If you just want a straightforward good jazz performance and don’t want the tunes to have to conform to a particular program theme, no problem. Michael Arnowitt has 25 years of experience presenting jazz concerts to the general public, performing as a solo pianist or in small groups ranging from two to five musicians.

These programs always present a pleasing mix of tunes past and present, from Michael’s highly creative arrangements of jazz standards such as There Will Never Be Another You or Autumn Leaves, through lively improvisations on jazz midcentury classics by Herbie Hancock, Charles Mingus and others, to his takes on songs of more recent vintage being written by leading musicians of today’s jazz world.

Michael Arnowitt frequently includes in his sets a few of his own original jazz compositions, featured on his 2-CD release Sweet Spontaneous. His likable jazz creations are extraordinarily wide-ranging, from the captivating jazz waltz “Pirouette” and the swinging “Migratory Mood” to his moving ballad “Chicago Avenue” in memory of George Floyd and the high-energy “Bulgarian Hoedown.”

Highlights of Michael Arnowitt’s sets include his well-received jazz arrangements based on classical music material (including medleys profiling music by great composers of the past such as Bartok, Stravinsky, and Copland), plus his jazz arrangements of the music of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, and even his transformation into jazz of the occasional pop song that catches his ear.

These performances feature improvisations on tunes from Michael Arnowitt’s favorite jazz musicians:

Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton, Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, Billy Childs, Kamasi Washington, and Brad Mehldau.

Pianist Michael Arnowitt performs with a variety of outstanding American and Canadian jazz musicians chosen for their top-level listening and improvisational abilities. Michael Arnowitt is relaxed and easy to work with and he is well-known for his warm onstage manner with audiences of all ages. From the first note to the last, his absorbing performances unfailingly bring his audiences out in a sunnier mood than they came in with through the power of music. Michael Arnowitt says, “music is all about motion and journey. To me, listening to a piece of music is like travelling through a varied landscape of rolling hills. We go up and down and round corners to see constantly changing vistas of different colors and textures.” Come join Michael Arnowitt and ImproVisions Jazz for an up-close experience – a great opportunity to hear an outstanding group of musicians perform a set of engaging acoustic jazz full of improvisational interplay and musical conversation.

Sample set lists from a recent Michael Arnowitt and the ImproVisions Jazz Quartet performance

first set
Very Early (Bill Evans)
Suzanne, instrumental version (Leonard Cohen, jazz arrangement by Billy Childs)
Hope, In the Face of Despair (Billy Childs)
A Boy Like That and Maria (from Jazz Suite from West Side Story, jazz arrangements by Michael Arnowitt of the original Leonard Bernstein songs)
Speak No Evil (Wayne Shorter)
The Stream (Michael Arnowitt, jazz arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Fugue in C-sharp minor)

Second set
George’s Dilemma (Clifford Brown)
The Color of Iris (Dave Holland)
Roumanian Dance no. 1 (Bela Bartok, jazz arrangement by Michael Arnowitt)
You Must Believe In Spring (Michel LeGrand)
Afro Blue (Mongo Santamaría)
She’s Leaving Home (Beatles, jazz arrangement by Brad Mehldau)
Boogie Stop Shuffle (Charles Mingus)

Michael Arnowitt’s “Jazz Suite from West Side Story” is a performance of his jazz arrangements of nine sections of Leonard Bernstein’s classic, featuring such famous songs as Somewhere, Maria, Tonight, and America. Audiences have loved this head-bobbing, toe-tapping music familiar from the Broadway musical and hit movie, creatively transformed by Arnowitt into the world of jazz.

The tunes in the suite move from one to the next as a continuity so the unique mood of Leonard Bernstein’s New York City scene is maintained. The total length of the suite is about one hour and 15 minutes.

