Casa Myrna Vasquez

"The Great Gatsby" Ballet is a huge success!

Billy was commissioned by The Washington (DC) Ballet to create a period score for their original production of The Great Gatsby. His collaboration with choreographer and company artistic director Septime Webre was a huge success, selling out 6 of 7 shows at the Eishower Theater at the Kennedy Center and it was the best-selling show in the history of the Washington Ballet.

The Washington Post review of the performance raved about the music:

" Bringing in Boston-based jazz expert Billy Novick and his band ... was a brilliant move.
The result is that for its musical splendors alone "Gatsby" is a remarkable event, an evening of explosive, ticklish and swooning live jazz (songs of the era, filled out with Novick's compositions), played with a verve to spark your thirst for hooch. Especially wonderful are the dark and cinematic early Ellington tunes ("East St. Louis Toodle-oo," "Saturday Night Function"), percolating jammers such as Tommy Dorsey's sly "It's Tight Like That," and Irving Berlin's ruminative "What'll I Do?" -- which echoes through the ballet as the theme for Jay Gatsby's romantic longings."

2011-GATSBY REDUX!

The Great Gatsby was performed again at the Kennedy Center in November of 2011 and was met with the same critical and audience response as in the premiere. The Washington Post STILL loved the music.....

"The first bit of action in Septime ?Webre’s “The Great Gatsby” is the emergence of the jazz band, rising on a lift from the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater’s orchestra pit, the tuba and string bass glowing under the lights like oil lamps.
It’s fitting that vocalist E. Faye Butler and the six musicians of Billy Novick’s Blue Syncopators receive such a prominent introduction, because they are the starring attraction of this production, which the Washington Ballet reprised Thursday after its February 2010 premiere. It is the music — vintage selections by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin and more — that not only sets the mood for each scene but contributes to the emotional and dramatic tension, helps define the characters and distinguishes one episode from another. "