Orchestral jazz

Orchestral jazz or symphonic jazz is a form of jazz that developed in New York City in the 1920s. Early innovators of the genre, such as Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington, include some of the most highly regarded musicians, composers, and arrangers in all of jazz history. The fusion of jazz's rhythmic and instrumental characteristics with the scale and structure of an orchestra, made orchestral jazz distinct from the musical genres that preceded its emergence. Its development contributed both to the popularization of jazz, as well as the critical legitimization of jazz as an art form.

Orchestral jazz developed from early New Orleans jazz. The African-American musicians who pioneered the genre prior to 1920, and who migrated from New Orleans to Chicago and New York in the early 1920s, brought jazz north; in time, the African-American neighborhood of Harlem became the genre's cultural center.

In New York, the entertainment and arts industries thrived and jazz found a fitting home, becoming an important part of the cultural landscape. But before the widespread popularity of big bands, which developed in tandem with the growing dance craze, jazz was generally regarded as a rather crude variety of music. It was not widely listened to for its artistic value, as music critic Richard Hadlock writes:

A movement emerged during the 1920s, however, indebted in part to Paul Whiteman's musical influence. This movement led to the more stylized, and more formal variety of jazz that would become orchestral jazz, imagined first by Whiteman as symphonic jazz.

This stylization of jazz had elements of classical European composing, coupled with the rhythmic and instrumental sound of New Orleans jazz. Orchestral jazz was musically distinct from its southern predecessor for a variety of reasons: not only were the bands bigger, creating a certain richness of sound, but also the music was structurally more sophisticated. While New Orleans jazz was characterized by collective improvisation and the spontaneous reinterpretation of standard tunes, jazz orchestras played head arrangements that were composed and arranged prior to the performance in which they were executed. The busy, raucous style of early jazz did not hold the same kind of popular appeal that the comparative restraint of orchestral jazz did. In particular, the implementation of measured rhythm accounted for much of its popular appeal. The two-beat groove reminiscent of New Orleans jazz was replaced during the transition into the swing era by the bass innovations of Jimmy Blanton and Walter Page, both of whom are credited for developing the walking bass line. This would make four beats to the bar a jazz standard; furthermore, this rhythm was conducive to the kind of dancing audiences desired.

The rise of big band instrumentation had as much to do with artistic trends as it did with commercial viability. Significant technological developments transformed the music industry during the 1920s, allowing for an increase in the mass consumption of music. Phonographs and records became standard household items; indicative of the widespread popularization of recorded music is the fact that nearly 100 million records were sold in 1927 alone. Prearranged music had a particular commercial appeal, since audiences were familiar with the songs they saw performed live from the recordings they purchased. Furthermore, exposure to musical innovation—and jazz, in all its varieties, was certainly innovative—had never before reached the same breadth of American audience. Given the commercial availability of music—which, in addition to records, was aided by the proliferation of broadcast radio—a platform was thus created that accounted for the popularization of jazz. But the mass consumption of jazz simultaneously allowed the audience an inverted influence on its development, and consumer demands dictated that orchestral jazz adopted a structure similar to traditionally accessible popular music.

The "King of Jazz" in the early twenties was Paul Whiteman, a classically trained musician from Denver. Prior to his time as a ballroom bandleader at the Palais Royal, in New York Whiteman played violin in both the Denver Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. His classical training substantially influenced the way in which he approached "Modern Music"; most famously, Whiteman's performance at Aeolian Hall in 1924 showcased the transformation he helped pioneer. Concluding this noteworthy show with George Gershwin's famous composition (and perhaps the best example of symphonic jazz) Rhapsody in Blue, Whiteman's performance is often cited as the event that signifies the arrival of jazz from a folk music to an art form. The showmanship and innovation Whiteman exhibited earned him the moniker "King of Jazz," though with this title there is a good deal of controversy associated. As a white man, Whiteman's capitalization on a musical genre that is incontrovertibly African-American in origins has led many critics to question the authenticity of his artistic pursuits, and even deem them exploitative. Despite this, many of Whiteman's contemporaries, black and white, praised him and, indicative of his influence, wanted to emulate his successes.

Two of Whiteman's contemporaries that made, arguably, the most significant contributions to the development of orchestral jazz, were the collaborative duo of Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman. Though Henderson, a piano player, never gained the celebrity of many other bandleaders of the time, his collaborations with Redman nonetheless had enormous influence on the development of orchestral jazz, and particularly its transition from Whiteman's symphonic arrangements to the eventual supremacy of big band.