Umlaut Chamber Orchestra: Zodiac Suite – Mary Lou Williams

From 1942 until 1945, pianist Mary Lou William (1910-1981) wrote "Zodiac Suite," a twelve part composition in which each movement was named after a sign of the zodiac and was also dedicated to one or more renowned jazz musician born under that sign; for example, "Aries" was for Ben Webster and Billie Holiday, while "Libra" was for Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. In total the entire suite ran for about forty minutes. Although it was initially written for piano, and a trio version was recorded for Asch records, in 1945 Williams decided to orchestrate it for chamber orchestra.

Performances of the orchestrated version took place at Town Hall NYC, with an eighteen-piece orchestra, at the end of 1945, and at Carnegie Hall, with a seventy-member symphony orchestra, in June 1946; the latter was claimed to be the first time a symphony orchestra had performed jazz compositions. Nonetheless, neither performance was a great success, partly because the recordings of each one disappeared, presumed stolen. Afterwards, Williams took a break from performing and never attempted another performance of the full composition.

Fast forward to France 2021. After working for several years on the Mary Lou Williams archive and releasing the album Mary's Ideas (Umlaut, 2021)—a double CD of rare and newly discovered works by Williams—Pierre-Antoine Badaroux decided to tackle the chamber orchestra version of "Zodiac Suite," in an interpretation which underlines its heterogeneity and richness. Recorded at Tandem, Scène nationale, Arras, France in late May 2023, by a twenty-two-member Umlaut Chamber Orchestra, directed by Badaroux, the album strikes a near-perfect balance between jazz and orchestra, with plenty of variety and contrast across the piece. Some of the twelve parts feature an untethered horn solo while in others the strings predominate. Throughout it is clear that Williams' original intentions have been honoured and respected. Altogether the album is a great success, for which the credit must go to all the musicians, to Badaroux and, of course, to Williams herself.