Written by C.B. Hanif | 14 March 2010

South Florida has not lacked for jazz festivals over the years, but the road to musical fulfillment for local fans of this great art form has been rocky.

Consider the once-promising Riviera Beach Jazz and Blues Festival, which from 2002 to 2008 drew people from around the Southeast before getting away from its simple musical formula and falling victim to financial mismanagement and political infighting.

When bad weather one year forced a shivering Patti LaBelle from the stage, it could have been seen as an omen of the ills that would shortly sink the festival.

Jazz aficionado Robbie Littles, who helped orchestrate the Riviera festival, remembers when things were different, particularly because of the presence of trumpeter Melton Mustafa, his groups, and the bands he brought in.

Littles recalled being “pleasantly surprised when I saw as many kids from the high school level, particularly black, into jazz and performing down at the Melton Mustafa set.” Littles said that Mustafa, ever the educator, “also would come up and do clinics for the kids at Suncoast High School. We would invite kids from Palm Beach Lakes, Palm Beach Gardens and other high schools, and it was always extremely positive.”

All of which is proof that Mustafa's roots in South Florida run deep, back to the Afro Arts festivals in West Palm Beach that Littles helped spearhead between 1973 and the late 1980s. And that may explain why Mustafa's own festival has been going strong for 14 years now.

“There’s so little live jazz down in South Florida that I’ve just been hungry for it,” Yolanda English said after the Melton Mustafa Jazz Festival closed its two-day run Feb. 13. “I had a night’s full tonight. Just to be able to hear live jazz, period — and especially the orchestra, my goodness, the big band — that’s really priceless down here,” added the Broward County resident, who was back for her second year.

“I’ve been coming since the beginning,” said her friend Brenda Rivers of Miami. What did she like best this night? “For me it was the youth band. I always like to see the talent of the future, and it really was a pleasant rendering we got tonight,” she said, also complimenting the “comfortable atmosphere.”

The long-running event on the campus of Florida Memorial University proved again to be no less than a South Florida jewel, featuring internationally renowned artists assembled by Mustafa, Florida Memorial’s director of jazz studies, in the school’s cozy Lou Rawls Performing Arts Theater.

Miami native son Mustafa not only is a gifted trumpeter, arranger, composer, bandleader and producer. He’s been a headliner at various international jazz festivals, has performed with Count Basie’s, Duke Ellington’s and Woody Herman’s orchestras, and leads his own small groups and big bands.

As in past years, the event on the Miami Gardens campus featured another stellar lineup: trumpeter/composer Charles Tolliver, drummer Victor Lewis, pianist Edward Simon, bassist Ed Howard, saxman Jesse Jones Jr.

“Among the greatest jazz musicians in the world, barring none,” observed Mustafa.

He should know, having played alongside innumerable numbers of the best, from Billy Taylor to Frank Sinatra, Idris Muhammad to Nestor Torres. His festival routinely hosts them. Some are noted music educators themselves to which the university has awarded honorary doctoral degrees, such as James Moody and the late Grover Washington Jr.

In fact, the education aspect is just another that distinguishes the two-day festival. On Friday each year are master workshops during which aspiring students, participating band directors and registered guests learn from some of jazz’s greatest artists. This year’s sessions were streamed live online at theglobaljazznetwork.com.

Saturday’s climax kicked off with the Dillard Performing Arts High School Jazz Band. One might have expected Director Christopher Dorsey’s kids to come off like deer in the bright lights. But they clearly were in their element as they went to work performing such big band standards as the Duke Ellington Orchestra ballad After All.

“We need go down to Dade County and let them see how we swing up here in Broward County,” Dorsey said he had told his students. They proceeded to a rendition of Stolen Moments, featuring various members of the ensemble exhibiting their improvisational skills.

Several of the same kids sat in as the Broward College Jazz Ensemble next took the stage, performing such tunes as the classic On the Sunny Side of the Street.

As always, the Florida Memorial University Presidential Jazz Band, which is supervised by Mustafa, was impressive. The group included two steel pans, three vocalists, a trumpet and rhythm section, and started off with the late trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay. Their soaring, lengthy rendition allowed room for all the musicians to show out, while the steel drums, carrying the melody, added a unique, stirring texture.

