Grooves and grandeur

Willis Delony doesn’t look like a fugitive from the law, but don’t let the scholarly glasses and kindly smile fool you.

On paper, the guest soloist at Friday’s (Nov. 1) Lansing Symphony Orchestra concert is as respectable as they come — a longtime composer, teacher and performer obsessed with exploring the connections between classical music and jazz.

Delony will play George Gershwin’s famous “Rhapsody in Blue” Friday night, along with a unique concerto by Washington composer Greg Yasinitsky that fuses orchestral grandeur with jazz rhythms, harmonies and improvisation.

But “crossover” artists often find themselves in a crossfire.

“It’s hard to find successful pieces that truly marry those two styles,” Delony said. “If you don’t play both, it’s hard to be convincing in both.”

It’s tempting to imagine Delony scurrying down a back alley with two jurisdictions on his trail — the jazz police and the classical police.

“That might be a view from the past,” Delony said with a laugh. “When I was coming along, the classical folks didn’t like jazz, and the jazz folks were hiding in the corner, but it’s not like that anymore. There are too many people out there who do both things, and there’s too much respect on either side for both.”

LSO maestro Timothy Muffitt vouched for Delony’s skill in both genres.

“If you were to see one of his recitals, it would have Claude Debussy and Art Tatum on the same program,” Muffitt said. “He’s uncompromising in both realms.”

Delony, a professor of piano and jazz studies at Louisiana State University, worked with Muffitt a dozen times when Muffitt was music director of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, but they’re bringing their partnership to Lansing for the first time Friday.

In 2017, they struck gold together when they commissioned a concerto for piano and orchestra from Yasinitsky, then director of the School of Music and co-coordinator of the jazz studies program at Washington State University. (Yasinitsky retired in 2022.)

The performance, conducted by Muffitt with Delony as soloist, helped earn the piece the American Prize in composition that year. The duo will showcase it again on Friday.

For much of the concerto, Delony will have nothing but a series of chords to go on, leaving the rest to the whims of the moment.

“There’s nothing else quite like it,” Delony said. “It’s a true jazz piece with classical techniques in the mix. Most of what you hear me play Friday night will be improvised.” He’ll bring a bassist and a drummer, embedding a jazz trio into the symphonic mix.

The last movement comes out swinging in a bebop frenzy. After drawing together threads from the previous movements in classical concerto fashion, the piece ends with a rollicking jazz waltz.

In Delony’s view, the concerto shows that crossover can be done — and done well.

“The old assumptions aren’t true,” he said. “This piece has to swing hard, and a lot of orchestras know what to do. Muffitt understands this better than any conductor I’ve ever met.”

Friday’s concert will open with William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 2, “Song of a New Race.” Muffitt is jazzed (so to speak) about conducting this piece for the first time in his career.

“From the moment it hits your ears, it draws you in,” Muffitt said. “It’s so attractive, so appealing, so American. I just know people are going to walk out saying, ‘Why haven’t I heard this before?’”

With two largely unfamiliar works on the program, Muffitt asked Delony to warm the piano stool for 20 more minutes and treat the audience to a live romp through Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Delony has played the rhapsody a dozen times. He even wrote his doctoral thesis on it. Despite the demands of double concerto duty, he jumped at another chance to play it. These days, rhapsodizing in blue is the thing to do, with the 100th anniversary of the work’s premiere approaching in February.

“I still love it,” Delony said. “It’s one of those miracles of creativity that’s hard to explain and doesn’t happen often.”

Delony loves performing with Muffitt, but one of his favorite memories with the maestro has nothing to do with their own music. In 2018, the brass-heavy rock ensemble Chicago played a concert in Baton Rouge, performing its entire “Chicago II” album. A starstruck Delony and Muffitt got to hang out with the band afterward.

“Tim and I were just fanboys,” Delony said. “I can play every note on that album if you want me to bore you.”

Delony begged founding Chicago member Robert Lamm to let him bang out the famous piano intro to the band’s hit “Saturday in the Park.”

“I told him, ‘Dude, if you could let me play that piano part, I could die happy,’” Delony said.