JAZZ REVIEW : Holman Gives Old Standards a New Look

For the next-to-the-last session in the successful series of Monday big-band nights at the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blossom Room, Bill Holman reassembled the orchestra he has led, all too intermittently, over the past couple of decades.

Once a serious name-band tenor sax player, Holman gave up the horn to concentrate on composing and arranging, which he handles with a rare combination of ingenuity, verve and wit.

All those qualities--and more--are needed to take a nondescript old tune like Alfred Newman’s “Moon of Manakoora” and convert it into something extraordinary, through a deft use of voicings, shifts in rhythms and melodic lines, and spirited solo interludes.

Holman’s sense of humor lifted “Just Friends” out of the ranks of most overworked standards, turning it into one of his perennial crowd pleasers with a chart written almost entirely for the brass and saxophone sections to play in unison.

His reworking of Frank Rosolino’s waltz “Blue Daniel” and Sonny Rollins’ “Airegin” displayed the same idiosyncratic personality. Another Rollins piece, “Saint Thomas,” became a little too clever by losing the West Indian flavor along the way.

The Holman originals--”No Joy in Mudville,” “Primrose Path,” and an inspired slow blues called “I Didn’t Ask”--brought this brilliant writer’s essence clearly into focus.

Each horn section featured at least one outstanding soloist: Bob Summers on trumpet and fluegelhorn, Bob Enevoldsen on valve trombone, plus three more Bobs in the sax section--Cooper on tenor, Efford on baritone and the underrated Militello on alto.

The Monday series ends next week with a show featuring the John Clayton-Jeff Hamilton Orchestra.