Guest Artist Biographies

Aaron Diehl

Pianist and composer Aaron Diehl mystifies listeners with his layered artistry. At once temporal and ethereal, his expression transforms the piano into an orchestral vessel in the spirit of beloved predecessors Ahmad Jamal, Erroll Garner, and Jelly Roll Morton. Following three critically-acclaimed leader albums on Mack Avenue Records – and live appearances at historic venues from Jazz at Lincoln Center and The Village Vanguard to New York Philharmonic and the Philharmonie de Paris – the American Pianist Association’s 2011 Cole Porter fellow now focuses his attention on what it means to be present within himself. His forthcoming solo record promises an expansion of that exploration in a setting at once unbound and intimate.

Diehl conjures three-dimensional expansion of melody, counterpoint, and movement through time. Rather than choose one sound or another, he invites listeners into the chambered whole of his artistry. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Diehl traveled to New York in 2003, following his success as a finalist in JALC’s Essentially Ellington competition and a subsequent European tour with Wynton Marsalis. His love affair with rub and tension prompted a years-long immersion in distinctive repertoire from Monk and Ravel to Gershwin and William Grant Still. Among other towering figures, Still in particular inspires Diehl’s ongoing curation of Black American composers in his own performance programming, unveiled this past fall at 92nd St. Y.

Diehl has enjoyed artistic associations with Wynton Marsalis, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Buster Williams, Branford Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, Philip Glass, and multi-Grammy® award-winning artist Cecile McLorin Salvant. He recently appeared with the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra as featured soloist.

Diehl holds a Bachelor of Music in jazz studies from Juilliard. A licensed pilot, when he’s not at the studio or on the road, he’s likely in the air. Follow both his earthbound and aerial exploits via Instagram @aaronjdiehl.

Guest Artist Biographies

David Wong

Bassist David Wong was born and raised in New York City. In 2004, he graduated from The Juilliard School in classical music. He has studied with Orin O’Brien (New York Philharmonic) and Ron Carter. He is currently a member of Roy Haynes’s Fountain of Youth band, the Charles McPherson Quintet, and The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. He was also the last bass player in the Heath Brother’s Quartet, led by Jimmy Heath and Albert “Tootie” Heath, as well as Hank Jones’s Great Jazz Trio, and is featured on the piano master’s last recording. Wong is on faculty at Temple University, Purchase College, The New School, and The City College of New York.

Aaron Kimmel

Aaron Kimmel is a native of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Kenny Washington and Billy Drummond, and he is now a freelance drummer living in New York City. He frequently appears at Smalls and Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, performing as a sideman with the Benny Green trio and Aaron Diehl, among others. He has also played with such jazz luminaries as Harry Allen, Ken Peplowski, Eric Alexander, Joe Magnarelli, Grant Stewart, Terell Stafford, Ryan Kisor, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Brian Lynch, Ann Hampton Callaway, Mary Stallings, and Jon Faddis.

Alicia Hall Moran

Alicia Hall Moran’s (mezzo-soprano) blend of musicality, vocal beauty, and social inquiry intersect art, dance, opera, film, theater, Broadway, literature, poetry, and contemporary thought. She’s recorded two critically acclaimed albums: Heavy Blue and Here Today and performed in unique concert tours (Black Wall Street, the motown project, and Battle of the Carmens/Breaking Ice), cocomposed and directed a short opera for Washington National Opera, produced and performed an on-ice musical residency at Bryant Park, and enjoyed forays into improvisational music with artists such as Bill Frisell, Charles Lloyd, Brandon Ross, Kaoru Watanabe, and Yosvany Terry.

Moran has premiered works by celebrated composers Tania León, Bryce Dessner, Tomeka Reid, James Moore, Yosvany Terry, and Gabriel Kahane. Symphony engagements have included the

Guest Artist Biographies

Oregon Symphony, Grant Park Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Spoleto Festival, San Francisco Symphony, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic, stargaze Ensemble, National Symphony Orchestra Pops, Austin Symphony, Ocean City, Roanoke Symphony, 1B1 Orchestra, and Kennedy Center Honors.

