Vanguard Jazz Orchestra Honors Thad Jones

It has been a very long time since I last wrote about the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Indeed, this is my second undertaking, the first dating back to my Examiner.com days when, in September of 2014, I wrote about their album Over Time: Music of Bob Brookmeyer. The group was originally called the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, and it gave regular Monday night concerts at the Village Vanguard on the edge of Greenwich Village in New York. (Because of the scheduling, it was also sometimes called the Monday Night Orchestra.) After Lewis died in 1990, the name changed to Vanguard Jazz Orchestra.

Under that name, the group has released a variety of albums, most of which highlight musicians that led groups at the Vanguard. It should therefore be no surprise that one of the earliest albums, released in 1999, was Thad Jones Legacy. Those who know their jazz history know that Jones was a trumpeter and the “middle brother” of three major jazz musicians in the twentieth century. His older brother was the pianist Hank Jones, and his younger brother was drummer Elvin Jones.

Thad Jones on the cover of the album released to celebrate the centennial of his birth

Thad Jones was born on March 28, 1923. It therefore seemed appropriate that the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra would celebrate the centennial of his birth with a new album. That album, Centennial: The Music of Thad Jones, was released today; and it is now available for digital download through an Amazon.com Web page. My own awareness of Jones’ work dates back to those good old days when I was collecting Mosaic box sets. One of these was The Complete Blue Note/UA/Roulette Recordings of Thad Jones; and it was a relatively modest collection of three CDs, with the “lion’s share” of the tracks devoted to Jones originals. Ironically, none of those pieces showed up on the Centennial album; but nine of the twelve tracks are Jones compositions.

Sadly, I have to take Amazon to task for their handling of this release. Through my “press privileges,” I learned that the album included an eight-page booklet with an informative essay by Shaun Brody and a track listing that accounts for the composers and soloists performing on each of the twelve selections. Those, like myself, that refuse to treat jazz as “sit-back-and-listen” music are likely to be frustrated by Amazon’s negligence. Perhaps Amazon decided that not enough of their customers would be interested in this album to make a difference. Mind you, they may be right; but to me it feels as if yet another nail is being driven into the coffin of twentieth-century jazz.