L'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal

David Benoit, piano

Over the last quarter century, composer and pianist David Benoit has been a passionate musical innovator committed to the exploration of many different art forms on the American landscape.

A five time Grammy nominee for his extraordinary and seminal contributions to contemporary jazz, Benoit has also embarked on a multi-faceted journey into the classical music world. This has led to guest pianist and conductor spots with numerous top symphonies and philharmonics, four performances at Carnegie Hall (including one with Maestro Leonard Bernstein), a performance on the steps of the Capitol Building with the National Symphony for the annual PBS July 4th event, and the creation of his symphonic tone poem Kobe, a he wrote about a little girl growing up in postwar Japan.

The remarkably versatile Benoit has lent his conducting talents and legendary piano performance skills to a wide variety of settings. As a conductor, he has performed the music of Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Camille Saint-Saëns, Mozart, Francis Poulenc and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. He has given piano performances for Claude Bolling’s Suite For Flute and Jazz Piano, Suite for Cello and Piano, and is scheduled to perform a suite for guitar and piano with Angel Romero at the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s annual fundraising concert. He has performed The Peanuts Piano Concerto with several orchestras as part of his tribute to Charles Schulz and the music of Vince Guaraldi, in conjunction with his 2000 GRP tribute recording Here’s To You, Charlie Brown: 50 Great Years. He is also slated to perform as a guest soloist with Lalo Schifrin and his orchestra.

Combining his virtuosity on the piano with his conducting, Benoit has led concerts with numerous world class orchestras and symphonies: The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The San Francisco Symphony, The Atlanta Symphony, The Dresden Philharmonic, The Philippine Philharmonic, The Toledo Symphony, The New World Orchestra, The San Antonio Symphony, The San Jose Symphony, The Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, The UC Santa Barbara Orchestra and The National Symphony Orchestra.

Benoit has arranged, conducted and performed music for many popular pop and jazz artists over the years, including Russ Freeman and the Rippingtons (he was involved with the band in its formative stages), Kenny Loggins, Patti Austin, Dave Koz, Kenny Rankin, Faith Hill, David Lanz, Cece Winans, David Pack, David Sanborn, The Walt Disney Organization and Brian McKnight. He also paid homage to one of his chief influences, Leonard Bernstein, by playing, arranging and performing on The Songs of West Side Story, an all-star project produced by David Pack, which achieved gold sales status.

Ranee Lee, Jazz singer

Ranee Lee, one of Canada’s greatest jazz vocalists, began her professional stage career as a dancer. From there she moved on to playing drums and tenor saxophone with various touring groups in the United States and Canada. In early ‘70s, Ranee settled in Montreal and her singing took over from past musical endeavours. Since then, she has become one of Canada’s most popular jazz vocalists and recording artists, astounding audiences with her amazing range, flawless phrasing, powerful scatting and profound sensitivity. Miss Lee’s natural flare for dancing and acting makes each performance a dynamic, theatre-like experience. Few vocalists impassion an audience the way Ranee Lee does. She is noted for her flawless delivery of great standards with a style that ranges from sensuous and warm to infectiously energetic. It is no wonder that through the years Ranee has matured into an accomplished songwriter as well; her original tune Until I Was Loved (Just You, Just Me, 2005) is the perfect example of her stunningly soulful, yet buoyant approach to composition. She has settled into a rarefied groove that places her just a little north of Nina Simone and a bit south of Sarah Vaughan… and her phenomenal scatting elevates her to the league of Mel Tormé, Ella Fitzgerald and Mark Murphy.

Michael Dozier, Jazz singer

Michael Dozier followed in his father’s footsteps. Jimmy Dooley, who had a hit record as the lead singer for a group called The Avalons back in the fifties was performing his solo act in nightclubs in Quebec when one day at a matinee, he decided to bring Michael to watch him sing. Before he knew it, Michael was up on stage singing. He was ten years old, and although he had sung at home, it was his very first time in front of live audience. Needless to say it went very well, the audience applauded and one customer even gave him two dollars. Michael Dozier was hooked.

He did backup vocals, both in-studio and live with such established artists as Lara Fabian, Bruno Pelletier, and many others. He toured with Mario Pelchat for the C’est la vie tour as a background vocalist. He also released some dance oriented singles in the early eighties and in 1994, recorded his first solo album entitled Take A Stand with Artiste Records and Paul Lévesque Management.

About 10 years ago he decided to abandon the club scene and found a new passion in musical theatre with Quebec sensation (500 performances) Les Fous du rock and roll. He has also been a regular performer with his own group at the Montreal Casino. He also discovered he had a knack for acting, and after being chosen as the lead role in the play Dead Skirt, studied and attended workshops and has appeared in over a dozen movies such as One Dead Indian, Slow Burn, Flirting with Danger, A Life Interrupted (The Debbie Smith Story).

