All that jazz came right from Russia with love Wednesday night when the Leningrad Dixieland Jazz Band communicated with a southern Oregon audience in the universal languge: music . The band appeared at Manhattan rose in a benefit for the Southern Oregon Traditional Jazz Society, sharing the stage with the Rogue Valley Dixieland Jazz Misfits. The Misfits, led by trombonist Larry Bernard, opened both the 7 and 9 p.m. shows with a half-hour warm-up. Then the Leningrad nine stepped onto the stage and like sputnik, the music went into orbit. Most of the music was in the American tradition. The first set offered standards like "Sweet Georgia brown," "Tico Tico" and It's Been a Long, Long Time." The leader, Oleg Kuvaitsev, announced a composition, "Russian Lullaby," written by the great American composer, Irving Berlin. Kuvaitsev, who plays the alto saxophone, said, that Berlin was born in Siberia in1887. This, he said, was the only Russian song Berlin ever composed. Kuvaitsev was the only member of the brass section on stage during the selection. He was backed by piano, bass, clarinet and banjo. Then the other brass player returned to pick up the tempo and the tune burst into a roof-raiser, "Puttin' on the Ritz." Each musician took at least a few bars of solo during the evening. Alexander Usyskin pulled sweet sounds from his clarinet on several numbers. Usyskin, 51, founded one of the earliest bands in the USSR, "The Seven Dixieland Boys." The drummer, Alexander Skrypnik turned up the heat on "Puttin' on the Ritz." He also contributed vocals, with a tenor version of "It's Been a Long, Long time" and a Louis Armstrong sound on "You Are Woman." Besides Skrypnik, other band members sang in English. Trumpeter Vladimir Voronin sang in the Armstrong style, and played a trumpet Louis would have been proud to hear. Brass pyrotechnics came from David Golshokin. During the first set he concentrated on the flugehorn. In the second he played the violin, sometimes making it sound like the train wheels of "Orange Blossom Special" and, later, playing it with a sound reminiscent of Paris jazz in the era of guitarist Django Reinhardt. Goloshokin lectures in jazz, augmenting his talks with demonstration. Between shows he said in a brief interview that he recorded an album in the USSR on which he played 10 instruments. As often happens, the second set flew higher and wider, opening with an American jazz classic "Alexander's Ragtime Band," and going forward to "When the Saints Go Marching In." The Leningrad musicians played in ensemble and individually with flair, throwing jazz phrases back and forth among themselves, and tossing in musical puns. Trombonist Anatoli Chimiris paid a musical respect to Glenn Miller by dropping a touch of "Pennsylvania 6-5000" into a number in the second set. The band members earned almost continuous applause, and the audience paid them well. While the music was outstanding, some technical problems with the sound system detracted from the show, and there was an uncommon amount of audience noise from the back of the room, particularly during the first show. The Leningrad Dixieland Jazz Band is on a 20-city tour of Canada and the U.S. It ends June 17 in Washington, D.C. They will be on ABC's "Good Morning America" June 14, and on the "Tonight" show on NBC next Wednesday. No matter how good they play on the Carson show, it won't be any better than the show in Medford Wednesday night. Al Reiss |