By Steve Elman

With so many cooks, flaws were inevitable. But the effort was noble, and hearing Terence Blanchard’s beautiful trumpet sound in Symphony Hall was a transcendent experience.

Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra, curated by Carlos Simon, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Terence Blanchard and Edwin Outwater, at Symphony Hall, March 22.

When the Boston Symphony officially announced the concerts on March 21 and 22 in their brochure for the 2024-25 season, Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra was described as “a new live concert experience reframing some of John Coltrane’s most popular and influential works with lush orchestrations, accompanied by exclusive and recently exhibited photographs of John Coltrane.” No soloists were specified.

I was apprehensive. “Live concert experience” and “lush orchestrations” were phrases that seemed designed to smooth the feathers of longtime BSO subscribers who would cluck at a program without a Big Name in Traditional Classical. For me, those words portended an earnest but possibly wrong-headed attempt to bring a jazz master into a classical framework. Still, the BSO playing Coltrane? For an entire program? This was a milestone, and I knew I had to be there.

What I heard on Saturday March 22 was much better than I expected. It was a suite of pieces associated with Coltrane, in orchestral arrangements contributed by composer-performers from all over the globe, framing solos and support from an excellent small jazz ensemble with a superstar soloist. Overhead projections of the “exclusive and recently exhibited” photos accompanied each part of the suite.

The parts were assembled (“curated” is the word used in the program and in the season preview) by Carlos Simon, the newly-appointed Composer Chair of the BSO, “a role that will see him exploring all of the BSO’s facets . . . as a composer, pianist, programmer, and educator” for this season and the next two. California-based conductor Edwin Outwater, who has been championing Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra for more than two years and has conducted it in three other cities, was again in charge of making it work in the moment.

With so many cooks, flaws were inevitable, but the reality was more than earnest goodwill – it was worthwhile music. Simon brought together respectful rethinkings of eight well-chosen Coltrane originals, three timeless jazz standards, and a classic popular song; in some cases (especially in Simon’s two pieces), the orchestrations approached the level of re-composition.

Trumpeter Terence Blanchard was the featured soloist, and he was backed by a stellar section composed of musicians from eastern New England – pianist Ben Cook, who has a long association as “regular pianist” with the Boston Pops; journeyman Rhode Island bassist and URI college faculty member Dave Zinno, making his first appearance with the BSO; and drummer George Darrah, an assistant professor at Endicott College who has worked regularly with the Pops.

Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra depends – as all great jazz performances do – on the gifts of the soloists and support players, and the inspiration of their spontaneous contributions. I was able to compare a recording of a 2024 performance in London with the one I heard at Symphony, and I can state confidently that the selected players of the BSO brought their A game to the stage (the orchestra was a smaller complement than is usually heard in Symphony Hall). I can also state that Outwater guided the ebb and flow of the music expertly, and that the soloists lifted the work to excellence.

Blanchard, jazz titan and composer of two operas and nearly 70 film scores so far, was (of course) the star of the show. His solos (all with open horn) were deeply felt and beautifully sonorous in the Hall’s wonderful acoustics, and his half-valving was especially effective. Since he has never recorded any Coltrane compositions as far as I can determine, these two performances represented a unique homage in his career to an artist he considers profoundly influential. Even more importantly, the warmth of his playing closed the gap between audience and performers in the way that committed jazz always does – in a way that the conception of this suite could not do on its own. He earned two standing ovations – and it isn’t customary for standing Os to occur at intermission time in Boston unless something memorable has happened on stage.

The suite obviously works best when it features a top-level soloist who encounters the material without fear. Previous performances have featured saxophonist Joe Lovano, who surely was up to the task, and for a brief time, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane (John’s son) was billed as the star-to-be in Boston; he too would have been an inspired choice. However, Blanchard was the first major trumpet soloist to be featured in it, which is another reason these evenings were special.

