"According to Shipton, "It is one of the least successful of Dizzy's big band ventures, lacking the authentic stamp of Ellington's own personality." I don't think it was meant to reflect Ellington as much as the broader instrumental palette that Gil Evans had explored. If, as Shipton suggests, Dizzy wanted a setting comparable to that Miles Davis had found with Gil Evans in Porgy and Bess and Miles Ahead, he had found the right arranger. But when Fischer arrived in New York from California, charts completed, he found that Dizzy, with the out-to-lunch carelessness of which he was capable, hadn't bothered to book an orchestra. Fischer had to do it at the last minute. Most of the best jazz players in New York were already engaged, and Fischer had to fill in the instrumentation with symphony players. They didn't grasp the idiom, and the album is stiff. In a word, it just doesn't swing. But the writing in that album is gorgeous; its failure is Dizzy's fault."
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Composers from the United StatesJazz musiciansPianists from the United StatesPeople from MichiganDeaths from disease
Original Language: English
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Sources
Gene Lees: "Birks and His Works," You Can't Steal a Gift: Dizzy, Clark, Milt, and Nat (2001), pp. 99-100
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clare_Fischer
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Clare Fischer
Douglas Clare Fischer (October 22, 1928 – January 26, 2012) was an American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader, best known for his innovations in the fields of Latin jazz and vocal arranging (as well as his [[w:Clare_Fischer
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