Concerto No. 2 for Big Band

During a musical career that lasted over seven decades, bassist, composer, arranger and jazz orchestra leader Miljenko Prohaska (Zagreb, September 17, 1925 – Zagreb, May 29, 2014) left a remarkable trace on Croatian music. His vast oeuvre, which extends from jazz to pop, a large number of music-drama works, film scores, works for wind, jazz, review and tamburitza orchestras, as well as chamber music, will remain a thing of value in the Croatian musical heritage and a challenge to all who in the years and decades to come are going to attempt to register and systematise it. An important part of his body of work is related to third stream music. It was in this style that he wrote compositions performed by combos and orchestras abroad. In fact, Prohaska is the only Croatian composer for jazz orchestra some of whose compositions and arrangements have become a part of the standard world repertoire. His name, then was mentioned in the same breath as those of world music greats. He worked and was friends with numerous famous jazz artists such as John Lewis, Johnny Griffin, Art Farmer, Michel Legrand, Art Taylor, Slide Hampton, and played in the international orchestras of Gerry Mulligan and Clark Terry. His Intima is the most-played jazz composition by any Croatian writer and the only Croatian jazz number to have found a place among world jazz standards, played and recorded by numerous well-regarded musicians in America and elsewhere. The original words for the composition were penned by legendary jazz journalist, writer and encyclopaedist Leonard Feather. The three movement Concerto no. 2 for big band of Miljenko Prohaska might be defined as a musical work of what is called the third stream, a stylistic orientation in which compositions are a kind of hermaphroditic classical and jazz music and demonstrate the characteristics of both genres of music. The Concerto was composed in 1963, but the date of the first performance of the composition is not known today. In the same year, on November 29, it was performed in the United States by the USA Orchestra conducted by Harold Farberman in Hunter College in New York. This performance was recorded on the album Sonorities which was released by the world famed record company Columbia. The solo parts in Concerto no. 2 were interpreted by renowned musicians Joe Newman on trumpet, Jerome Richardson, alto sax, and Dick Katz, piano. The concerto is written in three movements which differ from each other in terms of mode and style. Prohaska has not given any tempo marking for the first movement but because of the style and the tradition of writing a concerto we assume that it is probably meant to be vivace. The main melodic motif around which the whole movement turns is given by the bass, and then it recurs throughout the movement in various instruments and in different contexts. The movement is dominated by a mystic minor key atmosphere. A contrast to the pedal tones is the blues feeling, which stems from the use of dominant codes that are not resolved but a feeling of irresolution (rocking to and fro) remains constantly present. In contrast to the first movement, the second begins with a slower tempo, after which it moves into double time. One can feel the influence of folk music through the specific use of harmonies and melodic progression in modes. Also present is a frequent and well-expressed employment of polyrhythmicity; the solo instrument is the flute, which is played by the second trumpet. In the third movement Prohaska uses variations on a melodic motif from the first movement as grand finale with a gradual creation of tension. The use of dynamics is very important. Typical of Concerto no. 2 is the standard big band section and tutti writing. The rhythm section plays all through the composition. Prohaska also uses cross-sectional writing (first movement, letter F and third movement, letter H: alto saxophones with trumpets and tenor saxophones with trombones, which is a frequent combination in a jazz orchestra). He uses clarinets and the flute or recorder for a change of texture of the sound of the orchestra but as a separate section as well. In the trumpets and trombones, he uses mutes (cup, bucket mute, hat mute, wah mute). In the third movement the woodwind instruments on cue play high notes to produce an effect complementary to the groove created by the rhythm section and the clavioline.