Stan Kenton Plays For Today

This collection of familiar melodies—inventively scored for five trumpets and percussion—aptly demonstrates Stan Kenton's imaginative and virile approach to contemporary music.

Although the emphasis is definitely on romance, this is not just another album based upon standard selections. It is a love affair between gifted arranger and composer. To be sure, Kenton has orchestrated many albums—both ballad and jazz—but, never before without the benefit of the full orchestra.

That’s what makes this album unusual.

In an effort to express the very special kind of excitement that bestirs an arranger when he is exploring another composer's music, Stan intentionally wrote this music for only five brass and rhythm.

“Too often,” he recently told an advanced composition class at UCLA, “there’s been a tendency to write too much over the melodic line. Even without being conscious of it you can get so much going instrumentally, that only you know where the melody begins and ends. This is unfortunate, because after 30 or more bars you've lost the opportunity to share with someone else a very personal artistic experience.”

A few weeks later, while sketching out ideas for this album, Stan decided that now was the time to put some of his theories down on paper. By utilizing just two sections—one thematic; he other rhythmic—to develop and sustain his harmonic motifs he was able to add even greater scope and depth to what has now become known throughout the world as The Kenton Sound.

Each of these arrangements, highlighted by vividly descriptive passages of Kenton's piano, is a rich complement to the melody line. Striking shifts in tonal color, woven across unusual combinations of rhythm (tympani, congas, bongos, cow bell, tambourine, steel plate, qui do, drums, bass and piano) have made this blending of Kenton and song an extraordinary listening adventure.

Without paraphrasing, or obscuring a single melodic note, he has given this unforgettable music still yet another dimension. By skillfully contrasting fullbodied trumpet voiclngs with subtle, but distinctive. time changes, he again emphasizes his vast talent for constructing Infinitely beautiful levels of excitement.

Listen to what he does with Strangers In The Night. In an age characterized by pretentious musical styles and taste, his eloquently lean narrative becomes a must reading for all.

Somewhere My Love, The Sound of Music, and It Was A Very Good Year, under Kenton’s sensitive direction, evolve as resplendent tone poems and glow with rarely heard statements of love. Certainly, one of the most interpretative albums you're likely to hear for a long time to come, “Kenton Plays for Today,” will be played again and again by listeners everywhere. And, most assuredly will pinpoint in history another superb phase in that creative world that so completely belongs to Stan Kenton.

— Noel Wedder