Notes on the Program by Leonard Feather Jazz Composer and Critic with Esquire and Metronome Woody Herman's Orchestra is currently embarking on its first series of concert appearances to illustrate current trends in modern American music. The band's Carnegie Hall debut is, appropriately, the occasion for the premiere of a work written especially for the orchestra by Igor Stravinsky. This combination of circumstances has particular significance at the present time. During the past year or two schism has developed among students of modern music, which has divided them roughly into two camps - the reactionaries and the progressives. On the reactionary side are the so-called "Moldy Figs" - the cultists, faddists and inverted snobs whose musical opinions are based on the quaintness and simplicity of some jazz music and musicians who, feeling that time is passing them by, cling desperately to the faddists as well as the harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic crudities that characterized the jazz of a quarter-century ago. On the progressive side are virtually all the young musicians of today, as well as the leading figures both inside and outside the jazz sphere: men like Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn and Ralph Burns as well as men like Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Tansman. There men believe that modern music is developing along two parallel lines in the popular and classical fields, and that those things which one draws from the other will benefit music as a whole. To these men, music is a living, growing thing of the present and the future. To them, there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. It is because Woody Herman shares this musical philosophy, and because he has made his orchestra the outstanding new symbol of this progressive attitude in the jazz world today, that tonight's concert is being presented. It is because he and his musicians share this attitude that the Herman band was elected Band of the Year by a jury of famous jazz musicians in the Esquire Poll and won first place in the annual Metronome and Downbeat polls. More impressive than any other tributes to the Herman band in the past year were the interest of Stravinsky and the votes of fellow-jazzmen. One of the first remarks made by Stravinsky when he was introduced to Woody Herman was: "I like your orchestra because it has the progressive spirit in jazz." The list of fellow-musicians who voted for Herman's band in the Esquire poll speaks eloquently for itself: Barney Bigard, Jimmy Butts, Harry Carney, Benny Carter, Al Casey. Buck Clayton, Cozy Cole, Edmond Hall, Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, Ray Nance, Red Norvo (who since, because of his great admiration for it, has become a member of the band himself), Anita O'Day, Specs Powell, Slam Stewart, Billy Strayhorn, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson. Their musical understanding of what Herman's band is accomplishing is one of the reasons the orchestra is playing a concert here this evening.