Program notes

Following the first part of this program, which is devoted to music by jazz pianist David Benoit, we will hear two cornerstones of the American symphonic repertory, the Symphonic Dances from Bernstein’s West Side Story and excerpts from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess.

Leonard Bernstein
Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, August 25, 1918
Died in New York, October 14, 1990

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

Talented pianist, acclaimed composer, sensational conductor, charismatic host, guest professor at Harvard and author, Leonard Bernstein represents one of the best-known and most incredibly multi-talented artists on the American musical scene. As a student of Serge Koussevitzky, he became the conductor’s assistant at the Boston Symphony in 1942, then assistant to Artur Rodzinski at the New York Philharmonic the following year. One afternoon, he served as a last-minute replacement for the indisposed Bruno Walter, and his career skyrocketed. Among other things, he became the first American conductor to lead the orchestra at La Scala in 1953.

Following tryouts in Washington, D.C. in August of 1957, West Side Story went on to a Broadway run of over 700 performances at Winter Garden, followed by a tour and a film directed by Robert Wise in 1961 that won eleven Oscars. The story is a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet, with Capulets and Montagues replaced by rival street gangs – the Jets (first-generation Americans of Irish and Polish descent) and the Sharks (Puerto Ricans). Tony and Maria fall in love but will find it difficult to meet due to the rivalry between their clans.

Dancing constitutes an essential element in West Side Story. Most of Bernstein’s music accompanies a dance of some kind. The suite he drew from the complete score in 1961 contains some of the work’s best-known numbers, including “Somewhere,” which depicts an ideal world where the gangs are joined in friendship, and the romantic “Maria,” sung by Tony when he first meets Maria at a dance.

George Gershwin
Born in Brooklyn, September 26, 1898
Died in Beverly Hills, July 11, 1937

Excerpts from Porgy and Bess

At sixteen, George Gershwin found a job plugging new songs at the New York publishing house of J. H. Remick. Gershwin also composed his own songs, and in 1919 found himself rich with “Swanee,” which became a super hit and sold hundreds of thousands of copies on disc within just a few months. Endowed with a melodic gift and an undeniable genius for rhythmic invention, Gershwin turned out a series of musical comedies incorporating a highly original and clever use of fashionable jazz elements. There included Oh, Kay!, Funny Face, Girl Crazy and Strike Up the Band. From 1924 onward, the lyrics for these shows were written almost entirely by George’s brother Ira.

In 1926, Gershwin read the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward. He immediately contacted the author to discuss collaborating on a folk opera based on this work. Both parties were keen, but Gershwin waited nearly ten years before setting to work, due to a multitude of prior commitments. In the meantime, Heyward and his wife Dorothy had adapted the novel into a play incorporating Negro spirituals.

Gershwin finally found time to write his opera in the summer of 1934. For inspiration and purposes of authenticity, he immersed himself in the Gullah community on James Island (off the coast of South Carolina), where many of the African musical traditions of its residents were still preserved. The music is based on both New York jazz and traditional music of Southern Blacks. In order to provide the broadest possible portrait of Black folksong, Gershwin employed blues, church music, work songs and spirituals within arias and recitatives as normally found in opera.

Heyward’s novel was based on a newspaper article about a Black cripple known as “Goat Sammy,” who commits a crime of passion. The three-act opera takes place on Catfish Row, formerly inhabited by aristocrats but now a run-down, overcrowded seaside tenement building. Gershwin was particularly proud of what he had achieved in Porgy and Bess. David Ewen, the composer’s first biographer, stated that “he never stopped loving each and every bar, never wavered in the conviction that he had produced a work of art.”

The opera was given its first public performance on September 30, 1935 at Boston’s Colonial Theater, then went on to the Alvin Theater in New York for a run of 124 performances. In order not to frighten off audiences, the description “opera” was deliberately withheld.

While many of Porgy’s numbers, including “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” became hits before Gershwin died in 1937, it was only many years later that Porgy and Bess was recognized as a true American opera. (The Metropolitan Opera waited fifty years after the premiere to mount a production in 1985.) Lorin Maazel conducted the first complete recording of the opera in 1976 (many of the numbers having been abridged or cut in the Broadway presentations). Maazel has commented that “Gershwin’s compassion for individuals is Verdian, his comprehension of them Mozartean. His grasp of the folk-spirit is as firm and subtle as Mussorgsky’s, his melodic inventiveness rivals Bellini’s.

Lucie Renaud
Translated by Robert Markow