Live Jazz, With A Classical Touch

I saw an excellent jazz concert the other night here in my amazing community of The Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. It was the Ted Rosenthal Trio with Special Guests. The trio being Ted Rosenthal on piano, Noriko Ueda on bass, and Quincy Davis on drums. The special guests being Anat Cohen on clarinet and Sara Caswell on violin. The theme of the concert was “Classics Reimagined.” It featured a number of pieces by classical composers such as Chopin, Dvorak, Beethoven, Satie, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and others reimagined, arranged, and performed as jazz pieces. I know very little about classical music, but I know a lot about jazz and, to me, each of the pieces sounded as if it could have come out of a standard jazz songbook. They closed the set with a Tchaikovsky piece that echoed Diz and Bird right out of the bebop era. There were also beautiful ballads, such as a duet by Rosenthal and Cohen on a Chopin piece called Waltz in E-Flat. Anyway, the trio travels all over the world, so if you ever get a chance to see them, I recommend them highly. Also, if you’re interested in hearing the music, it is available on CD and perhaps other formats under the title Ted Rosenthal Trio, Classics Reimagined: improp2. I walked out of the concert with a copy of the CD. Actually a couple of CDs, as well as a video clip I was graciously allowed to record and subsequently post on YouTube. If you want to listen, here it is: Ted Rosenthal Trio With Guests, Linde Center, Tanglewood, Nov. 28, 2025, Classics Reimagined.

I started this post with a reference to my amazing community here in The Berkshires. Given the size of our county and the fact that it is somewhat rural and not attached as a burb of any major city, it is astounding the amount of great music we get here — not to mention theater and art. Of course, we have Tanglewood, which is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as a venue where many popular artists perform regularly. From a jazz standpoint alone, I’ve seen artists such as Sonny Rollins, Roy Haynes, The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and many others at Tanglewood. And I see James Taylor here every year, of course.

The concert the other night was held at a relatively new venue called the Linde Center for Music and Learning, and it is on the Tanglewood campus. It is a great setting for jazz: Rosenthal said he and his fellow musicians the other night described it as “perfect.” Great acoustics, all seats have a great view, and a surprisingly intimate atmosphere for a venue that probably has a capacity for 300 or so people.

In the next few weeks, I am seeing separate concerts by pianist Isaiah J. Thompson and guitarist John Pizzarelli at another gorgeous venue called the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, MA. It’s funny, because I also spend some time in New York City, but I tend to see more live jazz here in the Berkshires. I used to be glib about it when people asked me if I see a lot of live jazz. My standard answer was: “Not anymore — anybody I would want to see is dead.”

Fortunately, that was never really true and is even less apt today. In any case, since I’m using my forum here at Jazz Collector to talk about live jazz, please feel free at any time to post your own recent experiences, either as a comment or, if you really want to get creative, send an email to me alatjazzcollectordotcom.