Honors include a Bessie Award for musical collaboration with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, an NAACP Theater Award nomination (Best Lead Female in a Musical) for her portrayal of Bess – originally premiered in the Tony Award-winning production of Porgy and Bess, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Van Lier Fellowship, Ford Foundation Art of Change fellowship, and numerous artist residencies, including the Inaugural Chamber Music Artist Residency at Frost School of Music at University of Miami, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, National Sawdust, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and Yale Art Gallery, to name but a few. Her writing credits include New York Amsterdam News, Tidal Magazine, and Princeton U. Press.

Moran’s artistic and curatorial vision continue to inspire concert formats with husband Jason Moran, including Bleed for the Whitney Biennial, Work Songs for the Venice Biennial, and the tour Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration, commissioned by Carnegie Hall.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

MSO Artistic Partner Aaron Diehl returns to Milwaukee to premiere the complete full-orchestra version of jazz composer Mary Lou Williams’s Zodiac Suite. After intermission, we’ll stay among the stars for Holst’s The Planets.

Mary Lou Williams

Born 8 May 1910; Atlanta, Georgia

Died 28 May 1981; Durham, North Carolina

Zodiac Suite

Composed: 1942-45

First performance: 31 December 1945

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere

Instrumentation: flute (doubling piccolo); oboe; clarinet (doubling bass clarinet); tenor saxophone; bassoon; horn; trumpet; trombone; strings

Approximate duration: 30 minutes

Popularly known as “the first lady of jazz keyboard,” Mary Lou Williams (née Mary Alfrieda Winn) was one of the first significant female instrumentalists in jazz. A child prodigy, at age two, she was picking out simple tunes on the family piano, and at age three began piano lessons with her mother. A prolific composer, she was also a master arranger, creating musical scores for Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and other swing-era bands. Assuming the roles of friend, mentor, and teacher, her circle included such luminaries as Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Budd Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Her pianism has been described as a distinctively understated, legato style based on subtly varied stride and boogie-woogie bass patterns. At the same time, she was a major advocate of postwar modern jazz, constantly probing harmonies and articulations in a manner that allowed her to retain a reputation as a “modernist” for most of her career. And she made it a point to study the music of Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Some of her most important arrangements include “Froggy Bottom,” “Walkin’ and Struttin’,” “Mary’s Idea” (all for Andy Kirk’s band, 1936-38), and “Roll ’em” (for Benny Goodman, 1937). She also penned the bop piece “In the Land of Oo-bla-dee” and, following her conversion to Roman Catholicism, composed several sacred works, including a mass. Her cantata Black Christ of the Andes (1963) is a notably successful fusion of jazz and church music. She briefly played in Duke Ellington’s band, writing for him the well-known “Trumpet No End.” It was about this same time that she penned her 12-movement Zodiac Suite, a winning fusion of jazz and classical idioms, inspired by musical associates of Williams who were born under the respective constellations.

• Aries: Billie Holiday, Ben Webster

• Taurus: Duke Ellington

• Gemini: Shorty Baker

• Cancer: Lem Davis

• Leo: Vic Dickenson

• Virgo: Phil Moore

• Libra: Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane

• Scorpio: Ethel Waters, Katherine Dunham, Al Lucas

• Sagittarius: Eddie Heywood

• Capricorn: Pearl Primus, Frankie Newton

• Aquarius: Josh White, Eartha Kitt

• Pisces: Al Hall, Barney Josephson

The work exists in several versions: jazz trio, piano and chamber ensemble, and piano and symphony orchestra. In June 1945, Williams recorded the jazz trio version on the Asch record label. It has since been re-released on the Smithsonian label and can be found on YouTube. (It’s worth the time!)

