When musical worlds collide: The ECSO welcomes Sean Nelson’s Big Band to the Garde stage Saturday

January 19, 2023 7:00 pm • Last Updated: January 17, 2023 10:03 am

By Rick Koster
Day Arts/Features writer

Sean Nelson’s New London Big Band will join the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra onstage Saturday in the Garde Arts Center. (Vinnie Scarano)

When Rudyard Kipling wrote “Never the twain shall meet,” he wasn’t thinking about folks like Sean Nelson and Toshiyuki Shimada.

Though there are distinctive aesthetic differences between Shimada’s elegantly classical Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and Nelson’s rousing trad jazz New London Big Band, the two ensembles have found a mutually enjoyable kinship and stylistic overlap that will be ebulliently displayed Saturday when they share a bill at the Garde Arts Center.

Officially, it’s the ECSO’s first concert of the new year and the third of the 2022-23 season. The orchestra will perform the first half of the program and, after intermission, they’ll be joined onstage by the 17-piece New London Big Band for a set of material selected and arranged to show off the combined skills of both units. Aural fireworks, gleeful virtuosity and terrific instrumental interplay between the two units will ensue and, if the past is any indication, the ECSO faithful will be delighted.

After all, this is the second time the Big Band has guested on an ECSO program. In February 2020, in a bold, fun bit of programming, the two organizations co-headlined the Garde as one of the ECSO’s regularly scheduled seasonal concerts. The show was a huge success.

By popular demand

“That was our best-selling concert in 10 years,” says Caleb Bailey, executive director for the symphony. “It was a worthwhile endeavor, and we immediately got a lot of requests from our season ticketholders to do it again. We WANTED to do it again. But that was also our last concert before COVID hit.”

The ECSO was back for the 2021-22 season but scheduling for both ensembles was sufficiently tentative that the soonest they could book another co-bill was Saturday.

“Man, we had so much fun sharing the stage the first time,” Nelson says, a trombonist who serves as composer and arranger for his band. “It was a bit of an experiment, so it was gratifying that the Garde was packed. We’d never done anything like that — combining so many musicians from the stylistically different worlds of classical and jazz. From our perspective, it was humbling to be part of that program. I never thought I’d be on the Garde stage with an orchestra. And they made us feel instantly welcome.”

The key to the concept is that Nelson and Shimada find a blend of material that enables their respective bands to shine in a fashion that appeals to fans of each unit. On Saturday, the ECSO will take the stage first and play Bernstein’s “On the Town: Three Dance Episodes,” Harbison’s “Remembering Gatsby (Foxtrot for Orchestra),” and Gershwin’s “The Man I Love.”

After the break, the Big Band comes out and together the ensembles will explore more Gershwin (“Soon,” “Embraceable You” and “Fascinating Rhythm”), Debussy’s “Clair de lune” and “Juan Tizol’s “Keb-Lah.” Nelson’s own tunes — “Brisket and Beans,” “Meatspace,” “Last Call” and the group’s theme song, “Social Hour” — are also on the bill. Nelson’s tunes, which are featured on the two New London Big Band CDs, “Social Hour” and the live “Dancing Nitely,” are more than competitive with established work in the genre.

By prior arrangements

As he did for the initial ECSO twin-bill, Nelson has arranged a lot of the material for the upcoming concert, and he admits it’s a bit of a daunting job.

“It’s a huge project to rewrite material for a bigger ensemble,” Nelson says. “The only way to do it is in such a way that respects all the musicians on the stage. I want to make sure they all have value and don’t feel like their parts are afterthoughts. There’s a big sense of adventure for all of us, I think. Playing the music just to do something like this is a big part of the enjoyment.”

One aspect that makes it easier is the chemistry is that many ECSO and Big Band musicians are or were members of the United States Coast Guard Band, an outfit whose mission requires a demanding mastery of many different styles of music. In that sense, there’s a built-in personal and artistic camaraderie that many of the musicians share have from having played together.

Basically, it’s fun

“The ensembles and Toshi and Sean get along super well,” Bailey says. “The rehearsals are fun and exciting, and that’s something that translates to the audience during the actual concert. You can also see it onstage when Sean and Toshi are bantering and going back and forth introducing songs.”

That mutual respect and admiration is a big part of how the collaborative concerts came about.

“The whole concept sort of bubbled up organically,” Bailey explains. “In 2017-18, we’d done a program called ‘Mozart and Lalo Birthday Bash’ because those two composers shared a birthday. Someone pointed out that Jerome Kern had the same birthday so, as an encore, we had our guest soprano, Sarah Yanovitch, do Kern’s ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.’ People went crazy.

“It reminded us that, earlier in that season, guest piano soloist Mark Markham had encored with Meredith Wilson’s ‘Till There Was You’ and the crowd loved it. We started hearing from patrons that they’d enjoy more programming like that.”

Bailey has seen Facebook videos of Nelson’s band and was intrigued and impressed. He reached out to a mutual friend, Tim Fioravante, music department chair at Waterford High School, leader of his own big band and former member of the New London Big Band, who facilitated a meeting between Shimada, Bailey and Nelson.

“We all just instantly got along,” Nelson says. “There was an energy and an immediate idea that it would work.”

It took a year and a half to figure out all the details required before the 2020 concert became part of the ECSO season. Now, circumstances are such that it’s finally happening again.

“My goal all along about the Big Band and jazz is that it’s something for everyone,” Nelson says. “There’s a definite vibe to it. But I’m also a proud classical musician and the same things apply to classical music. I love the opportunity to play in a welcoming environment, whether that’s in a bar where people are drinking and dancing or a concert hall because you can tell when the audience gets it. The ECSO crowd was very hip last time. We’re all putting this energy out into the world. It’s a good thing.”

Bailey adds, “I’m so excited to see the stage crammed full of these two ensembles again. And I promise: Anyone who attends will be really glad they were there.”