Last Friday, the Memminger Auditorium was only half full, but people flowed in at a steady rate and there was an excited buzz as strangers socialized and settled into their seats.  The occasion was a special performance of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra with Charleston jazz musician Quentin Baxter and his band. By the time the concert began, the house was almost full.
Even if you didn’t know anything about the program, you could see from the set that this would not be the average orchestra concert.  There were microphones set up at the font of the stage, as well as a drum set.  A vibraphone and a large marimba were also stationed at the front, rather than relegated to the percussion section in the back.  
The orchestra was onstage, and guest conductor Edwin Outwater (music director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in Ontario, Canada) came out to applause from the audience.  He spoke about how excited he was to be working with Baxter and the CSO.  There was thunderous applause when he praised the CSO and said that the Charleston community is lucky to have such a great orchestra.
Outwater said that this would not be the traditional orchestra concert, but that they would begin with a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach to show how the orchestra normally performs.  They played the first movement of Bach’s “Double Concerto for Two Violins,”  with CSO concertmaster Yuriy Bekker and principal second violinist Alan Molina as the soloists.  The performance was beautiful and the sound rich.  Both violinists played their solo parts effortlessly.
After the piece ended and the applause faded, Outwater said, “Now we’re going to do something a little different with it [the piece] – we’re going to ‘jazzify’ it.”  He introduced Quentin Baxter, and explained that they were about to play Baxter’s take on the same piece.
The “jazzified” version began with the two violins and Baxter on drum set.  Baxter kept the notes of the original piece mostly intact (though sometimes adding ornamentation) and altered the rhythm to give it a jazz feeling.  The orchestra joined in after the introduction, also playing the altered rhythms.  
Baxter wrote the second piece on the program 10 years ago and dedicated to his father.  It is titled “Deacon’s Dance” (Baxter’s father is a deacon) and is written for cello, bass and trumpet. It began imitatively, then became a dialogue between the strings and the trumpet. “The quirkiness of the piece itself pays homage to the advice my Dad gave me when I didn’t think I needed it,” Baxter said, and the audience laughed.
The third piece was the “Duke Ellington Fantasy.”  Outwater spoke about how Duke Ellington had brought jazz and classical music together, and said that in this piece the orchestra and jazz band would play Ellington tunes together.  “We’re not quite melding yet,” he said. “That will happen in the second half, but we’re riffing off of each other.”
Baxter then introduced the members of his band: Charlton Singleton on trumpet, Mark Sterbank on tenor saxophone, Thomas Gill on piano and Kevin Hamilton on string bass.
The “Duke Ellington Fantasy” was the finale of the first half, and in good jazz fashion, the audience applauded appreciatively after each solo.  Singleton’s smooth trumpet sound was a pleasure to the ears, and Baxter, who was clearly enjoying every moment of the performance, seemed equally happy accompanying his colleagues or playing a solo.  
      The second half opened with Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy,” in an arrangement for percussion ensemble by jazz percussionist Max Roach.  Baxter said that they included the piece as a tribute to Roach, who was a big influence on Baxter’s playing.  For this piece Baxter was joined by CSO percussionists Ryan Leveille and Beth Albert, as well as Mike Holdeman.
Next Baxter and his band performed two pieces that Baxter wrote a few years ago as part of a collaboration with local artist John Duckworth. During the music, Duckworth’s artwork was projected onto a screen behind the stage.  It began with an image of moving water, then morphed into a stream of other nature images, including trees and birds that became fish and then birds again.
A brass quintet from the CSO joined Baxter for the next piece, “Ghostdance” by Max Roach, for brass quintet and drum set.  “Now to darken things up a bit,” said Baxter before they began, and the piece did have a darker sound, but a lot of energy.  It was rhythmic, edgy and fun - and well-played.
Following “Ghostdance,” the orchestra returned to the stage for the finale of the concert – two pieces by French composer Maurice Ravel.  The first was “Pavane pour une infante défunte” (“Pavane for a Dead Princess”), which Outwater described as a sad title but beautiful music.  
It began as a typical orchestral performance of the piece, with quiet, gorgeous melodies.  Then Baxter came in with soft cymbals that fit the music perfectly.  The jazz band played to pizzicato accompaniment from the orchestra, and the orchestra and band alternated their way through the piece.  Although it wasn’t what Ravel wrote, the performance was completely in tune with the spirit of the work.
The evening’s grand finale was Ravel’s piece “Bolero.”  “You heard the elegant Ravel, now you’ll hear the crazy, sexy Ravel,” Outwater said.  Unlike the typical performance of “Bolero,” in this rendition the woodwind players were encouraged to improvise during their solos, which they did to great effect.  
The audience and jazz band alike listened intently, smiled and even laughed at the improvisations.  The jazz band joined in as the piece progressed, and as it got louder and louder toward the final chords, the jazz musicians riffed off of the original.
It was a full melding of the orchestra and jazz band, and quite possibly the coolest “Bolero” any orchestra has ever performed.
If you missed Quentin Baxter and the CSO on Jan. 22 and the sold-out repeat performance on Jan. 23, you still have plenty of opportunities to hear the CSO this semester.  There are four concerts left in the CSO Merrill Lynch Masterworks series, including the season finale in April with the CSO Chorus.  The McCrady’s Pops series, of which the evening with Quentin Baxter and friends was a part, has two concerts left.  The next is “Fiedler’s Favorites,” a tribute the Boston Pops’ legendary maestro Arthur Fiedler, on Feb. 12 and 13.  The Backstage Pass series also has two concerts remaining, on Feb. 11 and March 25.  For more information, visit www.charlestonsymphony.org.
Students can support live music in Charleston through the CSO. Tickets are $5 with a student ID.