West Side Story is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, taking Shakespeare’s story of rival clans and transposing the plot to the rival gangs of New York City’s upper West Side. Michael Arnowitt feels the larger point that can be drawn from the Shakespeare and the Bernstein classics is this: if an individual man and a woman can say we’re not enemies, we can love and live together, then why can’t entire groups do the same? In the words of the song from West Side Story,

Someday, somewhere, we’ll find a new way of living
We’ll find a way of forgiving

This program has been extremely well-received by audiences who recognize the melodies from their prior experience of hearing Leonard Bernstein’s songs, while appreciating the creativity and imagination of how Michael Arnowitt has adapted and transformed the original musical material into jazz forms and structures for improvisation. Jazz Suite from West Side Story is a wonderful evening that truly brings you into the unique world of this timeless classic.

The suite contains Michael Arnowitt’s jazz arrangements of these famous sections from West Side Story:

A Boy Like That
Cool
Maria
Something’s Coming
Tonight
I Have A Love
Mambo
The Rumble
Somewhere
America

An original concert-length jazz suite

The Five Chinese Elements is a suite for jazz trio on the theme of the five Chinese elements: earth, water, wood, metal, and fire. The earliest written material about the five Chinese elements dates from the third century B.C., although the traditions no doubt date from an even earlier time. The ancient Chinese believed that each of the five elements had a particular color, sense, flavor, cardinal direction, time of year, type of weather, and animal associated with it. The performance of this fascinating composition, in a free-jazz spirit, is inspired by these traditional Chinese associations from thousands of years ago in combination with the trio’s own personal feelings in the present for each of these five natural elements.

Originally composed in 2004 by Michael Arnowitt and the bassist Anthony Santor, this suite is a full-concert length composition of approximately one and a half hours. It has generally been performed by a trio of piano, upright bass, and a third musician performing on a drum kit supplemented by a colorful variety of percussion instruments, however the music can be performed by a jazz group of any size or even piano solo.

Many of the innovative melodies and harmonies in the suite stem from new “hybrid scales” developed by Michael Arnowitt (described below). The performance also features non-standard instrumental techniques such as the bass tapping and stroking the wood of the instrument, or the piano striking a chord and then fluttering the pedal quickly up and down to create a sound reminiscent of radiating waves in a pond.

Some shop talk: more detail about the music

The musical material specified in the printed pages of the composition varies greatly from traditional classical music scores or even standard jazz lead sheets. In some sections, new hybrid scales created by Michael Arnowitt are used by the performers as collections of notes from which melodic lines and specific harmony chords are drawn for improvisation. These hybrid scales were devised by taking the bottom half (usually four notes) of a certain scale, optionally altering a single note of the four slightly, and then combining this lower half with the top half of another scale. The scales chosen for the component parts range in origin from ancient Greek and medieval modes to scales from 20th century classical and jazz music, as well as some that are completely original.

Other sections of the suite are based on elements of music such as an emphasis on a particular shape of line (for example ascending, descending, circular), rhythmic riffs, a general outline of harmonic tonal centers, or a sequence of textures or unusual instrumental techniques. Listeners may hear references to jazz form ideas, such as call-and-response, vamps, standard swing form, and spirituals, although the emphasis of the evening is on creating more free-flowing music, uninhibited by the traditional forms of jazz history. The Five Chinese Elements aims to present more fluid structures that develop much as water or wood do in nature.

Michael Arnowitt has performed selections from the suite in Düsseldorf, Germany; Delft, the Netherlands; Moscow, Russia; and at the 29th Prague International Jazz Festival, as well as in North America in Ontario, Colorado, and Vermont. As the exact performing instrumentation can be flexible, it is also possible Michael Arnowitt could perform the Suite as a visiting artist in collaboration with appropriate local musicians if that is preferred.

roadmap to the Suite on the Five Chinese Elements

Earth
Water - Part 1
Water - Part 2
Earth - call-back
(pause)
Wood
(pause)
Fire
Earth - call-back
(pause)
Metal
    starting from three different spatial locations
    ends with The Tiger
(pause)
The Aquifer (Water in Earth)
Spiritual
Earth - final call-back

[Sections of the suite follow each other without major breaks unless noted with “pause.”
Many of the individual sections of the suite have between 3 and 8 sub-sections each.]