No matter who is given the lead role in the suite, its conception would be incomplete without a solid foundation and contributions from the rhythm section. Pianist Ben Cook had several solo spots, and he was especially good in “Blue Train” and “Impressions.” Bassist Dave Zinno and drummer George Derrah were only given one solo apiece, which is too bad – both showed admirable ability on their instruments, and it would have been in keeping with Coltrane’s own philosophy of group interplay to give each of them one more chance to shine. Still, their sure-footed support throughout gave Blanchard and Cook the platform they needed, and the trumpeter complimented all three in his remarks from the stage, noting that they had had only brief rehearsals together.

High points for me: “Blue Train,” orchestrated by Erik Jekabson, which got the suite off to a strong start, and gave Blanchard a comfortable launching pad; Tim Davies’s lovely version of “Central Park West” and his ingenious reworking of “So What,” with the misterioso opening intact, beautifully colored by the use of orchestra bells and well-connected (for a change) to the famous vamp that follows – although Blanchard was very much in a Miles bag in his solo on this one, rather than invoking Coltrane’s; Andy Milne’s setting of “Acknowledgement” from A Love Supreme, which had originality and yet did not shy away from having the orchestra sing the “love supreme” chant; and, above all, both of Carlos Simon’s orchestrations, settings of the immensely moving “Alabama,” and of “In A Sentimental Mood,” which utilized Duke Ellington’s famous six-note motif that was created just for Coltrane; they were models of what the lesser pieces should have been.

As good as the overall performances were, as noble as the ambitions of Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra were, there are many ways in which I was puzzled, and some ways in which I was very disappointed. I’ll discuss them below. But this does not mean that the BSO should not be praised for mounting these evenings. It means that the orchestra should continue to push ahead with more such evenings in seasons to come, and their next ventures should be better.

I think we can hope for the achievement of those goals with some justification. So far (stretching history back to just before the pandemic) the BSO has chosen to present four evenings of music that put jazz composers and performers of color at center stage, and it appears that each has been a learning experience for the organization. If the very promising Wayne Shorter-esperanza spalding program last season (March 2024) proved to be somewhat disappointing, the jazz oratorio by Uri Caine (The Passion of Octavius Catto, scheduled for March 2020, cancelled because of the pandemic and finally performed in March 2023) was an unqualified success. If Victor Wooten’s electric bass concerto (La Lección Tres, October 2021) proved to be mostly flash and very little substance, the first of these adventurous concerts, with James Carter’s stunning performance of the Roberto Sierra saxophone concerto (March 2019), was a thunderbolt; the advent of COVID-19 was the only reason there was no second performance of the work at Tanglewood in the summer of that year.

So what’s in store for the 2025 – 26 season? Official announcement comes on April I0, but I believe I am breaking some news publicly here: James Carter will be returning to play the Sierra concerto again, in three November 2025 performances. They are to be be led by the outstanding Finnish conductor Dima Slobodeniuk, who expertly guided the orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in vital performances of two very different but complementary works – Arvo Pãrt’s Tabula rasa and Mozart’s Requiem, just a few days ago.

If this is even partially Carlos Simon’s doing, I applaud him now, and I look forward to the way in which he will add other works to the Carter program that will frame it and resonate with it. Will there be a second jazz-oriented program in the upcoming season? In almost all the previous years, such concerts have been placed in the second half of the season. I for one am hopeful that spring 2026 will see another venture of importance along similar lines.

With all this said, how could the presentation and performance of Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra have been better?

There were serious omissions from the printed program. I do not believe that the BSO would have permitted such flaws in the written material accompanying an all-classical concert. These issues speak to a lingering lack of respect for jazz as “serious music” – which, of course, is not limited to the BSO.

First, there was no history of the conception and progress of the work. With both Simon and Outwater readily available to provide the facts, a page or so of background would have been valuable, and it would have been entirely in keeping with past practices of the BSO program editors regarding the origin and development of purely classical pieces.

Second, there were surprising omissions in the program credits. Pianist Cook, bassist Zinno and drummer Derrah were not mentioned at all. This was shocking, and even a little insulting to these accomplished players. When have featured guest artists – even guest artists who have associations with the orchestra – been omitted completely from the printed credits in a BSO program? Carlos Simon credited them in his remarks from the stage, but there was applause then that obscured Zinno’s and Derrah’s names for many listeners. Verbal acknowledgement was not enough.

