by Dan Emerson
Decades after its heyday, the award-winning Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra is fondly remembered by jazz fans and musicians for its bold, singular sound – and for holding down possibly the longest-running weekly gig in jazz history, nearly 60 years of Monday nights at the Village Vanguard in New York City..
On Wednesday, May 21 at the Dakota, Minnesota’s premiere big band, JazzMN Orchestra, will celebrate the Jones-Lewis Orchestra’s venerable sound, taking on its swinging, innovative arrangements.
Longtime JazzMN drummer Joe Pulice has been designated music director for the 7 p.m. Dakota show. The orchestra procured “professional quality” arrangements of the music composed by Jones, from the University of Minnesota music library, says Pulice, who organized two rehearsals, hired the musicians, and designated the soloists for the Dakota show. With 16 pieces, the orchestra will have five saxophones, four trombones and four trumpets.
“Thad Jones was a prolific writer who wrote a lot of beautiful melodies,” says Pulice, whose 50-year career has included stints with Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd, Jack McDuff, Eric Gavatt and Bernadette Peters, and playing the music of “nearly every” big band composer. “In addition to having very thick, dense chords, he had a lot of counter-melodies going on. Thad’s writing enables the band to swing really hard. Even though he wrote a lot of the songs back in the ’60s ’70s and ’80s they sound as fresh as if they were written last week.”
Pulice, who has played the music of “nearly every” big band composer over the course of his career, says Jones might rank at the top of big band composers. Early in his career, Pulice notes, Jones gained a graduate-level education in blues and swing as trumpeter for the iconic Count Basie Orchestra.
Trumpeter Jones and drummer Lewis formed the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra in in New York in 1965. The band performed for twelve years in its original configuration, including a 1972 tour of the Cold War-era Soviet Union.
The Jones-Lewis partnership collaboration ended in 1978 when Jones suddenly moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, after which the band became the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. Since the death of Lewis in 1990 it has been known as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. They have maintained a Monday-night residency at the Village Vanguard jazz club in New York for five decades.
The band won Grammy Awards for the album Live in Munich in 1978 and for the album Monday Night Live at the Village Vanguard in 2009.
The current incarnation of the band continues the Monday night tradition at the Vanguard. met Thad Jones and started the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at the end of 1965. Beginning in February 1966, the band played every Monday night at the Village Vanguard. Since Lewis’s death in 1990, the band has been called the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, continuing on as the Village Vanguard’s house band.
Since its inception in 1999, the JazzMN Orchestra has staged more than 80 concerts, along with additional festival performances. The Orchestra has featured international jazz artists like Randy Brecker, Kurt Elling, Mike Stern, Arturo Sandoval, Gordon Goodwin, Phil Woods, Nicholas Payton and Paquito D’Rivera.
One of the Midwest’s elite percussionists, Pulice has played drums for the JazzMN Orchestra for 22 years. Winner of the Northern Midwest Regional Louie Bellson/Slingerland Drum Contest, Joe earned three music degrees from the University of Minnesota. And has won two Minnesota Jazz Music Awards.
Based on the two rehearsals getting ready for the Dakota show, “the band sounds so good we’re all excited, and talking about trying to find another (venue) to do it again,” Pulice says.
