Fran?ois 'Francy' Boland, composer, born November 6 1929; died August
12 2005
Bandleader whose arrangements allowed his soloists to shine
John Fordham
Wednesday September 14, 2005
The Guardian
Europe has long been a hothouse for jazz enthusiasm, but from the
1920s to the 1960s most Europeans paid scant regard to players in
their own backyard. By the 1960s, that balance was shifting, and the
Belgian composer, pianist and arranger Fran?ois "Francy" Boland, who
has died aged 75, played a significant role in the transformation.
Boland was a conservatoire-trained musician whose understanding of
jazz's subtleties took him way beyond the mimicry common among
European jazz musicians of his generation. Like Duke Ellington, Boland
often wrote pieces to frame the characteristic sound of a particular
soloist, and like Ellington also drew on classical orchestral methods
- giving the jazz big band a richness and depth the swing era's
solos-over-riffs approach mostly bypassed.
Boland was fascinated by the way an improviser's approach could be
coloured by unusual harmonies in an arrangement, and by how far jazz
could be pushed by structural departures more common to 20th-century
classical music without losing its spontaneous flow. When he wrote
what was effectively a saxophone concerto, Change of Scenes, for Stan
Getz, the American tenor player called it "the greatest advance in big
band music in 20 or 30 years".
Boland was born in Namur, Belgium, and began playing the piano when he
was nine. He attended the conservatoire in Li¨¨ge, but became attracted
to the big band jazz he heard on the radio and joined a band led by
Bob Shots in 1949, moving to Paris as the city was becoming a haven
for disaffected American musicians. Performing regularly on the Paris
scene, he revealed sophisticated skills as an arranger, fusing the
vocabularies of swing and the new bop.
Boland composed and arranged for the bands of Henri Renaud and Aim¨¦
Barelli, and worked frequently with Belgian saxophonist Bobby Jasper.
In 1955, he toured Europe with West Coast trumpeter and singer Chet
Baker, which led the Belgian to move briefly to the States in 1957.
Boland's elegant arrangements brought work with Count Basie, Benny
Goodman and Mary Lou Williams, and, on his return to Europe, with Kurt
Edelhagen's powerful big band in Germany.
It was Boland's partnership with one of the most famous American jazz
expats, pioneering bebop drummer Kenny Clarke, that guaranteed his
place in the history books. Paris resident Clarke began working with
Boland from 1959, initially in the Golden Eight, then as co-leader of
the Clarke-Boland Big Band, founded in 1961. The band attracted the
best American expats (saxophonist Johnny Griffin and trumpeters Art
Farmer and Benny Bailey among them), illustrious guests such as Stan
Getz, and leading soloists from Europe including Ronnie Scott - who
reported finding the band thrilling company to play in.
The soloists and a hard-driving rhythm section, featuring Clarke and
British drummer Kenny Clare, gave the band its charisma, but its
distinctive sound came as much from Boland, who furnished all the
scores. Some of the material imparted fresh colours to American
standards, as on 1968's All Smiles, but the band's 12-year life and
prolific recorded output allowed Boland to grow substantially as an
original composer. The sax-soloists' vehicle Sax No End (1967), Faces
(a feature for every member of the band, in 1968) or Griff's Groove,
for Johnny Griffin, put Boland on equal footing with more famous
contemporaries across the Atlantic.
Boland moved to Geneva when the band broke up in 1973, but continued
to provide arrangements and compositions for many of Europe's radio
orchestras and occasional big bands. In 1976, Clarke-Boland band
members came together for a recording project under his leadership,
and in 1984 he arranged a Sarah Vaughan vehicle (The Mystery of Man)
in which the singer and an orchestra under Lalo Schifrin interpreted
poems by a Polish priest (who was to become Pope John Paul II).
Boland's writing took precedence over his piano-playing, but he was a
better improviser, in a crisp, percussive boppish manner, than usually
credited. A European jazz original, but one whose contribution to the
music lay primarily in making the best work of the best soloists sound
better than ever. He is survived by his wife, daughter and son.
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