The omissions don’t stop there. Of the eight musicians responsible for the orchestral arrangements, only Carlos Simon received a biographical profile in the program, and in that profile there was no mention of his arrangements of “In a Sentimental Mood” and “Alabama,” which in my opinion were the best parts of the suite; his credits on those pieces were limited to small print next to each title later in the program. The seven other orchestrators are not big names, but they all have achieved respect and honor, and they deserved printed credits in the program. I have tried to remedy this briefly below (see “More”); it did not take me long to find enough information online to fill a paragraph for each one.

Even though the images projected above the stage during the performance had been billed as “exclusive and recently exhibited photographs of John Coltrane,” there were no photo credits in the program and no explanation of how they came to be included.

In the pages showing the details of the program, there is this credit: “Curated by Carlos Simon and Coltrane Estate.” But there was no explanation in the program elsewhere of the manner in which the Coltrane Estate was involved, and who from the estate collaborated with Simon in the creation of the work.

And one more substantive omission: In an otherwise useful and comprehensive essay, Emmett G. Price III provided solid and worthwhile histories of each of the compositions in the suite and fit them into the framework of Coltrane’s life. But he did not mention the importance of theorist-composer George Russell. Russell’s work was indispensable to the modal structures used for the first significant time in jazz on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, from which the suite draws two of its elements – “So What” and “Blue in Green.” Both Bill Evans and Davis have credited Russell with paving the way for Kind of Blue, and the definitive book on the session, Eric Nisenson’s The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and his Masterpiece (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000), devotes a full chapter to Russell’s significance. More broadly speaking, the modal foundations of so much of Coltrane’s mature work (as on “My Favorite Things” and “Impressions”) were also built on ideas that Russell pioneered. This represents a major error of omission.

No room in the program for this information? Nonsense. This edition included six pages previewing the following concert in the BSO’s season, which included Mozart’s Requiem – pages which were duplicated in the program for the Requiem itself a week later. Some of that space surely could have been used to complete the picture of Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra.

I was of two minds about the use of the projected images. Some were wonderful, with Coltrane’s face wearing the contemplative, almost melancholy look that it has in many of his great photographs. But others left me feeling unsatisfied. Instead of these good-but-not-great photos, the organizers might have been better served by classic portraits of Coltrane – from the covers of A Love Supreme and Ascension, just to cite two examples.As for the music, my reactions are based on how successful some of the elements were in comparison with others. Obviously, there are too many great Coltrane compositions to have been included in a single evening, but in three cases, I had concerns.

Coltrane’s recording of “My One and Only Love,” with Johnny Hartman’s vocal, could never be properly commemorated in this context without a singer, so the inclusion of this tune in the suite seemed to me a waste of space – and I found that Ben Morris’s arrangement did little to enrich it.

In his program essay, Emmett Price admirably credits Bill Evans with the conception of “Blue in Green,” and notes that Coltrane’s solo on it is relatively short. I agree, and therefore question whether this element of the suite was needed, considering that “So What” (also from Kind of Blue) is already there.

And the choice of “Crepuscle with Nellie” as a pointer for Coltrane’s work with Monk just did not work. Yes, the recording of Coltrane and Monk at Carnegie Hall is the right place to find the definitive examples of Coltrane’s understanding of Monk after months of their work together, and “Crepuscule” is part of that set. But Andy Milne’s arrangement of this tune, with its contemplative and idiosyncratic mood, smoothed out some of Monk’s jaggedness, and the orchestra had some trouble negotiating the other pauses. Not even conductor Outwater, who guided the orchestra so well throughout the rest of the evening, could get the orchestra to play Monk effectively.

What would I have included instead? “Bye-Ya,” also found on the Monk – Coltrane Carnegie Hall set, offers a more suitable opportunity for an arranger. And I have many other favorites, too many to add to an already lengthy program – the early masterpiece “Just for the Love”; one of Coltrane’s distinctive blues (I like ”Mr. Day”); the middle-period hypnosis of “After the Rain”; and/or something from the final three years – “Ogunde” or “Dearly Beloved.”

But even better, perhaps – omit all three above and give more solo space to the jazz musicians.

