Program Notes: From Chick Corea to Wynton Marsalis

When it comes to the Seattle Symphony’s Chamber Series, orchestra musicians take the lead in programming, submitting ideas of intimate works they want to perform that are ultimately turned into full-fledged concerts like the one you are about to experience. This jazz-informed contemporary chamber music program features two pieces picked by Principal Bassoon Seth Krimsky that precede a work he composed and premieres on this night. After intermission, a classical work by a jazz artist closes the concert. 

Krimsky hadn’t planned on premiering anything. He’d submitted an early chamber piece by Chick Corea for consideration: Trio for Flute, Bassoon and Piano (1968). Originally appearing on jazz flutist Hubert Laws’ 1969 third album, Laws' Cause, the Trio featured Corea (1941–2021) on piano with Laws and bassoonist Karl Porter, and it was later included on a 1974 Corea compilation, Inner Space. Based on his piano improvisations, it has a rubato introduction before picking up speed, with alto flute joining the bassoon and piano. “The whole piece is nothing but vibe,” Krimsky said of its deep retro feel.

Krimsky first heard the Trio shortly after he started playing bassoon and it spoke to his love of jazz but also piqued what was then his more recent interest in classical music. Though there was a recording, the sheet music wasn’t available anywhere. “When I was in college, I worked at Tower Classical Records on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and Chick Corea came in one night. Since the trio wasn't published, I asked, ‘Hey, that trio you wrote, can I get the music?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I love it when people ask.’ He gave me his secretary's phone number, but it was just on a scrap of paper, so of course I lost it.” 

The Trio was published a few years ago, renewing Krimsky’s interest in performing it. But because it was only 5 minutes long, he was invited to suggest works he might want to program with it. 

He added another 5 minutes to the program with Niebla y Cemento (which translates to “fog and cement”) by Argentine composer Mario Herrerías (1954–2018), a musician and music scholar who delved into jazz, tango, classical music, contemporary music and rock, bringing his interests together in a unique compositional style with influences ranging from Frank Zappa to Astor Piazzola. This particular Piazzolla-adjacent piece for clarinet, bassoon and piano was composed in 1993. Like Piazzolla’s work, it’s rooted in the sounds of Argentine tango nuevo and toys with unexpected rhythmic structures. Originally commissioned by fellow flutist Jorge de la Vega, Niebla y Cemento can be performed with flute or clarinet, bassoon and piano; this will be the clarinet version.  

Krimsky’s work closes the first half of the program and stretches to 15 minutes. Out of the Woodwork began very differently when he started working on it last spring, inspired by Joe Hisaishi’s Music Future concert and his use of displaced rhythmic cells. But Israel’s escalating retribution against Hamas and the Palestinian people changed its direction entirely. Krimsky is Jewish, and the intense reaction on college campuses paired with his anger in Israel’s handling of the situation as well as the U.S.’s response — or lack thereof — stirred up feelings that he funneled directly into his composition.  

He explains that the first movement is fully rooted in the rock and roll he grew up listening to, and is, he says, “pretty aggressive … there’s guitar licks in there. The last movement has a rondo but also, everybody gets a solo as if it were jazz. And I figured out most of that with a guitar.” He says it was also influenced a bit by Corea’s Trio, insofar as picking up on that deep vintage vibe. 

The second half of the program finds a jazz musician and composer, Wynton Marsalis, working in the classical chamber medium with his string quartet, At the Octoroon Balls (1995).  

According to Second Violin Brittany Breeden, who originally submitted the work for inclusion in a Chamber program and performs it on this night with three of her colleagues, “I fell in love with At the Octoroon Balls while preparing it for a Spectrum Dance Theater performance with Artistic Director Donald Byrd. While learning the music, I knew this was a piece I would want to play again and again with or without dance. It brings me right back to New Orleans. The blending of styles, the beautiful harmony and soulful melodies sing to me, and I can’t help but move to the rhythms.” 

Originally commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and premiered on May 7, 1995, by the Orion String Quartet (and later recorded by the ensemble for a 1999 album release), this extended 45-minute work for two violins, viola and cello is steeped in the traditional Creole music that surrounded Marsalis while growing up in New Orleans. The title of the piece references early New Orleans society balls that were held among light-skinned African Americans and much frequented by white aristocratic men looking for mistresses.   

At the Octoroon Balls explores the American Creole contradictions and compromises exemplified by life there via seven movements evoking Crescent City culture: Come Long Fiddler, Mating Calls and Delta Rhythms, Creole Contradanzas, Many Gone, Hellbound Highball, Blue Lights on the Bayou and Rampart St. Row House Rag. 

The 10-minute opening movement, Come Long Fiddler, is an unaccompanied violin solo mostly in the style of American deep Southern fiddling, full of country double stops and bright harmonics, while follow-up Mating Calls and Delta Rhythms is slow and suggestive, seeming to reference a woman whose flirting comes to fruition. After a stretch of unmeasured, rhapsodic music, a slow Delta rhythm ushers in Creole Contradanzas, its smooth drive contradicted by nervous melodies and edgy harmonies. Many Gone follows, stretching to nearly 9 minutes as it explores aspects of country, blues and spiritual dialects, not resolving but fading out.  

The portion of the quartet most often broken out and performed alone is the frenetically paced Southern train music of the fifth movement, Hellbound Highball, its strings varying between sliding and whining train whistles, or chugging and driving rhythms, laced with fiddle music’s famed “Devil” interval, the creepy tritone. It is a furious scherzo, not only based on train propulsion but also, as the liner notes point out, “the speed with which fortunes and directions are reversed in this exacting land of opportunity.” The short, atmospheric Blue Lights on the Bayou is the meditative nocturne that follows, a tense undercurrent expressed in the calculated pizzicato littered throughout. The classic rag-informed finale, Rampart Street Row House Rag, closes the quartet on a slinky, slightly dissonant note. 

Leilani Polk © 2025