For much of its history, jazz was considered the most evanescent of art forms, a music whose brilliance was strictly of the moment, leaving no mark beyond the memories of those who happened to be listening in that room, that night.
There were, of course, classic recordings -- sparks of genius preserved in amber -- but those were merely exceptions proving the rule. Unlike classical music, which was boxed in by tradition and the composer's intentions, jazz was ever-changing and infinitely mutable.
Then, about a quarter century ago, that notion was turned on its head as jazz partisans began to argue that jazz was very much like classical music.
In 1984, the critic Grover Sales published an introduction to jazz entitled Jazz: America's Classical Music.
A few years later, pianist and educator Billy Taylor argued that, as created by African Americans, jazz -- or "this classical music" -- was "an authentic American music which articulated uniquely American feelings and thoughts, which eventually came to transcend ethnic boundaries."
Certainly, jazz had by then not only gone through various stylistic phases but had developed its own canon of influential artists and great compositions or recordings. Just as classical experts could claim that Beethoven's Third Symphony was essential to understanding the romantic period, jazz scholars could argue that it was impossible to understand modern jazz without grasping the principles behind Miles Davis's Kind of Blue.
But the acid test for judging whether jazz could be taken as an analog to classical music was the creation in 1988 of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Originally based in the same complex as the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Ballet, the LCJO was conceived as a jazz repertory company, dedicated to presenting the great works of the jazz canon -- classics by Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Jelly Roll Morton -- as well as pieces commissioned from contemporary jazz composers.
It would, in short, work less like a big band than a symphony orchestra.
Now known as the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra -- the name changed after the group moved into its own permanent performance space, the Frederick P. Rose Hall, in 2004 -- the ensemble has succeeded beyond its founders' wildest dreams. It tours regularly, offers a concert season in New York and has built a library that stretches from the early days of swing to such modernist touchstones as John Coltrane's A Love Supreme.
The Orchestra's current road show (which arrives at Toronto's Massey Hall tonight) is the rough equivalent of a symphonic pops concert. Dubbed Songs We Like, it presents jazz chestnuts ranging from the Gil Evans arrangement of Summertime, famously recorded by Miles Davis, to Wild Bill Davis's treatment of April In Paris, which was a 1956 pop hit for the Count Basie Orchestra.
On the plus side, such a program is a tremendous boon to those who have only heard those pieces on album -- if only because it serves to remind that classic jazz started out as a living, breathing music that changed every night, even if no one was around to record those changes.
But the downside for many jazz fans is that, despite the care and passion that goes into its performances, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra's recreations infrequently live up to the originals. And therein lies the biggest problem with wanting to treat jazz as an institution like classical music.
Since 1991, when trumpeter Wynton Marsalis was appointed the orchestra's director, critics have grumbled that the Lincoln Center vision was little more than a cult of personality -- although there was some debate over whether the personality in question belonged to Marsalis or to his mentors, Jazz at Lincoln Center board members Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray.
It can't help that both Marsalis and Crouch are so famously pugnacious, particularly when it comes to music they feel is less elevated than jazz. Marsalis, speaking about his latest solo album From the Plantation to the Penitentiary, told Britain's The Guardian newspaper that rap is merely "ghetto minstrelsy," adding, "Rap has become a safari for people who get their thrills from watching African-American people debase themselves . . ." Crouch goes even further in his rap animus and was banned in the early 1990s from The Village Voice after attacking hip-hop journalist Harry Allen.
But it was the trio's view of jazz that generated the most heat. Over the years, the Lincoln Center program has been accused of being too conservative, too limited, even too black. (Marsalis was particularly stunned by that last criticism, telling New York magazine, "I'm thinking to myself, this is Lincoln Center and they're talking about no white people?")
In fairness, there have been changes. Where once the organization was considered openly hostile to the avant-garde, this season finds Jazz at Lincoln Center prominently featuring a performance by pianist Cecil Taylor. Likewise, since those early complaints about ignoring white jazz musicians, the Orchestra's "book" has been broadened to include works by such notable Caucasians as Benny Goodman, Eddie Sauter and Woody Herman.
What hasn't changed is the earnestly average quality of the Orchestra's renditions. Although the classic compositions are beautifully played, they too often lack the sort of vibrant personality that made Charles Mingus's performance of Tijuana Gift Shop (which the Lincoln Center group offers on the album Don't Be Afraid . . .) so memorably distinct. The members of the JaLCO know how to play the music; what they don't always understand is how to possess it.
If the jazz-as-classical-music model is ever to work, jazz musicians will have to find the same sort of balance classical musicians achieve when they deliver a performance that is both true to the score and also a reflection of themselves. And as difficult as that may be when dealing with Beethoven or Mahler, it's even tougher in jazz, since the soloists are not only expected to play the music properly but to improvise at the level of jazz's greatest geniuses. It's a lot to ask.
Still, the idea is only in its infancy. It took the better part of a century for classical orchestras to come to grips with the intricacies of presenting that repertoire; Jazz at Lincoln Center has barely been around two decades. There's still plenty of time for jazz to find its Toscanini.