Landscapes and borderlands

In the midst of a swinging, spectacular and songful Lansing Symphony Orchestra concert Friday evening (Nov. 1), one small gesture stood out.

Settling onto the bench, guest pianist Willis Delony switched sheepishly to a different pair of reading glasses, drawing a chuckle from the audience.

Was the glasses routine a feint to break the tension, nudge the skeptical purists in the audience to unclench their sphincters and get everyone in a receptive mood? If so, it seemed to work. Washington composer Greg Yasinitsky’s piano concerto was not a lightweight diversion but an earnest and bold flight into seldom-traversed musical borderlands between classical music and jazz — or at least jazz-adjacent realms.

It began with a swirling melody that suggested an Irish dance, underpinned by steely chords out of the mid-20th-century playbook of Aaron Copland or Paul Hindemith. Clearly this music was going somewhere fast, and sure enough, the orchestral energy shapeshifted with uncanny ease into a swinging jazz trio positioned at stage center, with Delony in the lead. The music churned along so confidently that there was no time to wonder, “How is this going to work?” It was already working. Joyful orchestral blasts punctuated the trio’s buttery licks, serving double duty both as a musical counterpoint and an unfiltered emotional projection, as if shouting to Delony and the trio, “Yeah! Go!” 

Delony’s more deliberate solo passages took the swirling melody apart, slowed it down and stretched it out until the full orchestra returned to hammer out a concluding flourish — at which point a man in the audience couldn’t hold himself back and yelled, “AAAHHH!” The classics are great, but it’s fun to be surprised at the symphony.

Delony and the orchestra drifted into exquisite balladry in the wistful and lyrical slow movement, a not-so-jazzy idyll that felt like stepping out of a smoky club and watching the moon float over the city skyline.

Suddenly, it was back to the bebop as Delony and the orchestra knocked out an angular, heavily accented melody in the ultra-hip-for-1955 vein of Leonard Bernstein’s “Cool” from “West Side Story.” Delony’s trio featured two stellar local artists, one of them conveniently in house. Principal bassist Ed Fedewa, a stalwart of many jazz groups long renowned as a master of both classical and jazz styles, got a rare chance to depart the ranks of bassists parked at the far edge of the stage and show his other good side. Despite being surrounded and outgunned by much louder instruments, Fedewa found melodic and meaningful ways to dig into the groove amid the orchestral tumult.

Drummer Jeff Shoup, a local favorite and impresario of Jazz Tuesdays at Moriarty’s Pub, kept the chang-a-lang well oiled, exhibiting his trademark delicate brushwork, but managed to whack out some thunderous accents that inspired the orchestra to dizzying heights.

Both Delony and the orchestra had plenty of fun with the propulsive melody of the last movement, an urbane tower of chords à la composer Lalo Schifrin (and more than a little reminiscent of Schifrin’s run-cop-run theme from the 1967 TV series “Mannix”). To wind it up, all forces coalesced into a swinging jazz waltz, with Fedewa setting the groove and slick rim shots from Shoup egging everyone on.

Delony displayed enough mastery not only to nail the trickier parts but to slow things down and improvise, keeping the narrative fresh from moment to moment.

LSO maestro Timothy Muffitt clearly reveled in the musical challenge, unleashing some athletic moves heretofore unseen in his 18-year tenure in Lansing. At one point, while cuing the brass in a high-energy rhythmic blitz, he seemed to be throwing hand grenades at the back of the stage.

To cap the night, Delony returned to the piano stool to take part in a grand 100th-anniversary performance of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” If you like a lot of loose juice in your “Rhapsody,” Delony is not your man. Abandon and ecstasy aren’t his things, let alone schmaltz. In compensation, he delivered clarity, authority and a buttoned-down humor you had to tune in to carefully to appreciate. But the orchestra more than made up for Delony’s dry delivery by pumping out verve, oomph and swing by the barrelful, with maximal milking on muted brass by principal trombone Ava Ordman and principal trumpet Neil Mueller.

The night began with another fresh revelation for most of Friday’s listeners, William Grant Still’s rich, full-throated Symphony No. 2. It’s a purely orchestral piece, but the human voice, often tinged with the blues, is at its core. The orchestra tapped Still’s endless wellspring of song with breathtaking unity, pouring out one gorgeous, singing melody after another, now triumphant, now tragic, now swaggering, now wistful.

Still is a master of the imperceptible yet suddenly overwhelming buildup, and, conveniently, so is Muffitt. No sooner did the cellos get hold of a meaty melody in the first movement, with the double basses thrumming underneath, than the entire brass section thrust itself upward, like a mountain range, behind them. There was much more sonic wonderment, but you get the idea. The symphony, though unfamiliar to many music lovers, is a national treasure, and the home team did it proud.