Conveying the spirit of Louis Armstrong

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Friday, Oct. 10, 2008 | 2 a.m.

COURTESY PHOTO

Byron Stripling has played with the Count Basie Orchestra under the direction of Frank Foster, backed Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, and performed solo with the Boston Pops. He is artistic director of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra.

The Las Vegas Philharmonic will take its first chops at pops Saturday with a tribute to Louis Armstrong.

The concert features trumpeter Byron Stripling emulating the jazz legend. Though Stripling can sing Armstrong dead on — gravely voice, clenched vibrato — don’t expect that this weekend.

Stripling is no impersonator. He’s a talented musician in his own right — who played with the Count Basie Orchestra under the direction of Frank Foster, backed Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, and performed solo with the Boston Pops. He is artistic director of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra.

Stripling happens to be indelibly linked with Armstrong since starring in the short-lived musical “Satchmo! America’s Musical Legend” in the 1980s.

“I just want to give people the spirit of what Louis Armstrong was about, and that spirit was happiness,” Stripling says during a phone conversation while waiting for his daughter’s ballet class to end in Columbus, Ohio.

If that sounds a little feel-goody, it should. Armstrong himself said he stood “in the cause of happiness” and sought to please with his amalgamation of New Orleans sounds that influenced jazz and popular music.

On Saturday, Stripling and the Philharmonic will perform a program that includes “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” along with medleys of Armstrong hits.

The concert is the first of three in the Philharmonic’s new pops series, which includes a Christmas concert and concludes in May with “You and the Night and the Music” featuring former “Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular” star Brent Barrett.

Stripling, 47, has worked with music director David Itkin before, including on a Louis Armstrong program for the Abilene Philharmonic Orchestra in Texas.

Stripling was born in Atlanta and raised in St. Paul, Minn., and studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. He has played with such esteemed groups as the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band.

His father taught classical music but in the evening listened to jazz and popular music, including Armstrong.

Stripling says Armstrong’s music grabbed him immediately: “It’s like an infection that runs through your body, and there is no cure for it.

“Usually if a guy had a voice like Louis Armstrong they’d say, ‘Hey, you need to sit in the back of the choir.’ But Louis Armstrong stood front and center with that voice, with the way that he was. With the spirit that was his and his alone ... (he) said, ‘This is mine.’ ”