Yet the evening was just warming up to an unexpected treat: the Jesse Jones Jr. Quintet, featuring South Florida vocalist Yvonne Brown. Jones’ flute and his alternately sweet and funky alto sax were impeccable. When Mustafa’s brilliant trumpet joined in, the musical magic only heightened.

Following another brief intermission to get things set up came what everyone had waited for: Mustafa’s all-star jazz quartet with Simon, Howard and master drummer Lewis. The set, which featured several original Victor Lewis compositions, concluded with his Hey, It’s Me You’re Talking To, which he said pianist Kenny Barron had inspired.

Even after the jazz legends had forged rhythm and harmony into light, there was more. To cap the night, the quartet morphed into a big band directed by Tolliver. That ensemble delivered with performances such as 'Round Midnight, featuring Tolliver’s trumpet solo. Among other fine renditions was I Want to Talk About You, the Billy Eckstine tune from his big-band days that was immortalized by John Coltrane.

Amid all the joyful noise was one sign of why this is Miami’s longest-running jazz festival: sitting on the back row of the bandstand was the unpretentious Mustafa, who through the years has not been averse to taking a back seat to his invited guests. Next to him was Yamin Bilal Mustafa, his son and another accomplished trumpeter. The evening’s engaging emcee, in fact, was another son, Melton Rashaan Mustafa, music teacher at Broward’s Parkway Middle School and himself a noted saxman.

During a reception following the concert, several Dillard High School apprentices spoke of what it meant to have watched jazz theory in exquisite practice.

“It was pretty amazing,” said saxophonist Brandon Lubin. “I got to see some good players you don’t get to see every day. I got to see Jesse Jones. I appreciated him the most. He had a beautiful sound.”

Fellow saxman Anthony Burrell, on why he was there: “Came here to play, came here to listen to some good music.” And how did it go? “It was fun playing onstage, we got to play some tunes. And we heard some bands. The bands were tight. The last big band was just off the chain. Victor Lewis, killing it. One of the best drummers I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“I was blown away,” said Markus Howell. “I would say as a saxophone player, I liked Jesse Jones, just like Brandon. His sound. What jumped out at me was I could tell he was influenced by Cannonball Adderley, one of my main influences. The big band, Victor Lewis, Melton Mustafa, everyone. I’m just blown away.” Howell aspires “to become a college professor, teach the music, tour.”

Bassist Russell Hall said the Saturday workshops “were a real learning experience. It was great to actually have a one-on-one session with someone who is actually out there and doing it for their living.”

But the masters too appreciated those sessions. “Yesterday I saw some guys of the future,” drummer Lewis said regarding the Saturday workshops. “It’s the same that the older cats saw in me when I was that age, and meanwhile I’m saying, ‘I’m not worthy, but I love this, maybe I’ll get a shot at it.’ And the older cats saw that in me, and they would take a minute to give me a little wisdom, and I’d get some mileage out of it.

"So I saw guys yesterday that don’t even know right now that they’re part of the future of this music. I had to work hard to hold back the tears.”

Littles said Mustafa, Florida Memorial and the current and future legends of jazz have been in a solid groove since the beginning.

“Just as he always put together solid aggregations to bring up to the Riviera Beach Jazz Festival — whether his small group, quartet, or his 18-piece orchestra — at the Florida Memorial set he’s always had, at least the at ones I’ve attended, an array of solid, stellar entertainers. That’s a consistent thread with him: Surround himself with the sharpest people who are available.”

That included that kids, on a night when the underlying theme was increasing support for jazz and other arts programs.

“I was very pleased and awestruck by so much talent on one stage,” said Dr. Sandra Thompson, Florida Memorial’s president, who added that she was tired of hearing the festival called South Florida’s best-kept secret. “The kids were fantastic. Can you imagine as they grow and mature even more? The talent is just phenomenal.”

Said Lynn Fenster, a university trustee: “I thought it was probably about as good as you’re going to see anyplace in this country. I sat here crying to think that we can have such fabulous kids and nobody would know it. And tonight a lot of people knew it. There wasn’t anybody on that stage tonight, even the young orchestras, who couldn’t go anyplace and play. It was scary. I think our music school can really put us on the map.”

