In the early years of Novel Jazz Septet’s two-decade history, the band’s founder and trombonist, William “Barney” Balch, made a pilgrimage to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. There, Balch held in his hands a handwritten score of Duke Ellington’s famous hit, “Mood Indigo.”
“My hands were shaking,” Balch recalls from his home in Newcastle. “I mean, this is it. This is where the concept was put on paper.”
The members of Novel Jazz Septet didn’t set out to seek the original scores of the music they play. Formed 20 years ago this year after an invitation for pizza at a home in Pittston that turned into a musical jam, the band started performing jazz standards, including those by Ellington and his longtime musical collaborator, Billy Strayhorn, at Skidompha Public Library in Damariscotta.
At a performance, an audience member requested the band play an Ellington tune no one in the band knew.
“These guys in the band have been playing jazz a long time, so it’s rare that everyone in the band is stumped,” says Balch. “I asked the now momentous question, ‘I wonder how many compositions these guys made?’”
Combined, Ellington and Strayhorn produced more than 3,000 compositions.
An ocean scientist by trade who retired from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay last year, Balch loves to do research, so he set out to answer his own question. Combined, Ellington and Strayhorn produced more than 3,000 compositions.
“Maybe 2% of these are the well-known standards by Strayhorn and Ellington,” he says. “So, then, I started following this lead.”
That lead took him to the Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian. Over the years, he’s made repeated trips there to research Ellington’s compositions and Strayhorn’s, which were acquired by the Library of Congress in 2018. Before that acquisition, Balch traveled to the University of Chicago to see Strayhorn’s materials.
Much like they didn’t set out to research original music compositions, the band also didn’t aim to focus on these two composers. But the research propelled them.
In addition to the rush of seeing the handwritten scores, the daily lives of Ellington’s band members are glimpsed alongside the musical notes: a poem by Strayhorn about life on the road written on hotel stationery or a grocery shopping list on the flipside of a trumpet fingering chart.
“It’s stuff like that—the details that make it such a rich story,” says Balch.
The stories, as much as the music, are the special sauce that Novel Jazz Septet brings to performing. Alongside largely unknown Ellington and Strayhorn compositions arranged by the band, they share the history they uncover in their research, touching on everything from what it was like for a Black band performing on the road to the civil rights movement to the dangers Strayhorn faced being a Black man and gay.
“A typical show will be a story and then the tune, and then a story and the tune,” says Balch. “And they’re unbelievable stories of what these people put up with.”
That Balch talks about the songs and the historic context in which they were created “adds so much to the quality of the concert,” says Matthew Graff, executive director of Skidompha Public Library, where Novel Jazz Septet is sort of the house band, performing several free concerts a year in the library’s atrium.
“I have nothing but superlatives, honestly, for the band,” Graff says. “Their professionalism, their engagement with the crowd was eye-opening—startling to me.” He adds, “To be able to offer something like this—along with some of the other special library programs that we offer—is a great opportunity for people.”
As they wrap up their 20th anniversary year, there aren’t many opportunities left to see the band perform live. They take a break from performing during the winter months, using that time to “wood shed,” as Balch describes it, working on arrangements of songs for the upcoming performance season. Looking ahead to the band’s future, they plan to continue what they’ve built on, maybe adding another CD to the four they’ve already released.
“We still have a lot of this jazz iceberg (Ellington and Strayhorn’s compositions) to chip away,” he says.
See Novel Jazz Septet perform live as part of the Concerts for a Cause series on Saturday, Nov. 23 at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 1 Middle St., Brunswick. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, $10 for students/children and are available at the church office, Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, and online at https://ticketstripe.com/noveljazz7.
Watch videos of Novel Jazz Septet performing at https://www.mainejazz.net/home/band_video.
View the Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington Collection online at https://sova.si.edu/record/nmah.ac.0301.
Novel Jazz Winter Solstice Celebration, Saturday, Dec. 21, 7 p.m. at Skidompha Public Library, 184 Main St., Damariscotta. Admission is free; financial donations to the library or food or personal hygiene items for the library’s Little Food Pantry gratefully accepted. Pantry items must not be expired and must be unopened.
