Classical Concert Reviews Cinci

@uc_ccm’s Philharmonia, under its music director Mark Gibson, closed out its slate of concerts for the 2023-24 academic year with a program dedicated to the combination of full orchestra and jazz, pairing music by two of America’s most well-known jazz composers of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Pianist Diana Chubak, a student of CCM professor and piano department chair Michael Chertock, joined the orchestra for a vibrant, scintillating reading of George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F. Chubak’s playing throughout was bouncy, inviting and elegantly phrased while not overtly virtuosic, thanks to fairly steady tempos in the first and final movements. The dialogue between piano and orchestra was beautifully shaped, even if the acoustics of CCM’s Corbett Auditorium seemed to work more in the orchestra’s favor.
The same could also be said for the CCM Jazz Orchestra, which joined the Philharmonia for a toe-tapping, high-spirited performance of Wynton Marsalis’s Swing Symphony (Symphony No. 3). While Marsalis himself called it “a celebration of American ideals”, influenced by composers such as Aaron Copland, Charles Ives and Duke Ellington, it is more of a love letter to the history of jazz as an art form.
Cast in 6 movements spanning almost an hour of music, both orchestras gave it their all tonight, with lyric strings, extremely powerful brass and fun and engaging percussion. Throughout this work, Corbett seemingly turned into an intimate jazz club, with the audience expressing their appreciation following most solos in the big band sections. While acoustically the balance was not the most desirable, the level of artistry all these music brought to the stage more than made up for it. The jazz orchestra on its own merits must rank as one of the best I. The city, full of incredibly gifted players who relish their turns in the solo spotlight at every opportunity.
Maestro Gibson seemed to be having the time of his life conducting this piece, as it has been a longtime passion project of his, along with the Jazz Orchestra’s director, Scott Belck. CCM’s orchestras definitely delivered, and I eagerly anticipate what they program for the next academic year.