Sumner Hutcheson, vice president for institutional advancement, noted that the university “is very proud of the fact that we have such professional artists as Melton Mustafa, and Dr. Dawn Batson (chair of the visual and performing arts department), who are excellent performers in their own right but also are encouraging the students.”

Hutcheson expressed excitement about the university winning an $80,000 Knight Foundation challenge grant to support scholarships. But he also encouraged alumni, friends and friends of jazz “to help support these fine programs and mostly the students.”

Throughout the evening, Mustafa echoed that appeal.

His focus continues to be on promoting his fellow legends while they’re still here, and on delivering classical African-American music to new generations to be kept alive and pure.

And his gem of a South Florida festival, in the midst of its second decade and dear to music lovers as diverse as humanity, continues to be a credit to that music, to its music makers and to their fans.

For more on the festival, visit www.meltonmustafa.com or www.msmartsinc.org. For more on The Global Jazz Network, visit www.theglobaljazznetwork.com.

C.B. Hanif is a writer, editor and consultant at www.cbhanif.com.

Written by Greg Stepanich | 12 March 2010

In his recent study of Sergei Prokofiev's Soviet career, the musicologist Simon Morrison reveals that the composer was a huge movie buff, and that for one tantalizing moment, had a chance to do a film score in Hollywood for Paramount.

It didn't happen, but Prokofiev never stopped trying to write theater and film scores in the Soviet Union, and with Sergei Eisenstein in 1938, he crafted a soundtrack that stands up quite well as absolute music, which is why the cantata he fashioned from it shows up on ambitious symphonic programs.

At the Festival of the Arts Boca on Wednesday night, that Prokofiev-Eisenstein collaboration, Alexander Nevsky, was seen in its entirety while the score was played live by the Russian National Orchestra. The Seraphic Fire concert choir sang the choral parts, and the young mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor offered a beautiful reading of the solo aria that appears toward the end of the film.

Presenting the movie as the focus of an orchestral concert was an interesting and largely successful idea, and came a couple months after a similar event this season: a showing of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, with a live Shostakovich score played by an augmented Palm Beach Symphony. But that film is silent, and while Nevsky doesn't have an overwhelming amount of dialogue, there are long patches of musical silence while the characters above act out the 13th-century story of how an early defender of the Russian homeland thwarted an invasion by Germanic tribes.

Those pauses made things somewhat awkward at times, also affected some of the playing, with some intonation lapses as instruments were warmed back up. But for the most part, the RNO played well under conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos. Much of the Nevsky score is big and bustling, and the orchestra gave it the appropriate gusto as it accompanied battle scenes, celebrations and religious blessing ceremonies on the screen above.

Seraphic Fire sang its hymns to Mother Russia (Arise, Russian people, for one) with a kind of brute strength that was very appropriate for the music and the drama, and at times it had you wishing for a performance of the cantata to hear this music at a closer remove. Most compelling of all was O'Connor, whose dark, smoky voice added poignancy to the aria Respond, bright falcons, a lovely tune that Prokofiev made sure to repeat in the orchestra afterward.

O'Connor's appearance was necessarily much too brief, and like Seraphic Fire, her singing increased the appetite for more of them and less of the film.

The audience followed the Nevsky film carefully, it seemed to me, sticking with it despite its stilted, declamatory acting and its nakedly propagandistic purpose. But there doubtless were many in the audience with memories of World War II, and surely it seemed prophetic to them; when the film was made, the Soviets fully expected to have to fight the Third Reich, which was then taking over Czechoslovakia and casting its malevolent eye at Poland.

And indeed it was the difficult weather and the vast, stubbornly defended terrain that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany's attempt to subjugate the Soviets a few years later, which should have made Nevsky required viewing in the halls of the German high command.

The performance was marred by some sort of structural element for the tent that repeatedly banged against the metal in Wednesday's high winds, making it that much more difficult to keep your attention during moments of cinematic quiet, and one hopes that's been fixed for the remaining nights of performances.

The concert opened with a world premiere, a setting for chorus and orchestra by the American philanthropist and composer Gordon Getty of Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Getty's overture Plump Jack was a feature of last year's Boca festival, and this year's contribution was, like the overture, mildly interesting.

