In the 1920s, jazz swept through the world of music like a typhoon, exciting listeners and composers alike with an array of new harmonies, instrumental sonorities and rhythmic ideas. Jazz musicians tried their hand at orchestral forms, and classical composers raced to include jazz strains in whatever they were working on at the moment.
The ferment of the period comes through in the season-opening concert of the Vallejo Symphony, led by Music Director Marc Taddei. George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and George Antheil’s “A Jazz Symphony,” written back-to-back in 1924 and 1925, make up the first half of the program, with piano soloist Jeffrey LaDeur undertaking both solo parts.
After intermission, Taddei will conduct Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7, the last and least appreciated of the composer’s symphonic catalog. Presumably Taddei has a plan in mind to refute the naysayers.