BRATTLEBORO — In the old cities of the world, you could hear music from many lands, evoking the past and the home countries of immigrants, mingling and becoming something new.
A new suite of songs by Brattleboro composer Julian Gerstin celebrates these transformations, bringing together musical styles from Athens, Istanbul, Havana, Fort-de-France, and the streets of San Francisco in a jazz context.
The Julian Gerstin Sextet is expanded for this occasion, with trombone, saxophone, and flute added to the sextet's usual lineup of clarinet, trumpet, piano, bass, drums, and percussion.
“Certain styles have certain sounds,” Gerstin explained in a news release. “We'll play a danzón, which is an older Cuban style that features flute. A merengue-salsa hybrid is going to need sax and trombone along with the trumpet and clarinet. There is a slow dance that you might hear in Sofia or Sarajevo, played by a brass band.”
The Julian Gerstin Sextet's first CD, The One Who Makes You Happy, released in summer 2017, has received rave reviews. Jazziz Magazine included a track on its annual jazz compilation CD and wrote, “Infusing jazz composition and instrumentation with his worldly orientation and rhythmic arsenal, Gerstin teases out the African and Caribbean elements so prevalent in New Orleans music, while also recognizing its Eastern European analogs.”
For this new suite, Gerstin challenged himself to compose in older styles such as danzón and afro (both from Cuba), biguine (Martinique), and cocek (Bulgaria). He was particularly interested in 19th-century New World styles with multiple sections.
Beginning with multi-part French and British contradances and quadrilles, this manner of composing spread all over the New World, creolized into such forms as danzón, Columbian pasillo, Brazilian choro, and, in the U.S., marches, ragtime, and early jazz.
“These forms challenge you to write distinct yet organically related melodies,” Gerstin says. His song, “Que Guapo Es Mi Compay,” combines a three-part danzón with an even earlier Cuban style, danza, “for an extra touch in a different rhythm.”
The suite's title composition, The Old City, moves from a gentle Cuban canción melody to a darker Greek tsamikos, and then to the rousing merengue-salsa hybrid mentioned above. “Imagine all those people finding one another in a café on a cobblestone street, and then what their children do with it all,” Gerstin adds.
The Sextet brings together several of the area's top jazz musicians.
Anna Patton, clarinet, is a hometown favorite whose band Elixir tours nationally in the contradance scene.
Don Anderson, trumpet, has performed lead roles with the Latin jazz big band Creación, Vermont Jazz Center Big Band, and many other ensembles.
Eugene Uman, piano, is the director of the Vermont Jazz Center and has performed with such luminaries as Sonny Fortune, Sheila Jordan, and Bo Diddley, in addition to leading his own Confluence Project.
Bassist Wes Brown has worked with such jazz notables as Earl “Fatha” Hines (with whom he toured at the age of 18), Wadada Leo Smith, and Fred Ho.
Drummer Ben James has worked with John Tchicai and Green Mountain Mambo, among others.
The concert will feature Carl Clements on flute, Jon Weeks on saxophone, and John Wheeler on trombone.
There may be a few surprise guests as well in the percussion section. But in the main, Gerstin holds down the percussion himself. An anthropologist and ethnomusicologist for most of his career, Gerstin studied and performed traditional drums of Cuba, Ghana, and the Caribbean island of Martinique (where he lived for two years).
The Sextet plans to record its next CD in the spring, featuring the songs of the Old City suite.