Getty's tonal language here was modern but conservative and evoked the gloom of the poem's famous lines -- The sedge has wither'd from the lake/And no birds sing -- with slow, stern phrases and the kinds of harmonies that were similar to Prokofiev's, especially when heard back-to-back. Seraphic Fire conductor Patrick Dupré Quigley led the respectful, well-sung performance.

Tonight's performance at the Festival of the Arts Boca 2010 features 15-year-old American pianist Conrad Tao in the Rachmaninov Third Concerto (in D minor, Op. 30), and the Kyrgyz-born jazz phenomenon Eldar Djangirov in his own Iris and music by Duke Ellington. Constantine Kitsopoulos conducts the Russian National Orchestra in the concert, which also includes music by Shostakovich (Festive Overture, Tahiti Trot), Rimsky-Korsakov (the overture to May Night) and Bernstein (Slava!) 7 p.m., Count de Hoernle Amphitheater, Mizner Park. Tickets: $25-$150. Call 866-571-2787 or visit www.festivaloftheartsboca.org.

Written by Greg Stepanich | 07 March 2010

She opened the New York Philharmonic's current season with an infrequently heard song cycle by Olivier Messiaen, and her newest album is a collection of rarities from the verismo composers of the late 19th century.

One of the best things about Renée Fleming is her fondness for fresh, interesting repertoire, and the soprano offered ample evidence of this side of her art as she opened the Festival of the Arts Boca 2010 in Mizner Park on Saturday night.

A chatty, friendly presence on stage, dressed for the first half in green and the second in a grayish silver with a black wrap ("This is my summer dress," she said to laughter from the large, slightly chilled crowd. "I'm so disappointed."), Fleming joined conductor Patrick Summers and the Russian National Orchestra at the Count de Hoernle Amphitheater for an evening of arias and songs that ranged from bel canto to classic Broadway.

Fleming was in strong voice for most of the night, with the velvety lower range that has made her singing so distinctive in full flower, and her highest notes powerful without being shrill. In her very first aria, the coloratura showstopper D'amor al dolce impero, from Rossini's 1817 opera Armida, all of Fleming's beautifully rounded instrument could be heard, bottom to top, as she nimbly negotiated the busy embellishments of its repeats.

After an impressive Casta diva, the standout aria from Bellini's Norma, Fleming moved to Tchaikovsky, presenting one of her signature pieces -- the Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin -- and something most unusual, an attractive aria (Pochudilis mne budto golosa) from The Oprichnik, an earlier (1871-4) Tchaikovsky opera.

The Onegin scene showed also that Fleming is a first-rate singing actress. She fully engages herself with the text, and in the climactic pages of this aria, with its famous descending-scale motif, Fleming sang with a straightforward purity that expertly mirrored Tatyana's painful honesty in offering her heart and her life to a man who is about to reject her.

That first half of Fleming's concert also featured the orchestra in the overture to Norma as well as the overture to Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila. Both were played with intensity and drive by this big band, though perhaps with less of the precision the group demonstrated last year under its chief conductor, Mikhail Pletnev.

Fleming opened the second half with a lovely quartet of songs by Richard Strauss -- Ständchen, Freundliche Vision, Winterweihe and Zueignung -- in which she could float her voice luxuriantly above the rich orchestration, and did so. She is a fine exponent of this repertoire, and in Winterweihe, her avowed favorite of the four, she brought an added layer of warmth and earnestness to its lullaby-like melody that dipped into the bottom of her range.

A verismo package of arias by Leoncavallo, Giordano and Mascagni that followed the Strauss (and the Intermezzo from Puccini's Manon Lescaut) offered not just good singing, but revelation. Here is a body of overlooked music by Puccini's contemporaries that deserves to be heard more often, and Saturday night's audience gave them generous applause.

After beginning with a marvelously judged reading of the great farewell aria (Donde lieta usci al tuo grido) of Mimì from Act III of Puccini's La Bohème, Fleming sang two arias from Leoncavallo's treatment of the same story, which at the time was a source of bitter dispute between the two composers that destroyed their friendship. And the Leoncavallo version has much fine music, including Testa adorata, a wonderful aria for Marcello that was popular with an older generation of tenors.

