interest in doing this for his own project, and so the Michael Leonhart Orchestra was born, and thus, so was this MLO album.
This isn’t a ‘tribute’ album to all those great conductors and composers of the past, this is Leonhart’s own vision.
An orchestral arranger and leader can write his signature on the band just by how the instruments are arrayed and configured. Leonhart’s band has nine brass players and slightly more — ten — woodwind players, along with a string trio of two violins and a cello. It’s huge and lush, with the strings making a bigger impact on the overall sonority than its size might suggest.
All of this performs side-by-side with a contemporary combo of drums, bass, a quartet of percussion players and Cline’s guitar, with Leonhart himself playing trumpet (natch) and half of dozen of other instruments like organ, accordion and bass harmonica. No drums (sorry, Earle Cooke, Jr. fans).
The scores themselves is the other part of Leonhart’s orchestral signature, and he excels here as well. The meat of this album is the seven-part “The Painted Lady Suite,” which presents a mood representing each leg of the Painted Lady butterfly’s 9,000 mile migration pattern. Leonhart is way more interested in setting a sonic terrain that suggests a place, not cleverly scored twists and sharp turns that’s been done so many times before. “The Experimental Forest, North Dakota,” for example, evokes the mysterious, barren landscape of the Upper Plains, with Cline’s guitar ever so subtly bolstering that mysterious element.
For “Countdown To Saskatchewan” Leonhart builds a gathering swirl of majestic horns around a circular synth figure. On the next segment, “The Arctic Circle,” we are introduced to yet another section of the Orchestra, a choral foursome comprised of Leonhart and three family members (Carolyn, Jamie and Milo), with the overall atmosphere like that of a Ennio Morricone score. Another unique touch is the start/stop contemporary beat meted out of a loose snare. The bleakness of “1500 Feet Above the Sahara (Night)” is aptly conveyed by a dirge-y muted trombone feature (by Ray Mason), with a distant tension brought out by the strings.
Those are just a cross section of devices Leonhart uses to make his orchestral pieces a little out of the ordinary and feel more of this century, not the last one.
The trio of stand-alone compositions offers Leonhart the opportunity to apply elaborate arrangements without the confines of a theme. “In The Kingdom of M.Q.” has a marching cadence with layered on counterpoints and an animated sax solo by Donny McCaslin. “Music your Grandparents Would Like” has all the markings of an imposing Ellington arrangement until Cline crashes in with his nervous guitar skitterings, an inspired old-vs-new pairing. “The Girl From Udaipur” has this certain exotica created by a lithe bass figure, a harmonious blend of horns and strings and once again, the wordless vocals. The last solo is a bass solo taken by the leader’s dad, Jay Leonhart.
Not everyone is cut out to take on such an ambitious project like this but one look at Michael Leonhart’s background makes it undeniably clear that he could handle it. Still, he went beyond what even his vast skill set has suggested. The Painted Lady Suite is now available for purchase, from Sunnyside Records.
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