It's a fantastic idea. The reality is almost as good. Take a crack classical ensemble (the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group) and organise a tour with jazz players (trumpeter Dave Douglas, drummer Susie Ibarra and bassist Mark Dresser), incorporating a new commission, two repertoire classics and some top-quality improvisation, conducted by Peter Rundell.
The cornerstone was Douglas's hour-long Blue Latitudes, a 12-movement work that covered every trick in the book. Over a prolific recording career, from the sublime Charms of the Night Sky to the polemical Witness, Douglas has shown he can play more or less anything, with anyone - jazz veterans, DJs, even Tom Waits.
His orchestral writing shows an equally eclectic gift for colour: everything from Ives-like bombast to shimmering avant-gardisms, with a few nice tunes along the way. Blue Latitudes parallels Captain Cook's adventures, with sections entitled Life at Sea or Drinking Song Discovery. Sometimes the score mutes the orchestra for 30 seconds while the trio blows.
For much of the work, Douglas rises to the challenge of integrating improvisation with through-composition. There are moments where the BCMG sound unsure of what to follow: the pulse or the conductor's hands, highlighting some cultural differences between jazz musicians and classical specialists. Douglas good-naturedly draws attention to this divide when he introduces Webern's Concerto Op 24 and Ligeti's magnificent Chamber Concerto. Noting that the Webern is "very flexible in its tempo", he jokes that he has been watching Peter Rundell conduct and still doesn't understand how the musicians follow him.
The BCMG's reading of the Ligeti is a tough act to follow, but the closing trio improvisations - inventive, free of cliche, sonically rich - make a fine complement. Blue Latitudes is impressive, but not in the same league. As a composer, Douglas throws every ingredient into the pot, as if unsure what makes a square meal. He pays warm tribute to Rundell's skill in realising the piece, but you wonder whether Douglas needed an editor more than a conductor.
Nevertheless, any concert that puts Ligeti and Ornette Coleman on the same bill (Douglas encores with Lonely Woman) gets my vote.