Fleming sang two playful, witty arias of similar character, the better of which, Musette svaria sulla bocca viva, was a reminder in its melody and layout that Leoncavallo is also the composer of Mattinata (perhaps best-known in its pop-crooner version as You're Breaking My Heart). In this and the second aria (Mimi Pinson, la biondinetta), Fleming sang with charm and sparkle.

Giordano's death scene for Loris from Fedora (Troppo tardi! Tutto tramonta, tutto dilegua), which features a reminiscence of that opera's hit tune, Amor ti vieta, was in Fleming's hands moving and deeply affecting. Best of all was Un dì (ero piccina), from Iris, Mascagni's Japanese-themed opera of 1898. A smartly paced aria based on swiftly moving back-and-forth minor chords and a catchy modal melody, this is a most effective theatrical piece even without the stage, and Fleming made a marvelous case for it.

A lush performance of the first Hungarian Dance (in G minor) of Brahms served as a nice crossover transition to Fleming's final set, two songs by Richard Rodgers: Hello, Young Lovers, from The King and I, and You'll Never Walk Alone, from Carousel. Fleming used a handheld microphone for these plush songs, perhaps because her voice had begun to tire, and also to help make herself heard above the elaborate arrangements here, which were replete with wind solos and numerous harmonic changes from the original.

The arrangement was misguidedly busy on Hello, Young Lovers, but quite effective on You'll Never Walk Alone, with a strong trumpet motif that led the way in the middle to a massive brass statement. Fleming had plenty of stamina left for the higher reaches of You'll Never Walk Alone, and after a standing, shouting demonstration from the audience (which in any case had handed her its collective heart during the Puccini), sang two encores: I Feel Pretty and Somewhere, from Bernstein's West Side Story.

Although some of the topical rewrites of the I Feel Pretty lyrics, reflecting Fleming's receipt of the keys of the city, weren't really necessary, she sang both of these songs with the same sense of style, dedication and general excellence that distinguished this concert, and that continues to distinguish this artist's inquisitive, intelligent career choices.

The Festival of the Arts Boca 2010 continues today with two literature events. Author Noël Riley Fitch will speak at 4 p.m. in the Cultural Arts Center on the second floor Plaza Real in Mizner Park; her lecture is titled Appetite for Life: Writing the Story of Julia Child. At 7 p.m. tonight at the Count de Hoernle Amphitheater, writer David Brooks of The New York Times gives a talk on the current political outlook. Tickets: $25-$50. For tickets, call 866-571-2787; for more information, call 561-368-8445 or visit www.festivaloftheartsboca.org.

Written by Bill Meredith | 03 March 2010

At the age of 23, most jazz musicians are still figuratively getting their feet wet in both their art and their lives. Which puts young pianist Eldar Djangirov at least up to his waist by comparison.

Going by only his first name since starting his recording career nine years ago, Eldar (eldarjazz.com) released Virtue, his sixth CD overall and fourth for Sony Masterworks, last August. The largely-original disc is adventurous and unpredictable; a maze of complex melodies, rhythms and harmonies that illustrate how far beyond his years this young pianist and composer is.

"I was writing this record over the course of about a year-and-a-half," Eldar says, "while soaking up as much music and practicing as much as I could. Many of the tunes started as certain experiments, and little by little, each one developed into its own form. Some expanded slowly; others fast into complete tunes. I've been on the road for the record for about six months, and the response and appreciation has been really good, especially in Europe. People seemed really into it over there, and also in New York City and on the West Coast."

In the liner notes to Virtue, Eldar calls the music "a fitting soundtrack to my life and the things I have seen and experienced while living in New York City since 2007." That soundtrack, complete with recording partners Armando Gola (bass), Ludwig Afonso (drums) and Felipe Lamoglia (saxophone), will be on display March 11 at the Count de Hoernle Amphitheater in Boca Raton's Mizner Park as part of Festival of the Arts Boca.

"I found the right core band for this record, musicians who could take what I was writing, put it in their own terms, and know what to do with the vocabulary,” he said. “I met Armando while he was playing with Arturo Sandoval, and Armando introduced me to Ludwig. We ended up playing for about 10 hours the first day we got together.