At the end of that year, she presented a version for chamber orchestra at Town Hall in New York, conducted by Milton Orent, whom Williams credited with having a hand in the orchestration. The following summer came full symphonic orchestrations of three of the 12 movements, with the Carnegie Pops Orchestra. The arrangement heard on these MSO concerts was prepared by Jeffrey Sultanof and Rob Duboff, published in 2011 with the authorization of the Mary Lou Williams Foundation, Inc.

Gustav Holst

Born 21 September 1874; Cheltenham, England

Died 25 May 1934; London, England

The Planets, Opus 32

Composed: 1914-16

Premiere: 28 September 1918; London, England

Last MSO performance: February 2017; Edo de Waart, conductor

Instrumentation: 4 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo, 4th doubling piccolo and alto flute); 3 oboes (3rd doubling bass oboe and English horn); 3 clarinets; bass clarinet; 3 bassoons; contrabassoon; 6 horns; 4 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; tenor tuba; 2 timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, gong, snare drum, tambourine, triangle, xylophone); 2 harps; celeste; organ; strings

Approximate duration: 51 minutes

These pieces were suggested by the astrological significance of the planets. There is no program music in them, neither have they any connection with the deities of classical mythology bearing the same names. If any guide to the music is required, the subtitle of each piece will be found sufficient, especially if it is used in a broad sense. For instance, Jupiter brings jollity in the ordinary sense, and also the more ceremonial kind of rejoicing associated with religious or national festivities. Saturn brings not only physical decay, but also a vision of fulfillment. Mercury is the symbol of mind.

– Gustav Holst

The English composer Gustav Holst is best known for his seven-movement suite The Planets That such should be the case was a source of great consternation to him – much like Boléro for Ravel or the piano prelude in C-sharp minor for Rachmaninoff. With other fine orchestral music, several operas, chamber music, songs, and a plethora of sublime choral music in his catalogue, the composer never thought it his best work; he was flummoxed by the sensation it caused. Regarding success, he stated, “It made me realize the truth of ‘Woe to you when all men speak well of you.’”

Born into a musical household – his father was a pianist and organist, his mother a pianist and singer – Gustavus Theodore von Holst’s family tree had its roots in Scandinavia, Russia, and Germany (he anglicized his name in the course of WWII). As a child, he took piano lessons and began writing music while still in grammar school. In his late teens, he entered the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied composition with the eminent Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). At the RCM, he met fellow student Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). The two immediately became fast friends and began the lifelong habit of playing their newest works-inprogress to each other.

Throughout his adult life, Holst was a teacher – and an influential one. That profession took up most of his time, allowing him to compose only on weekends and in August, when he worked undisturbed in his soundproof music room at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, Hammersmith. Appointed director or music there in 1905, it was the only teaching post he kept to the end of his life. Often lecturing in evening institutes as well, he was forced to save up his compositional ideas until the end of each week. That’s why it took him two years (1914-16) to write The Planets. (Bad eyesight and neuritis in his right arm had kept him from war service.)

As Holst makes clear in the quote on the previous page, offered in connection with the work’s first performance, The Planets was conceived with an astrological, rather than astronomical, mindset. Holst was first introduced to astrology in 1913 by Clifford Bax, brother of composer Arnold Bax, while the two were on a tour of Spain. Not long afterward, he wrote to a friend, “Recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely.” Thus, their contrasting personalities gave rise to a work unlike anything he had ever composed.

The first performance was for an invited audience of a few hundred people; Sir Adrian Boult led the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra. Many thought Mars was a depiction of the war still being fought, when in fact it was composed prior to August 1914. The end of Neptune – with its offstage women’s chorus fading into silent infinity – caused the biggest commotion, but Holst’s own favorite was always Saturn. Over one hundred years later, the piece never fails to please. His daughter and biographer Imogen Holst (1907-84) summed it up best: “During the many years since it was written, The Planets has suffered from being quoted in snippets as background music, but in spite of all unwanted associations it has survived as a masterpiece, owing to the strength of Holst’s invention.”