One of the most beloved jazz pianists of all time, Bill Evans’ style featured beautiful harmonies, lyrical and romantic melodies, and lively rhythmic innovations. Pianist Michael Arnowitt leads a quartet in a concert profiling the life and music of Bill Evans (1929-1980), offering a mix of Evans’ own original tunes and those by other composers that Evans was famous for playing through the years.

The tunes on the program were originally recorded on historic discs such as “New Jazz Conceptions” and “Portrait In Jazz” from the 1950’s, “Waltz for Debby” (Live at the Vanguard, 1961), “At the Montreux Jazz Festival” (1968), “The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album” (1975), “The Paris Concert” (1979), and “Live at the Village Vanguard” (June 1980), the last recorded just three months before Evans’ untimely death.

Bill Evans first received notice for his crucial role in helping to shape the sound of Miles Davis’ combos of the late 1950’s. Evans’ playing with Miles on albums such as “Kind Of Blue” (the best-selling jazz recording in history by a large margin) led Davis to comment: “I’ve sure learned a lot from Bill Evans. He plays the piano the way it should be played.” Miles’ admiration for the new sounds Evans was creating on the piano was shared by the entire jazz world, and Bill Evans is largely credited with establishing the modern style of jazz piano playing with lighter, more open harmonies that blended better with the growing role of the upright bass in jazz.

After working with Miles, Evans travelled widely as the leader, over 20 years, of three major trios of piano, bass, and drums. He was popular with both musicians at the highest level as well as with lay listeners from around the world. His first trio was with the great bassist Scott LaFaro, who tragically died in an accident in his early 20’s. Evans went on to form a long-standing trio with the bassist Eddie Gomez, and at the end of Evans’ life, with bassist Marc Johnson. His trios were considered ground-breaking in the degree of interplay between the three instruments.

The program features Bill Evans’ two most popular originals, both written when Evans was quite young: “Waltz for Debby” (composed for a four-year old relative) and “Very Early.” Also on the program from Evans’ period with his first trio with LaFaro are “Peri’s Scope” and the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves.”

From Evans’ middle period with Eddie Gomez the program contains Miles Davis’ “Nardis,” one of Evans’ favorite tunes throughout his life, and Ray Noble’s jazz standard “The Touch Of Your Lips,” which Evans recorded both solo piano and with the vocalist Tony Bennett. From Evans’ final trio with Marc Johnson the concert includes versions of “Bill’s Hit Tune,” “Laurie,” and “34 Skidoo,” recorded in famous live performances in Paris and at the Village Vanguard in New York City.

Pictured above: Michael Arnowitt performing with saxophonist John McKenna
at an outdoor concert. Photo courtesy Jeb Wallace-Brodeur.

The program of “The World of Bill Evans” will be drawn from the following repertoire:

Bill Evans originals

Peri’s Scope
Waltz for Debby
Bill’s Hit Tune
Very Early
Laurie
34 Skidoo
Displacement
Turn Out The Stars
Time Remembered
Walkin’ Up

Tunes by other composers favored by Bill Evans

Alfie (Burt Bacharach)
The Touch Of Your Lips (Ray Noble)
My Foolish Heart (Victor Young)
Nardis (Miles Davis)
Autumn Leaves (Joseph Kosma)
I Do It For Your Love (Paul Simon)
Come Rain Or Come Shine (Harold Arlen)
I Loves You Porgy (George Gershwin)
How My Heart Sings (Earl Zindars)
Detour Ahead (Frigo-Carter-Ellis)
When In Rome (Cy Coleman)
Young and Foolish (Albert Hague)
You Must Believe In Spring (Michel Legrand)

Michael Arnowitt wears both his classical and jazz hats in this fascinating program featuring the many creative jazz arrangements he has made over the years based on the music of famous classical composers. He takes melodies, harmonies, and other musical elements from the original classical music pieces, all transformed into the language of jazz: rhythms are unstraightened and given swing and syncopated accents, and he ingeniously reshapes the original classical material into vehicles for jazz musicians to improvise on, including call-and-response trading, solo breaks, blues and other forms of jazz standards, cadenzas, and so-called vamps where a short progression of chords are looped for band improvisation.