As a last word, I must admit that one of the best things about Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra is that it sent me back to the original recordings, and I marveled again at the passion, the sincerity, the ever-searching quest of a great master. Almost one hundred years after his birth (September 23, 1926), we need John Coltrane’s music as much as we ever have . . . probably more.

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More:

Performances of Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra to date:

Premiere: Meridian Hall, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 2024. Co-commissioned by TO Live, Toronto’s principal multi-arts organization, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. “Arranged by Carlos Simon.” In this show, Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” was billed among the parts of the suite instead of “My One and Only Love.”

Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Edwin Outwater, conductor
Joe Lovano, saxophone
Robi Botos, piano
Mike Downes, bass
Larnell Lewis, drums

Second performance: Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, UK, November 2024. “Arranged and curated by Carlos Simon.”  By the time of this performance, “My One and Only Love” was included instead of “Lush Life.”

BBC Concert Orchestra
Edwin Outwater, conductor
Giveton Gelin, trumpet
Denys Baptiste, tenor saxophone *
Nikki Yeoh, piano
Ewan Hastie, double bass
Shane Forbes, drums

* “Change of artist from originally advertised”

Third performance: Powell Hall, St, Louis, MO, February 2025. “Carlos Simon, curator and arranger”

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
Edwin Outwater, conductor
Joe Lovano, saxophone

Regrettably, the pianist, bassist, and drummer are not identified in the on-line sources I was able to consult.

Fourth performance: Symphony Hall, Boston, MA. March 2025. “Curated by Carlos Simon and Coltrane Estate.”

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Edwin Outwater, conductor
Terence Blanchard, trumpet
Ben Cook, piano
Dave Zinno, bass
George Darrah, drums

With remarks from the stage:

from Carlos Simon, before the first number and from Terence Blanchard, after intermission

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About the orchestrators of Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra

Carlos Simon, who curated the entire suite, and orchestrated “In a Sentimental Mood” and “Alabama”:

From his website: “Carlos Simon [born April 13, 1986 (per BSO notes on his WAKE UP!) = 39 this year] is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, whose music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores, with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism. Simon is the Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts . . . and was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY award for his album Requiem for the Enslaved.” 

From the BSO program, March 21 – 22, 2025: “Carlos Simon is the [orchestra’s] first-ever Deborah and Philip Edmundson Composer Chair . . . The BSO first performed his music in 2021, when Andris Nelsons conducted . . . his Fate Now Conquers. Nelsons [also] conducted the world premiere of Simon’s BSO-commissioned Four Black American Dances in 2022, subsequently taking the piece on tour in Europe. He composed his second BSO commission, Festive Fanfare and Overture, in honor of Andris Nelsons’[s] tenth anniversary as BSO music director. . . . The orchestra has also performed his Motherboxx Connection and Warmth from Other Suns.”

Jonathan Bingham, who orchestrated “My Favorite Things”:

From his website:  Jonathan Bingham [was born April 14, 1989 (per Wind Repertory Project) = 36 this year]. His works have been performed “at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. He’s created original scores for over a dozen film productions which have premiered at the New York Film Festival, Rome International Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival among others. Having lectured at Stanford and Columbia Universities, he currently serves on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  Holding degrees in composition from Howard University and New York University . . . he is founder of Cool Story—a record label researching music and producing recordings of lesser-known literature.”

Tim Davies, who orchestrated “So What” and “Central Park West”:

From his website: Tim Davies was born in 1972 (per allmusic) [= 53 this year] and educated in Australia. “He is now based in Los Angeles, where the Grammy-nominated and Annie-winning musician juggles conducting, orchestrating, composing, and arranging for major projects across film, television, video games, and concert stages around the world.”

Steven Feifke, who orchestrated “Giant Steps”:

From Wikipedia: “Steven Feifke (born June 21, 1991) [= 34 this year] is an American jazz pianist, composer, orchestrator, and arranger. In 2023, Feifke became the youngest musician [ever] to win the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble.”

Erik Jekabson, who orchestrated “Blue Train”:

From Wikipedia: “Erik Jekabson (born March 23, 1973) [= 52 this year] is an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. A Bay Area-based musician, he is known for the jazz group The Electric Squeezebox Orchestra . . . He is also a composer and arranger.”

