EIF Review: JLCO with Yuja Wang

In one of the Festival’s more intriguing collaborations – and a world premiere – renowned New York-based jazz ensemble Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra joined forces with classical piano superstar Yuja Wang to present a set of jazz standards and some lesser-known pieces. So writes Lindsay McMurdo for theQR.co.uk…

The co-mingling of these two worlds is not really new – think Duke Ellington, Stan Tracey or indeed JLCO leader Wynton Marsalis himself – but rarely happens at this level. The acid test is whether they actually mingle or just exist side by side in a kind of uneasy truce.

In this instance, happily, it proved very much the former, bar the occasional mismatch. This was clear from the get-go as the set opened with Dave Brubeck’s spiky Blue Rondo à la Turk. Wang is one of the piano world’s most rhythmically-driven performers, and she hammered away gleefully at the main theme with metronomic precision, which somehow segued perfectly into the band’s more lounge-like episodes. As during the entire set, the arrangements (mainly by JLCO members) were top-notch. This opening piece set up a sense of proper dialogue rather than competition or opposition, which continued throughout.

An early highlight (the third of the nine pieces played) was a gorgeous rendition of Duke Ellington’s languid ballad Reflections in D. Opening on solo piano, Wang delivered the haunting main melody with a level of heartfelt expressiveness that one sometimes wishes to hear more of in her “day job”. Jazz, it seems, suits her.

Virtuosity, Blues, and Dialogue

Jazz also plays well, in a very different way, to her relentless virtuosity, and a couple of pieces were clearly chosen to highlight the technical prowess that made her name. First was Oscar Peterson’s challenging L’Impossible (the clue is in the name), which proved all too possible for Wang’s super-fleet fingerwork. Second was Art Tatum’s breathtaking Tiger Rag, a work hardly ever performed due to its technical demands, but played here in a manner that suggested Scarlatti on speed—though not without a real sense of swing and the occasional flash of humour. Heady stuff.

Some selections, inevitably, worked less well, especially the two blues-driven numbers where a lack of affinity on Wang’s part became evident. However, JLCO’s complete mastery of every jazz form helped to fill in the gaps and allowed several of its front-line players (all virtuosos in their own way) to take the spotlight.

“Wang is one of the piano world’s most rhythmically-driven performers, and she hammered away gleefully at the main theme with metronomic precision, which somehow segued perfectly into the band’s more lounge-like episodes.“

The set concluded with a wonderful rendition of the evergreen standard Autumn Leaves, famously performed by Erroll Garner, again featuring a deeply-felt solo piano exposition before building to a full-throttle climax.

Taken as a whole, this joyful collaboration was a resounding and thrilling success, one which both restated JLCO’s position on the highest rung of the jazz ladder and perhaps also opened up some intriguing future possibilities for the still-unfolding talent of Yuja Wang.