BSO premieres a reimagined Duke Ellington Nutcracker
by Christianna McCausland
Swingin’
You know the holiday season has arrived when performances of Tchaikovsky’ s The Nutcracker fill concert halls with the predictability of death and taxes. But this year, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will offer a swingin’ take on this classic when it revisits the original jazz movements written by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn and pairs them with the percussive step dancing of Washington, D. C.’ s Step Afrika!.
This fully realized Duke Ellington Nutcracker was commissioned by the BSO for this, its world premiere. The performances December 8 – 11 will be led by Nicholas Hersh, the 28-year-old associate conductor of the BSO. While it will not be his first time conducting The Nutcracker— in fact, he conducted the BSO performance of the classic score in November for both the subscription and Off the Cuff performances— it is the first time he will be at the podium for this multimedia version. He’ s excited to see it all come together on stage.
“ There will be a lot to see, with the dancers and the orchestra on the stage together and props, costumes and highly innovative production,” Hersh says of the performance.“ It will be like going to your normal December Nutcracker performance with this whole new element of jazz and step that will add a new and, I think, unexplored dimension to the holiday classic.”
Ellington’ s version of The Nutcracker was released in 1960. He focused on the more popular and recognizable songs from Tchaikovsky’ s Suite, rendering iconic movements like the“ Russian Dance” and the“ Waltz of the Flowers” for a swinging jazz ensemble. The BSO performed that music in 2014, with Step Afrika! providing dance and narration. The response to the performance was so positive that the symphony hired composer and arranger Paul Murtha to not only rearrange the original Ellington / Strayhorn score for orchestra, but also to rewrite the entire Tchaikovsky score into a full 90-minute, two-act jazzy Nutcracker. The process is a challenge.“ You’ re culling the melodies out of Tchaikovsky’ s work, you’ re putting them rhythmically into a jazz idiom, and then you’ re looking for harmonic progression in the style of Duke Ellington, and then writing it for orchestra,” Murtha explains.
To give the orchestra the swing it requires to execute the music, a jazz drummer, pianist, bassist and saxophone player will be added to the instrumentation. However, Murtha says that he has made the orchestra integral to the music, not something that plays in the background with a jazzy overlay.
“ I’ m trying to give everyone something fun to play,” he says.
This Ellington Nutcracker is full of exciting challenges for everyone involved,