Once again in the park of Villa Osio in Rome, for one of the most anticipated events of Summertime.
The nervousness that prepares for the big rehearsals spreads: a few minutes before the start of the concert, a pianist continues to tune the piano, while a saxophonist goes over a difficult passage with silent fingering.
The Secret Society by Darcy James Argue, Canadian composer and bandleader, but now naturalized American, is about to be staged. It is a true big band, with full brass sections and musicians required to play second instruments: 20 elements in all, an organizational effort bordering on sustainable, shared with the North Sea Jazz Festival, which together with Casa del Jazz has grabbed the only two European dates of the lineup.
This alone would be enough to make the evening a great occasion, but there are already clear signs that the Secret conspirators are determined to impress by offering the best of themselves.
And the confirmation comes with the first songs introduced by eccentric and arcane overtures, sometimes even a little threatening: the shadow of the first George Russell, that of “Ezzthetic” and “The Stratus Seekers”, grows longer.
The compactness and impeccable precision of the orchestral sections is immediately striking: an outcome that is anything but obvious, given the sudden changes of pace and the close dialogues between them foreseen by Argue’s advanced writing.
But the Secret conspirators are not just studio musicians who are extremely skilled in the performance and sight reading of complex scores: from their ranks emerge soloists of surprising talent and confidence. And it is far from easy to keep up with an orchestral phalanx capable of instantaneous feline outbursts through improvisation, a panther that perpetually looms menacingly over the soloist.
The sure hand of the composer Argue is immediately revealed in the concision and effectiveness of the songs which always end with clear caesuras, which accumulate tension as the setlist progresses. Their inspiration is clear and well defined: they evoke characters who burst into their time coming from the future: for example Alan Turing, the breaker of the diabolical Nazi Enigma code, the man without whom the Second World War would not have been won, condemned by his country not only to anonymity, but also to a tragic and ignoble end. But there is also a dark and threatening song, dedicated to the founder of the largest American mercenary company: “a very particular piece” says Argue, “as it is dedicated to a True Bastard” (sic!).
While the orchestra’s book also opens up bright opening phases in which the band seems to boldly untie the sails for an adventurous navigation on the open sea, the temperature in the stalls continues to rise, and the greatest excitement is recorded among a large group of musicians, who had initially accepted the Artistic Director’s invitation mostly due to personal updating. The finale was very warm, I would say exciting, with ‘Tensile Curves’, a very long piece inspired by the famous Ellingtonian “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue”, that of Paul Gonsalves’ 36 chorus in Newport 1956.
Is The Secret Society really “the orchestra to be heard”, as Brad Mehldau, who is notoriously sparing with words, so succinctly stated? My answer and that of the hundreds of Summertime viewers is a clear “yes”, without any ifs or buts, as they said some time ago. Moreover, the critics of ‘Down Beat’ also think so, who placed the Secret Society album in seventh place in the ranking of albums of the year, which sees ahead people of the caliber of Charles Lloyd, James Brandon Lewis, Vijay Iyer , Jamie Branch and Christian McBride. And sorry for the immodesty, but we too, in our own small way, had immediately sniffed out this album in unsuspecting times.