Then we did a tour where we started experimenting with some of the material that ended up on ‘Virtue.’ When we went into the studio, there was an evolution and a confidence. Everything had become more clear through being on the road beforehand."

The pianist's other festival performance is at the amphitheater on March 12 with the Russian National Orchestra. The classical guest appearance gives a clue as to where Eldar's serpentining journey to the Big Apple began, both geographically and musically. And it's a musical roadmap unlike any other.

Eldar Djangirov was born Jan. 28, 1987, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in the former Soviet Union. His mother Tatiana Djangirov, a local music instructor, started teaching him classical piano lessons at age 5. Eldar was playing at a Russian jazz festival by age 9, where he caught the ear of American jazz supporter Charles McWhorter, who recommended the young pianist for a summer jazz camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.

While Eldar attended the camp at age 11, the Djangirov family settled in Kansas City, the Midwestern town where Charlie Parker -- and a great deal of jazz history -- was born.

"I spent a lot of time in both the Missouri and Kansas sides of Kansas City," says Eldar, who still speaks Russian fluently, and has only a hint of an accent when he speaks English. "They were only a few streets apart where I lived. The town was really vibrant while I was there, and there were so many older musicians that I could learn from."

It didn't take long for Eldar's open ears and promising future to be recognized by jazz royalty. He became the youngest guest ever to appear on venerable British pianist Marian McPartland's National Public Radio program Piano Jazz at age 12, and Dave Brubeck wrote a letter to immigration authorities to recommend that he be allowed to stay in the United States.

That wish was granted, and the young pianist celebrated by releasing his independent debut, Eldar, at the ripe age of 14. That same year, he won the student jazz piano competition at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Idaho.

"Growing up while having a recording career has been very interesting," Eldar says with a laugh. "It has its pluses and minuses, but the important thing is to keep playing and composing. I was brought up learning classical music through my mother, and it’s still a big part of my daily practice routine. You use certain parts of your brain playing classical, and others playing jazz. Oscar Peterson was the first jazz pianist I ever heard, and he had a huge impact. My father Emil, who was a doctor in mechanical engineering and traveled through the Soviet Union, collected jazz records and introduced me to Oscar. I've opened some shows for Dave Brubeck, too. I have a lot of respect for him, and I'm thankful for all of his support."

Other influences include Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. Eldar's sophomore effort, Handprints, was released in 2003, and he was signed to the Sony Classical label the following year. His 2005 major label debut, also titled Eldar, featured saxophonist Michael Brecker, bassist John Patitucci, and liner notes by iconic jazz pianist and educator Dr. Billy Taylor.

Literally and figuratively, Eldar had arrived. He'd already relocated to San Diego with his family, and had been admitted to the Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. He soon moved to Los Angeles, and was studying at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California when he recorded Live at the Blue Note in 2006 with guest trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Chris Botti. The 2007 release Re-Imagination earned Eldar his first Grammy nomination for best contemporary jazz album just as he was getting his feet set in Manhattan.

"I finished high school while we lived in San Diego," he says, "and then I started studying at USC. I'm an only child, and my mother teaches for the Yamaha School of Music in California, so she wanted me to stay. She said, 'You only just graduated high school; I don't want you to leave yet.' I knew it would make her happy, so even though I wanted to move to New York, I stayed in Los Angeles to be with her for a few years."

For the last few years, Eldar has lived in the jazz epicenter.

"I'm close to Columbia University, so places stay open late and there's always something going on," he says. "The city itself provides so much inspiration."

With the release of Virtue, Eldar may have sealed his role in future jazz history.

Saxophonist Joshua Redman guests on its opening track, Exposition, on which Eldar, Gola and Afonso play frenetically in shifting time signatures too complex to easily distinguish.
Trumpeter Nicholas Payton forms a horn section with Lamoglia on Blackjack, a number in standard 4/4 time that the pianist and rhythm section make sound like anything but. Of the piano trio numbers, Blues Sketch in Clave shows Eldar's Latin jazz vocabulary, and the quieter Lullaby Fantazia skates between 4/4 and 5/4 time and features a memorable, haunting melody.

