Lockhart turned back to the audience and smiled. ``I forgot a piece," he said. ``These things happen." He instead launched the orchestra into John Williams's swing tribute ``Swing, Swing, Swing.'
From that point on , the festival opener swung along smoothly. The Pops orchestra played a fine set alone that showed why early jazz deserves respect from the classical world. Then John Pizzarelli brought his quartet out to join the orchestra and further upped the evening's already impressive swing quotient.
The Morton piece, when Lockhart got to it, gave the audience its one hint of Dixie, and it was followed by Don Sebesky's adaptation of George Gershwin's ``Prelude No. 2," the night's most classical-sounding work. The Pops' principal clarinetist, Thomas Martin, then flashed his considerable chops on Artie Shaw's ``Clarinet Concerto." The orchestra closed out its set with the greatest jazz composer of them all, Duke Ellington, and his familiar orchestral piece ``Harlem."
Pizzarelli led his set off with ``Pick Yourself Up," which set the tone nicely by coupling his soft, insouciant tenor voice with solid instrumental solos from his pianist, Larry Fuller, and himself -- Pizzarelli scatting in unison with his rapid-fire guitar lines. Other highlights included Pizzarelli's burning guitar solo on ``Avalon," which he followed by mouthing ``That's my brother" to the audience as Martin Pizzarelli played a bass solo. Frank Loesser's ``Say It Over and Over Again" had Pizzarelli's tenor floating over lush orchestration.
But Pizzarelli's biggest round of applause came for a snippet of ``The Wonder of It All," the casino theme that made him famous, into which he substituted lines such as ``Yes, I am that guy" and ``residuals are sweet." The Pizzarelli set seemed on the verge of concluding with Benny Goodman's ``Sing, Sing, Sing," but he followed it with a swinging version of the Beatles' ``Can't Buy Me Love" before the orchestra took over on the evening-ending ``Stars and Stripes Forever."