The program will be drawn from these jazz arrangements:

The Stream ⋅ based on Fugue in C-sharp minor from J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Keyboard, Book 1
Bi Bim Bop ⋅ a jazz fugue based on the style of J.S. Bach blended with bebop jazz
Bartok’s Roumanian Dances ⋅ based on Bartok’s Six Roumanian Dances for violin and piano
Beauty and the Beast ⋅ based on Waltz from Mother Goose Suite by Maurice Ravel
Burana Bop ⋅ based on Carmina Burana by Carl Orff
Coplandscapes ⋅ based on Appalachian Spring, Fanfare, and Billy the Kid by Aaron Copland
Ginastera’s Gaucho Groove ⋅ based on Piano Sonata no. 1 by Alberto Ginastera
Interlude with Igor ⋅ based on Petrushka and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
My Man’s Gone Now ⋅ based on the song from Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin
Green Dolphin Street ⋅ overlaying music from Debussy’s Children’s Corner with the jazz standard
Chopin Meets Jobim ⋅ based on a mash-up of Chopin’s Prelude no. 4 in E minor
    and Jobim’s How Insensitive
Rockin’ With Prok ⋅ based on Piano Concerto no. 2 by Sergei Prokofiev
Boppin’ With Brahms ⋅ based on Symphony no. 4 by Johannes Brahms

Michael Arnowitt offers to come to your city and compose a suite of 12 jazz pieces, each section depicting through music a significant place that is part of your city’s identity. These dozen slice of life vignettes will showcase all the diverse elements of your city and its people, from familiar signature places and activities your city is best known for such as parks, markets, and sports scenes, to music capturing the flavor of spots that are more off the beaten path and scenes evoking rivers and other important elements of your area’s natural environment. Taken together, Michael Arnowitt’s composition will create a colorful portrait of the many facets of life in your city, from its varied social subcultures to the natural world that cohabits with its people.

As an example of a past Scenes of the City, the set of pieces Michael Arnowitt composed for Montpelier, Vermont included “Rialto Bridge Groove,” “State House Lawn,” “Union School Recess” (at an elementary school playground), “Sledding in Hubbard Park,” “Farmers’ Market,” “North Branch Wildlife,” “In the Stands” (at a baseball game), “Waterfall Enchantment,” and a scene about a popular ice cream stand. An ingenious aspect of the composition is its use of the opening theme of Mussorgsky’s famous classical piece Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky created his theme in the 1800’s to depict a person walking around an art gallery looking at different artworks, while here Michael Arnowitt transforms the theme, which fits beautifully with jazz harmonies, to make a representation of someone walking around not a room, but a city. As in the Mussorgsky original, Arnowitt brings back the walking theme here and there to make transitions and unify the experience of the piece as a whole.

The project would take place in two phases. First would be a residency where Michael Arnowitt would come to your city or region to familiarize himself with the places, people, and natural features of your area. He will begin his composing during this initial phase and optionally could present a work-in-progress event to show the beginnings of the composing process. He would then return to his home and complete the compositions and then in a later second trip collaborate with jazz musicians from your city to learn the pieces and present the full suite in a public concert.

The legendary drummer Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers ensembles are honored in this special tribute concert, featuring a sextet of trumpet, sax, trombone, piano, bass, and drums. The Jazz Messengers groups were outstanding ambassadors for jazz, bringing Blakey’s trademark high-energy, swinging, uptempo “hard bop” style to audiences around the world.

Art Blakey’s bandmates over the decades reads like a Who’s Who of jazz history: Clifford Brown, Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Marsalis, Wayne Shorter, Hank Mobley, Benny Golson, Horace Silver, Cedar Walton, Keith Jarrett, Curtis Fuller, and many others were all “graduates” of Blakey tours.

This concert program, featuring arrangements transcribed by Michael Arnowitt from classic recordings dating from the group’s inception in 1953 to Art Blakey’s death in 1990, offers 15 tunes chronicling different stages in Jazz Messengers history.