Cassie Kinoshi, who orchestrated “Blue in Green”

From Wikipedia: “Cassie Kinoshi [born 1993 (per allmusic) = 32 this year] is a British composer, saxophonist and bandleader who leads the group SEED Ensemble, who were nominated for a Mercury Prize award in 2019.”

Andy Milne, who orchestrated “Naima” and “Acknowledgment” from A Love Supreme:

From Wikipedia: “Andy Milne (born January 30, 1969) [= 56 this year] is a Canadian jazz pianist, who records and performs both as a solo artist and as the leader of the ensemble Dapp Theory. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and raised in Kincardine and Toronto. . . [He] studied music at York University, where he was a student of Oscar Peterson.”

Ben Morris, who orchestrated “My One and Only Love” and “Crescent”:

From his website: “Ben Morris [won the ASCAP Foundation Young Composer Award in 2019, given to composers under 30, so he is probably between 30 and 35 this year.  He] is a composer and jazz pianist . . . [His first album] garnered two Down Beat Awards, and two ASCAP Herb Alpert Jazz Composer Awards . . . He has collaborated with the American Composers Orchestra, . . . Imani Winds,  . . . and the NDR Big Band . . . [His] concert music has received . . . an ASCAP Morton Gould Award and the International Society of Bassists Composition Contest Grand Prize. He is Assistant Professor of Composition at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.”

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About the rhythm section in the Boston performance:

Ben Cook, piano:

From the Berklee College of Music faculty website: “Ben Cook is [an Associate Professor at Berklee and] . . . a regular pianist in the Boston Pops Orchestra, [with] hundreds of performances at Symphony Hall, [at] the Tanglewood Music Festival, on U. S. tours under the direction of maestros Keith Lockhart and John Williams, and on the orchestra’s 2023 tour of Japan. . . . Cook also works extensively as a jazz pianist . . . in the New England area. He [has] appeared on records by multi-instrumentalist Miles Donahue [and] . . . the jazz/world music ensemble Crosscurrent. [He is also] . . . a veteran of countless Broadway tour pit orchestras.”

Dave Zinno, bass:

From the University of Rhode Island faculty website: “Dave Zinno [is an instructor at URI in Jazz String Bass, and also holds faculty positions at Salve Regina University in Newport RI and Brown University in Providence. He] has been performing professionally since 1980. [He has worked with] Dianne Schuur, . . . Julian Priester, Hadley Caliman, . . . Walter Booker Jr. . . . Jimmy Cobb, Junior Cook, Jimmy Heath, John Hicks, Victor Lewis,  . . . Larry Willis and many others. Dave . . . was [on the] faculty at the Toulon (France) Jazz Festival Workshop for 11 years.  [He appears on] over sixty recordings [both as a leader and led by] . . . Hal Crook, John Medeski, Rick Peckham, Bob Gullotti, . . . Scott Hamilton, . . . Adam Nussbaum . . . [and] John Stein.”

George Darrah, drums:

From his website: “George Darrah is a Boston-based composer, drummer, and music educator . . . He currently serves on the faculty of Endicott College as Assistant Professor of Music. [He also] . . .  founded the Endicott Percussion Ensemble. . . . [He] has composed and arranged music for the Boston Pops Orchestra, Jeff Tyzik and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Makoto Ozone (Tokyo Jazz Festival), Dave Liebman, Bobby Shew, Eddie Daniels, Ingrid Jensen and Jane Monheit.  He has performed with Byron Stripling, Sutton Foster, Michael Feinstein, Jean Yves-Thibaudet, Branford Marsalis, Dave Liebman, Bill Holman, Bill Dobbins, . . .  Dick Johnson, Billy Novick, [and] Harold Danko. . . Since 2022, George has been the drummer for Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Orchestra.”

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Steve Elman’s more than four decades in New England public radio have included 10 years as a jazz host in the 1970s, five years as a classical host on WBUR in the 1980s, a short stint as senior producer of an arts magazine, 13 years as assistant general manager of WBUR, and fill-in classical host on 99.5 WCRB.