The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra - a salute to the Modern Jazz Quartet

Alan Greenblatt

The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra is a big band with a smooth and polished sound, but not always the kind of oomph you hope for in an improvisational outfit. Lately they've been doing a smart thing in drawing small groups from the ranks of the large band and putting on pleasant tribute concerts, as they did last Saturday at the National Museum of American History. (For several upcoming concerts in April, check out www.smithsonianjazz.org)

Last week's concert was a salute to the Modern Jazz Quartet, the band that holds the record in jazz for longest tenure of an unchanged group of members. The four played together for something like 45 years, but three of them are dead now. They always played in Savile Row suits, lending real class to the idea of chamber jazz. The leader, pianist John Lewis, was a great aficionado of Bach and Debussy, so there was a wonderful tension between his elegant arrangements and playing and the much gutsier, blues-based performing style of vibes great Milt Jackson. Jackson often took to the road with other musicians to get his groove on, and those shows were a revelation.

Despite their popularity, you don't have the sense that the Modern Jazz Quartet is all that well remembered, so the concert played by local musicians was a wonderful reminder of how pleasant and lightly swinging their music was. Our old friend Chuck Redd does not bring a funky touch to the vibes but he is always sure and swinging. Pianist Larry Eanet, by contrast, has a chunkier sound than Lewis's. All in all, the musicians (including drummer Ken Kimmery and bassist Clarence Seay) put on an irrestible show, presenting simply such MJQ favorites as "La Ronde" and "Django" with obvious, contagious affection.

Later that same day, we went to one of the closing performances of "Copenhagen," Michael Frayn's play about the nativity of the atomic bomb, which played at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater. As you would expect from a Frayn play, it was impressively constructed and offered an unusually intelligent lesson in both history and physics. But it wasn't the most gripping drama. I don't doubt there was a father-son relationship between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, but it wasn't terribly moving on stage (although Len Cariou was delightfully smooth and paternal in his performance as Bohr). Also, for a play that turns on the whole idea of how close the Nazis came to getting the bomb, it didn't give you as great a sense of its importance as you would probably like. There's also an interesting exchange of articles and letters going on in the New York Review of Books about the accuracy or deceptively pro-Heisenberg bias of the play.

Last night, we caught a screening of "Suddenly Naked," a Canadian comedy lacking U.S. distribution, at Visions. We had a chance to chat briefly with director Anne Wheeler, who reported that she was just back from the Berlin film festival, once a home for independent films but now dominated by the likes of "A Beautiful Mind" and "Royal Tenenbaums."

Thus, in the dwindling spirit of supporting small films, I'd like to offer a strong recommendation in favor of "Last Orders," a British film based on a prize-winning novel by Graham Swift. The movie boasts excellent performances (by Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren and other Brit stalwarts), an intelligent and often funny script and relaxed, skillful direction. It approaches you as a quiet, almost larkish little picture but suckers you with its (enjoyable) emotional wallop. Worth checking out, definitely.