Trombone Concerto

Concerto for Trombone is a 1942 instrumental crossover work in three movements, which trombonist Tommy Dorsey, one of the best known musical entertainment stars of his time, commissioned from Nathaniel Shilkret, a noted conductor and composer of music for recording, radio and film. Shilkret describes the first movement as "in classic form, but in the middle I introduced a fugue, partly in jazz form, and near the end I wrote the main theme in fox-trot rhythm." The second movement has a blues mood and the third movement is in a boogie-woogie rhythm. The blues second movement is a 1943 replacement of the original "negro spiritual" arrangement. The original second movement has never been performed. A cadenza in the first movement is written to include the use of multiphonics, although the earliest performances of the piece did not use this technique. Early history The concerto was first orchestrated in 1943 for a full orchestra. Dorsey rehearsed the piece using this orchestration while working on a motion picture for MGM. When Dorsey left Hollywood and was working with his own ensemble, a new orchestration was made for Dorsey's group. Dorsey had contracted with Werner Janssen for ten performances with Janssen's Symphony Orchestra of Los Angeles, with the first performance scheduled for February 6, 1944. There was some publicity announcing these performances, but Dorsey was not available, and there were never any performances, despite claims in the liner notes to the LP Ecstasy to the contrary.