Learn more – click here to read some fun Art Blakey quotations and stories

Program

Infra-Rae (Hank Mobley)
Hippy (Horace Silver)
The End Of A Love Affair (E.C. Redding)
It’s You Or No One (Jule Styne)
Blues March (Benny Golson)
The Preacher (Horace Silver)
Ecaroh (Horace Silver)
Deciphering The Message (Hank Mobley)
A Night In Tunisia (Dizzy Gillespie)

-- intermission --

Mosaic (Cedar Walton)
One By One (Wayne Shorter)
When Love Is New (Cedar Walton)
Calling Miss Khadija (Lee Morgan)
Free For All (Wayne Shorter)
In A Sentimental Mood (Duke Ellington)
Fuller Love (Bobby Watson)

These arrangements were taken from the following recordings: Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1954-55), The Jazz Messengers (1956), Moanin’ (1958), A Night In Tunisia (Blue Note, 1960), Mosaic (1961), Free For All (1962), The Indestructible Art Blakey (1964), Keystone 3 (1982), Dr. Jekyle (1985), Feeling Good (1986).

This program of music by the great pianist Horace Silver focuses on tunes he performed in the 1950’s, one of his periods of peak creativity. Silver’s compositions on this program range from energetic bebop numbers such as “Room 608” and “Break City,” Latin-influenced tunes such as “Señor Blues,” “Nica’s Dream,” and “Ecaroh” (“Horace” spelled backwards!), and driving blues classics such as “Blowin’ The Blues Away” and “Cookin’ At The Continental,” to one-of-a-kind tunes such as the cryptic “To Whom It May Concern,” the soulful ballad “Melancholy Mood,” the Middle Eastern sounds of “The Baghdad Blues,” and the gospel and Dixieland-influenced “The Preacher.”

Horace Silver and his frequent colleague drummer Art Blakey pioneered “hard bop” jazz, which put “hot” back into jazz with high-energy swing and influences from rhythm-and-blues and gospel music. This portrait of Horace Silver shows how Silver balanced the gutty, raw, and rough side of jazz with stylish and sophisticated sounds. This performance, with Silver’s favorite instrumentation of trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass and drums, features all the wonderful and creative arrangement ideas he used with his quintet.

Program

Blowin’ The Blues Away
Señor Blues
The Preacher
Room 608
Melancholy Mood
The Baghdad Blues
How Did It Happen
Nica’s Dream
Break City
Ecaroh
To Whom It May Concern
Cookin’ At The Continental

Michael Arnowitt directs a tribute concert to the late jazz singer, featuring transcriptions he made of arrangements used by Ella on historic recordings she made between the years of 1939 and 1964.

Michael Arnowitt selected 25 songs to transcribe, with an ear to presenting some of the highest quality musical accomplishments of Ella’s career, from her start in the 1930’s with Chick Webb to her magnificent performances with big bands led by Count Basie, Billy May, Buddy Bregman, and Nelson Riddle, to her superb combo records where she collaborated with some of the best musicians of her era, such as pianist Oscar Peterson, trumpeter Louis Armstrong and guitarist Herbie Ellis. A special feature of the program is Ella’s acrobatic, high-energy “scat” singing performances, highlighted on the tunes “Lady Be Good,” “Them There Eyes,” and “Jersey Bounce.”

23 performers will be on stage for this concert: a 12-piece brass section, plus flute, vibraphone, cello, rhythm section quartet, and four vocalists sharing the role of Ella (including a male singer to help perform some of the vocal duets she did with Louis Armstrong). This concert debuted in April of 2003 to a sold-out audience delighted to experience a live re-creation of some of the most joyful, swinging jazz ever recorded.

Program

Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
Undecided
I Won’t Dance (vocal duet)
Baby, Don’t You Go ’Way Mad
This Year’s Kisses
You’re My Thrill
Night In Tunisia
The Midnight Sun
The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues
’Round Midnight
Can’t We Be Friends (vocal duet)
Cry Me A River
Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie
Lady Be Good

-- intermission --

Them There Eyes (vocal trio)
Something’s Gotta Give
Mr. Paganini
Lush Life (voice and piano solo)
This Could Be The Start Of Something Big
Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye
Our Love Is Here To Stay
Too Young For The Blues
Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most
My Reverie
Jersey Bounce
The Lady Is A Tramp (all four singers)

A special concert of international poetry with jazz trio accompaniment features classic poems in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic, all read in the original languages by the multilingual spoken word performer Therisa Rogers. Bringing together words and music, this program creates a colourful journey through the thoughts and emotions of poets from a half-dozen different countries from around the world. Therisa Rogers will be joined by three of Toronto’s best jazz musicians, Michael Arnowitt on piano, George Koller on the upright bass and Davide DiRenzo on drums.