The disc's depth, complexity, wide range of influences, and synchronicity between the piano, drums and electric bass is akin to late-1970s Weather Report (Eldar also adds occasional, Joe Zawinul-influenced electric keyboards). And like many of that supergroup's best studio efforts, Virtue has the expression, energy, spontaneity and fire of a live album -- but with the immaculate instrumental sounds of a controlled environment. In this case, that was Avatar Studios in New York City.

"That's exactly the kind of feel we were shooting for," Eldar says.

Ten years ago, Eldar was playing on National Public Radio with McPartland, one of only a handful of living jazz greats who appeared in Art Kane's famous 1958 photo, A Great Day in Harlem. Many prodigies might have burnt out or sold out during the 10 years following such an appearance, but Eldar shows why he's avoided such pitfalls by stating where he wants to be in another decade's time. With one foot in tradition, and the other placed forward to create transition, he may be assembling a jazz standard for tomorrow.

"When people tell a young kid that they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, they can naturally stop moving forward," he says. "But if you realize that you need to constantly do just that, you've made a conscious effort to dedicate yourself to the art. I definitely just want to stay on an upward slope. Which means keeping motivated and clean, getting better, and keeping my vision over the horizon, even though we can't know what'll be there.

“It would've been hard to predict the changes that have happened in the music industry over the past 10 years. You just have to keep progressing, because that's the only thing you know you can control. The dedication, and improvement, should give you self-satisfaction."

Bill Meredith is a freelance writer based in South Florida who has written extensively on jazz and popular music.

Eldar performs during the Festival of the Arts Boca with his quartet at 7 p.m. March 11, and guests with the Russian National Orchestra (with pianist Conrad Tao and conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos) at 7 p.m. Friday, March 12, at the Count de Hoernle Amphitheater in Mizner Park, Boca Raton (866-571-2787).

An Eldar discography

Virtue (Sony Masterworks). Tracks include Blues Sketch in Clave, Lullaby Fantazia, Vanilla Sky. Released 2009.

Re-Imagination (Sony Masterworks). Tracks include Interludes 1 and 2, Out of Nowhere, Blackbird. Released 2007.

Eldar: Live at the Blue Note (Sony Masterworks). Tracks include What Is This Thing Called Love, Straight, No Chaser (with Roy Hargrove), Sincerely. Released 2006.

Eldar (Sony Masterworks). Tracks include Sweet Georgia Brown, 'Round Midnight, Nature Boy. Released 2005.

Written by Greg Stepanich | 02 March 2010

Kelley O'Connor would like to spend some time pursuing her passion for cooking in the house she just bought in her hometown of Fresno, Calif.

But for the time being, the world of contemporary classical music has plenty for her to do.

Most notably, O'Connor is currently championing the Neruda Songs, a five-song cycle written by the American composer Peter Lieberson for his wife, the celebrated mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died at 52 in 2006 of breast cancer.

The songs have become a special document of creativity and love, and they draw on a similarly inspired document, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's Cien Sonetos de Amor, written for Neruda's third wife, Matilde.

"I find that if I really invest in them, and in their message, people have a really great response to it," said O'Connor, 29. "It's not just because of Lorraine and Peter, and their story. The songs are timeless and beautiful, and I've gotten lucky enough to sing them."

O'Connor, a mezzo-soprano, said the songs are about mature love, and that gives them a special kind of depth. Still, it was daunting to be picking up the mantle of the pieces, which were associated with Lorraine Lieberson, and which she recorded not long before her death with James Levine and the Boston Symphony.

"I was a little worried about it," O'Connor said of meeting the composer. "I did have to prove myself to him. But after I sang them in Chicago, he told me, 'They're yours,' and stopped coming to performances."

O'Connor has appeared several times in South Florida, twice with the Cleveland Orchestra in Miami for the Bernstein Symphony No. 1 (Jeremiah) and the Beethoven Ninth, which was later recorded. She also sang the Ninth last season under Itzhak Perlman at the Festival of the Arts Boca, and she'll return to that festival March 10 to sing Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, which will be performed as a backdrop to the 1938 film by Sergei Eisenstein.

It's the first time she's sung the Prokofiev score, and while the music suits her dark voice, the language is proving a challenge.

