The Whole Music Experience

The Michael Treni Big Band Boy’s Night Out Bell Production Co. The Jens Wendelboe Big Band Fresh Heat Rosa Records When I think of big bandleaders, I think piano.   Yet, here are two new releases by trombonists leading modern-era big bands.   You won’t find rehashed covers of Ellington or other American jazz legends, but both the Michael Treni 16-piece big band and The Jens Weldelboe Big Band swing low and high.   First, there is Treni who began his jazz career with promise, almost landing a touring gig with Art Blakely that at the last moment fell through leading the musician to a new direction of arranging.    Trombonist Jens Wendelboe, on the other hand, has run the gamut between jazz, pop, and movie soundtracks.   He leans heavily on a strong melody. Opening with Leonard Bernstein’s Something’s Coming Treni and his musicians provide robust jazz on the album, Boy’s Night Out .   The musical personnel however, does...

Heal Me with a Latin-Jazz-Classical Vibe You wouldn't think I'd find the soundtrack music of Westside Story healing with its jagged edges, slight dissonance portraying teenage angst, and sarcasm (both in the music and the text), but I do.  Similar to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony , the music from this Broadway musical and feature film, works through anger, frustration, and then ultimately triumphs.  The love songs in both the text and music (with its vaulting melodies), possess a sense of destiny and toy with metaphysical elements.  The text revolves around the theme of belonging somewhere, to someone, and to a community.  The melodies too combine ethnicity such as American jazz of the 1950s, mixed with Puerto Rican elements, and even European classical elements, after all, Leonard Bernstein composed this famous music.  The song, America for instance provides a poignant contrasts between immigrants who assimilate into a new culture, and those wh...