Tickets are available. The show is part of the Carol Busch Concert Series presented by the Busch Family Foundation.
SSJO director Todd Stoll said he’d been thinking of this program for a while and said people are excited for the music. The band is also excited to perform it, he said, with many of the band members doing this type of music for the first time as a smaller band of 10-12 musicians.
“It’s a completely different sound and a lot of fun hits,” Stoll said. “It was a very rich period that hasn’t been properly mined for its riches, when someone like Duke Ellington was writing and setting up what he’d be doing for the next several decades.”
He described the songs as a bit naughty for the period with plenty of double entendres, and there will be the original compositions and arrangements. They will be shorter songs than the SSJO normally plays at three to three-and-a-half minutes, with some extended for improv, but very difficult and complicated to play, opposed to Dixieland or New Orleans tunes.
“I’m a big fan of this music. It’s a completely different sound,” Stoll said.
Tunes will include “St. Louis Blues,” “Blue Room” and “Cake Walking Babies (From Home).”
Though Ellington and Armstrong are recognized names, Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith were also influential with the latter being one of the first Black artists to tour Europe.
Russell has toured with legends including Paul Simon, Steely Dan, David Bowie and Michael Feinstein, but jazz has always been a part of her life. Her dad, Luis Russell, was Louis Armstrong’s musical director and she met the legendary musician.
Her destiny was in music, even playing a jazz singer on the popular series “Boardwalk Empire,” and she will perform in a 1920s period dress for Saturday’s concert.
Stoll said it’s an interesting to have someone like Russell connecting with the young musicians of the SSJO in their 20s, giving them a new experience.
Even a pair of Springfield musicians figure in by chance. Bill McKinney lived here and went on to form McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, an influential band of the 1920s-1930s, and Garvin Bushell, a Springfield native, toured with Mamie Smith and played with some of the genre’s big names in a long career.
“This will be nostalgia without being naïve, just a fun night to start our season,” Stoll said.
The SSJO will play its annual Christmas show on Dec. 20 and will release its first album in early March called “Royalty” and feature the songs of Ellington and Count Basie with special guest artists. More details will be forthcoming.
Tickets for Saturday’s show cost $30 each and seating is general admission. To purchase tickets or for more information, go to www.springfieldsym.org/ssjo.
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