"The sound is a very Eastern European sound, and it fits my voice. But Russian is very difficult to sing," O'Connor said, noting that she will be singing with the Russian National Orchestra, "and that they might know what I'm saying."

The RNO will be led by Constantine Kitsopoulos, and the choral parts will be sung by Miami's Seraphic Fire.

O'Connor said she has fond memories of singing with Perlman at the Boca festival, which is sponsored by her management company, IMG.

"I had a great time. I always love the Beethoven Ninth," she said, which she has recorded with the Cleveland. "And to sing it with Itzhak: he's such a legend in our world. Just to even meet him was a special thing."

Growing up in central California, O'Connor first sang in school choirs and community theater, but it was during choir work at the University of Southern California that she developed the skill that would help her become a sought-after artist in new music.

"I did voice there, but it was in choir where I really developed my ear," she said. "That really helps me with contemporary music. I wouldn't be able to read this music without it."

A key break for O'Connor came when she was asked to sing the trouser role of the martyred Spanish poet Federico García Lorca in Ainadamar, an opera by the contemporary Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov.

O'Connor said the experience singing and then recording the opera was a life-changer for her, especially because of the changes demanded by director Peter Sellars, which required Golijov to compose new music, some of which O'Connor had to learn in a very short time.

"I really love being able to create on the spot. It's much more liberating as an artist to work with a living composer, to have things written for you, for your voice," she said.

O'Connor sang in the original Tanglewood production in 2003, in the revised version for the Santa Fe Opera in 2005, and on the subsequent recording of the opera, which won two Grammy Awards for 2006: best opera recording and best classical contemporary composition.

But O'Connor more often appears at orchestra concerts, not on stage, and she said she has her Ainadamar co-star, soprano Dawn Upshaw, to thank. It was Upshaw who has created a modern model for singers as contemporary music advocates rather than opera divas.

"Dawn Upshaw was a pioneer in doing this, and now it's not frowned upon," O'Connor said. "My road has gone this separate way, and now it's OK."

In December, O'Connor will sing Hippolyta in the Chicago Lyric Opera production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but the rest of the year takes her to much of Europe and North America for performances of the Neruda Songs in Edinburgh, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Canton, Ohio; Beethoven Ninths in Budapest, Athens, Chicago, New York and Oklahoma City; a Mahler Third in Milwaukee and a Mahler Eighth in Nashville; and a St. John Passion in Calgary.

O'Connor would like to do some more Mahler, in particular the Kindertotenlieder and the Rückert Lieder, but she's also open to the idea of doing some jazz.

"You know, I love singing in Spanish," said O'Connor, who can sing the E below middle C comfortably. "But I'm also Portuguese. I'd like to find someone to set some songs in Portuguese: it's such a beautiful language, and it would be great to do."

In her free time, she'll be looking forward to hosting dinners for her fellow musicians at her new house in Fresno.

"My mom's ready for me to get out of her kitchen," she said. "I can't wait to have singers over. We love food and socializing. It's a great luxury, and now I have my own place."

Kelley O'Connor will appear Wednesday, March 10, with the Russian National Orchestra at the Festival of the Arts Boca, in a performance of Sergei Prokofiev's score for Alexander Nevsky, directed by Sergei Eisenstein. The film will be shown on a giant screen during the performance. O'Connor will be accompanied by the Seraphic Fire concert choir; Constantine Kitsopoulos conducts. Also on the program will be La Belle Dame Sans Merci, a new piece by the philanthropist and composer Gordon Getty. 7 p.m., Count de Hoernle Amphiteater, Mizner Park, Boca Raton. Tickets: $25-$150. Call 866-571-2787 or www.festivaloftheartsboca.org.

A Kelley O'Connor discography

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (Deutsche Grammophon 477 7132-6). With soprano Measha Brueggergosman, tenor Frank Lopardo and bass René Pape. Cleveland Orchestra/chorus, directed by Franz Welser-Möst.

Golijov: Ainadamar. (Deutsche Grammophon 477 7165-5) With Dawn Upshaw, Jessica Rivera and Jesus Montoya. Atlanta Symphony Orchestra/chorus, directed by Robert Spano. (Click here for sound samples.)