Lightning and Thunder

I recently met the legendary jazz drummer Louie Bellson, now 82, at the ASCAP I Create Music Expo in Hollywood, and his wife handed me this CD. Like everyone else who’s a jazz fan, I’ve always been awed by Bellson’s percussion work—no less an authority than Duke Ellington, with whom Bellson played for many years, called him “the world’s greatest drummer”—but this little prepared me for my encounter with Bellson the composer. In the first of the two substantive works featured on the disc, The Sacred Music of Louie Bellson, composed and recorded in 2000 but only now released commercially, Bellson follows in the tradition of Ellington who composed three sacred concerts toward the end of this career. Like the Ellington works, this somewhat amorphous and somewhat untitled work in 14 sections incorporates a chorus and a jazz big band to which Bellson adds a string orchestra for good measure. But my favorite section is the all-instrumental opening movement, “Lightning and Thunder,” in which a tempestuous vision of the creation of the world is conjured up by the big band with quite a bit of help from Bellson’s own remarkable drum solo.

—FJO