"That's My Home"Vintage Jazz Big Band
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The music |
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Our music covers several big band styles within the Vintage Jazz ideom.
However, we can also give the listeners a slight taste of more modern big band styles
including some big band dance music. In our playing we always give high priority to
musical dynamics and to style sensitivity, - and we often add a bit of humour to it all. |
The Arrangements | |
There are very few printed big band arrangements of Vintage Jazz
available. Luckily we have in VJBB three arrangers of our own in Magnus Bylund,
Johnny Korner and myself. This CD contains, however, also two numbers played from old printed arrangements: No.5 Mule Face Blues, and No.14 Cotton Tail. Our special arrangements are often transcriptions of classic, preferably early recordings by masters such as Armstrong, Oliver, Russell and Ellington, sometimes with a special touch of VJBB. Examples on this CD are No.8 Give Me Your Tel. No. (Russell) and No.15 Rent Party Blues (Ellington), and particularly the last 4 blues choruses of No.3 Snag It. Even jazz tunes normally not associated with big bands have been arranged for VJBB. Examples on this CD are No.9 Jazz Me Blues (Bix) and No.2 Willie The Weeper (Armstrong Hot Seven). The VJBB repertoire also includes several original compositions of mine, on this CD represented by the shuffle tune No.11. I Gungning - which translated means swinging and rocking, but also "feeling dizzy". The 10 first tracks on this CD are largely stompy in character with sousaphone and banjo in the rhythm section. The sousaphone is used in several of my stompy arrangements also as a part of the brass section in the ensemble parts. The saxophone trio with two altos and one tenor often play clarinet trios. Musical greetings are given in the stompy section of the CD both to Louis Armstrong and King Oliver as well as to Bix and Luis Russell. Tracks No.4 Thats My Home , No.6 My Inspiration and No.8 Give Me Your Tel. No. could of course also be classified as early swing. Tracks 13 - 16 offer a swinging dose of Ellingtonia. The abrupt change in style from the traditional New Orleans jazz march 1919 March to the much more modern I Gungning is quite deliberate. If you are still reading these notes without listening to the CD, which I doubt, I suggest that you start playing the CD immediately. I also suggest that you pour yourself a good measure of your favourite drink, (whatever that may be) in a glass or a cup, (whichever is the most appropriate), that you sit down in your best easy chair, relax, forget all about stress and your problems and enjoy this CD with the Vintage Jazz Big Band ! Do it !! Now !!! Enjoy !!!! Rolf Sundby |
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