By now, it's old news that New York's Orpheus Chamber Orchestra doesn't use a conductor and doesn't need one. Yet it's still astonishing to watch this ensemble in action, to hear how unanimously the musicians play while executing collective interpretive decisions normally made by a figure with a baton.
Beyond that, there were two other chief attractions of their concert Saturday night in the Colburn School's Zipper Hall: the superb program geared toward, but not exclusively devoted to, 20th century French music and a rare appearance by jazz's Branford Marsalis in his classical guise.
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The chameleon-like oldest Marsalis brother made a brief stab at the classics in 1986 with a rather dreary album of transcriptions. But now, several years and several musical zigzags later, he has returned to the field with a more mature, searching musicality--and not insignificantly, genuine saxophone repertoire.
He brought an easygoing yet idiomatic swing and a mellow, absolutely legato tone to the elegant neoclassicisms of Ibert's Concertino Da Camera, and threw a sweetly withdrawn veil over the long-limbed melodies and cadenzas of Pierre Max Dubois' Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra.
