On Saturday, November 11 the Victoria Jazz Orchestra will be joined by Tony Genge on the Hammond organ, performing the music of Oliver Nelson including selections from Nelson's reworking of "Peter and the Wolf" by Prokofiev. This is one of the truly classic, large-scale jazz compositions ever recorded: Oliver Nelson's interpretation of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, as recorded by organist Jimmy Smith for Verve Records in 1966.

Nelson arranged this work for jazz orchestra and added much of his own blues- and rock-oriented music, primarily to provide a solo sections for Jimmy Smith. This version is different in many ways from the original one: this is without narration and it makes use of the jazz orchestra, not the symphony orchestra. Also, the original themes are used but they are now somehow different because of the orchestration. There is new music, too, intended to give this version duration and to give Jimmy Smith a suitable environment in which to improvise. And this version is not politically suggestive one way or the other.
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