San Francisco Symphony's great, multi-talented principal trumpet — usually seated upstage — will be front and center on the Davies Hall stage Thursday. The event, "A Jazzy Night with Mark Inouye," also will feature guitarist Jeff Massanari, bassist Larry Epstein, drummer Jeff Marrs, and the orchestra led by Edwin Outwater.
Major items on the varied program include the Duke Ellington version of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite and Vassily Brandt's Concert Piece No. 2. Inouye promises an evening of fusion. Why?
I've always thought about fusing styles together when playing. Every time I play a classical solo, I often wonder how a jazz musician would do it. You know that Louis Armstrong would play with style, character, and attitude, so why can't I bring the same level of enthusiasm or character to the music? It helps me play classical music.
So it seemed like a natural thing to do a concert of half classical and half jazz based on classical music. What people may not know about this concert is that I'm performing a classical solo with the orchestra on the first half by a Russian composer named Vassily Brandt — his Concert Piece No. 2. It's very lyrical and romantic, similar to Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, but it's also very virtuosic like a violin solo, minus the double stops.
Inouye is also known for composing and arranging, something that will be in evidence Thursday:
I had an arrangement (for jazz quartet) of the 'Tuileries' movement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and a pretty cool arrangement of "My Funny Valentine" in 5/4 time. But the key for me was that I was able to get a brilliant and creative arranger, Erik Jekabson (who is also an amazing Bay Area jazz trumpeter), to take these quartet arrangements and completely orchestrate them for the SFS.
The inspiration for a jazz waltz (based on the third movement of Dvorák's Symphony No. 8) came from a Sony Walkman demo tape in 1987! Sony issued a demo tape with every Walkman and mine had a jazz version of the Dvorák on the B side. I didn't actually own any cassettes at the time, so I listened to that demo tape over and over. Although I haven't heard that tape in 27 years, I remember it very vividly and knew that it could work for this concert.
At one time a regular at Yoshi's and other jazz spots, Inouye's day job, engagements, and time spent as an S.F. Giants fanatic have restricted his other activities:
Unfortunately, I don't get a chance to play much jazz anymore, but if I do, it's exhilarating... as is classical music. It really just comes down to performing and making music. Hopefully I'm able to express my energy, emotion, and ideas while doing something I love, and that's playing the trumpet. I want people to think, "I've never heard a trumpet sound like that, but I like it!"