The program features poems from two great African-American poets both with deep personal links to the music world. Langston Hughes, who often wrote his poems in jazz and blues clubs, will be represented by works including “Crossing,” with its powerful images of the stream, the prairie, and the mountaintop, evoking the place of true freedom and independence not yet reached. Maya Angelou’s celebrated poem “Still I Rise” presents a unique mixture of defiance, quirkiness, and strength-giving hope that has sustained countless readers through the generations.

Poems in French will include selections by the late 19th century Quebec poet Emile Nelligan, one of the most beloved French Canadian poets of all time. An iconic figure in Quebec today, Nelligan’s sensitive and musical poems tragically all date from when he was 16 to 19 years old. Another Quebec poet, Michele Lalonde, wrote the most dramatic poem on the program, the provocative 1968 “Speak White.” The title’s racist taunt, borrowed from American slavemasters, was used against those who spoke French in public spaces to make them feel inferior. Lalonde’s masterpiece draws connections to anti-colonial liberation movements from world history far from Quebec.

Other poems on this diverse program include sonnets in Spanish by Pablo neruda of Chile and the Mexican nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, who wrote brilliant poetry in the 1600’s, and poems in Arabic by the great Syrian-born poet Adonis.

The concert also features some instrumental jazz trio selections from Michael Arnowitt’s recording release Sweet Spontaneous, along with his creative arrangements of the jazz standards Autumn Leaves, There Will Never Be Another You, and the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby.

Program

Pablo Neruda
    Love Sonnet 17
Langston Hughes
    Trumpet Player
    Madam and the Census Man
    Madam and the Rent Man
    The Weary Blues
    Easy Boogie
    Drum
    Dream Boogie
    The Crossing (music composition by Michael Arnowitt)
Adonis
    The beginning of poetry
    Dialogue
    Elegies (for my father)
Compositions by Michael Arnowitt
    Migratory Mood
    Pirouette
Beatles
    Eleanor Rigby (arranged Michael Arnowitt)
Charles Baudelaire
    Harmonie du soir (Evening harmony)
Émile Nelligan
    Soir d’hiver (Winter evening)
Michèle Lalonde
    Speak White
Joseph Kosma
    Autumn Leaves (arranged Michael Arnowitt)
Harry Warren
    There Will Never Be Another You (arr. Michael Arnowitt)
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
    Sonnet, She complains of her luck
    Sonnet, An amorous fantasy
Michael Arnowitt
    The Crying Candle (music composition by Michael Arnowitt)
Maya Angelou
    Still I Rise (music composition by Michael Arnowitt)

Jammin’ with Langston

Langston Hughes’ writings were strongly influenced by his love of jazz and the blues, frequently adopting word and line patterns taken from musical rhythms and forms. Michael Arnowitt performs improvised music simultaneously with the speaking of the texts: the music he improvises is affected by the way the words are read, while the reader speaks and spaces the words differently each performance in reaction to the music heard in the air.

The program features a generous sampling of Langston Hughes poems, such as “Danse Africaine,” “Drum,” “The Weary Blues,” “Madam and the Rent Man,” “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “Crossing,” “I, Too,” (from Words Like Freedom), “Mother to Son,” “Trumpet Player,” and several selections from his excellent Montage Of A Dream Deferred: Dream Boogie, Harlem, Children’s Rhymes, Dream Boogie Variation, Jam Session, Easy Boogie, and Juke Box Love Song.

In addition, the short story “Blue Evening” (featuring a musical party scene) from Hughes’ collection “Simple Speaks His Mind,” will be read, as well as some of Hughes’ prose writings.