A Century Later, Porter Gets A Spanish Flourish

(Correction: One of the singers in the video is incorrectly identified as Ruth Prillaman. She is Emma Akwari.)

Dominic Coles came to New Haven 100 years after Cole Porter left — and brought with him a respectful new twist to the songwriter’s durable canon.

Coles, a Yale freshman, played his ES 135 Gibson electric guitar Sunday as part of the Yale Jazz Ensemble. The group performs this time each year in an annual jazz tribute to the late Stan Wheeler, a Yale law prof and jazz musician who passed away in 2007. The annual concert —which also featured an ethereal set by the Reunion Jazz Ensemble, whose members include longtime New Haven music-scene stalwarts bassist Jeff Fuller an saxophonist Tim Moran — filled the Yale Law School auditorium. (Click here for background on Wheeler and here for a look and listen from a previous annual concert.)

The Yale ensemble played a different set this year — eight pieces, all by Cole Porter, who penned Yale’s Bulldog Song and then, after his graduation in 1913, went on to become one of the most popular American tunesmiths and lyricists of 20th century. Broadway (Anything Goes, Jubilee) immortalized his songs. Evocative of the Roaring Twenties, Porter’s songs featured urbane, witty rhymes and a carefree melodic swing that seemed a world away from the soulful, blues-reality-derived African-American jazz music with which it cross-pollinated. (Porter was the ​“birds do it/ bees do it” and ​“I get no kick from champagne” guy.)

On Sunday the Jazz Ensemble marched succinctly through the Porter classics ​“Love for Sale,” ​“Every Time We Say Goodbye,” ​“You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To,” ​“Begin the Beguine,” ​“I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” ​“I Love You,” ​“Night and Day,” and ​“What Is This Thing Called Love?” (Click on the above video for a sample.)

Along the way, instead of sticking to standard arrangements, the musicians added some new flavors to the hallowed recipes under the energetic direction of the irrepressible Yale music prof Tom Duffy.

Coles (pictured), for instance, added counterpoint to a solo he played on ​“You’d Be So Nice” in between backing vocalist Rebecca Brudner in a smooth, Porter-faithful duet.

“We’re kind of following in his lineage as Yale students, expanding on the musical ideas that he pioneered,” Coles, who comes to New Haven from New York City, said after the performance. ​“I was mostly thinking about Spanish guitar music and counterpoint [when playing the solo]. I thought it would be interesting to try to think what would Cole Porter have written if he had been a Spanish composer.” Coles came up with what he called ​“melodic lines of harmony” as an alternative to Porteresque ​“vertical blocks of harmony.”

Bandleader Duffy (pictured) was asked why Porter’s songbook remains so familiar to American ears a century later.

“People can actually sing these tunes. And they hear them reinforced on the theater stage,” Duffy responded. ​“High school people revive Kiss Me Kate over and over again. It’s music of the people for the people. It fits perfectly in the jazz world.”