Chapter 1 New York City Big Band Scenes Monday night is musicians’ night. With Broadway theaters dark, the weekend club dates finished, and many residencies at nightclubs running Tuesday through Sunday, on Monday nights jazz musicians gather to perform and lis- ten to the music that interests them. Though a thriving tourist industry may supply clubs with a stream of foreign and domestic visitors, on Mondays the venues are much freer of “amateur” clubgoers than later in the week. In an atmosphere of camaraderie and release from the week’s accumulated frus- trations, jazz musicians cram themselves onto tiny bandstands to play in big bands. A cool Monday evening, October 1997. A friend and I decide to take a walk around Greenwich Village to check out a few of these big bands.1 Within a radius of a few blocks, half a dozen bands are performing in a wide range of styles. Beyond the Village, more than we can possibly visit in a single night, an even more astounding variety of bands are performing in the downtown and midtown scenes. We begin our big band tour at the Village Vanguard, where the journey- man Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (formerly the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orches- tra) has appeared weekly for more than forty years. Even on Monday night the club is packed with tourists (mostly European and Japanese), and musi- cians and friends of the band congregate in the back near the bar. The leader, John Mosca, counts off a Thad Jones classic, “Big Dipper.” After an eight-bar intro played by the saxes and trombones, an extended piano solo by Jim McNeely launches the evening’s opening number. For several min- utes, while the rest of the band sits idly by and the rhythm section warms up, the audience waits in suspense. When the brass and reeds finally enter, the crowd explodes in approval. We stay for the first set, an interesting mix of 25 26 new york city big band scenes classic material from the band’s library and brand-new arrangements written for the band by McNeely. Just down the street at Sweet Basil, a predominantly black thirteen-piece group, the Spirit of Life Ensemble, though maybe not, strictly speaking, a big band, plays “creative jazz with a world beat.” The group includes several per- cussionists and a singer. Though only a few doors away, the music seems to come from a completely different world. Instead of complex, hard-swinging, expertly rendered arrangements, we hear mostly Latin-flavored pieces, rather minimally arranged but played with enthusiasm. A few blocks away, at Visiones, Maria Schneider guides her band through her intensely personal compositions. Her unique style of conducting has cap- tivated the small crowd gathered there. As we enter she is talking about grow- ing up in Minnesota. She describes her fears associated with a bomb shelter that was in her parents’ house (the door to which was beside her bed) and shares intimate details about her life. The band then launches into “Bomb- shelter Beast,” the first part of an extended suite based on Schneider’s child- hood memories. We stay for only one piece so that we can race downtown to the Knitting Fac- tory in time to hear the Oliver Lake Big Band. When Lake is not playing alto saxophone sideways to the audience,he makes strange gestures and hand signs to the band. Apparently the band has learned a secret code,for they re- spond with glissandos,staccato blips and blaps,long drones,and other unusual effects. A singer joins the band,her intonation somewhat unsettling to our ears. In one of the most memorable performances of the evening,Ku-umba Frank Lacy takes a wild solo,at one point removing parts of his trombone. After several pieces we take a cab uptown to Times Square to catch an- other composer, Toshiko Akiyoshi, and her orchestra at Birdland. This spa- cious and comfortable new jazz club has instituted a big band policy featur- ing Chico O’Farrill’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra on Sunday nights and Duke Ellington’s Famous Orchestra—under the direction of Duke’s grandson Paul Mercer Ellington—on Tuesday nights. Along with her husband, the tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin, Akiyoshi has been leading her own band since 1974. Though not sharing intimate details of her life, Akiyoshi draws on her background by incorporating elements from traditional Japa- nese music. Her music reminds us of the VJO in the bop-styled lines and vir- tuosic demands made on the players. But, unlike the VJO, most of whose members solo in the course of an evening, Akiyoshi features Tabackin on most of the solos. Her band, made up of some of the best young Broadway pit players and jazzmen in town, glides through her difficult arrangements with apparent ease. We do not have time (and would not have been able to get tickets anyway), but a little farther uptown at Lincoln Center, far removed from the crowded stages and dingy clubs of the Village, the tuxedo-clad Lincoln Center Jazz Or- new york city big band scenes 27 chestra (LCJO), under the direction of Wynton Marsalis and hosted by Ed Bradley, is performing for Vice President Al Gore and his wife and a host of other luminaries—raising a million dollars for Jazz at Lincoln Center in the process. Later we hear that after the concert the LCJO played another set for the assembled socialites and dignitaries on the terrace of the State Theater, proving that a jazz big band can still fulfill one of its original functions, pro- viding social dance music. We end our tour back in the Village, around the corner from where we started, at another subterranean club, aptly named Small’s. Remembering that Small’s serves only tea and fruit juice, we pick up a bottle of wine. In this late-night, bohemian atmosphere, the Jason Lindner Big Band, a group made up of young European Americans, African Americans, Israelis, and a female trombonist, performs for an equally youthful, enthusiastic audience. The contrast with the Akiyoshi, Schneider, and Vanguard bands is pronounced. Here the emphasis is on the soloists; the arrangements, though interesting, occupy relatively little performance time. We have to save for a future Monday tour Howard Williams at the Garage and the Chuck Clark Little Big Band at the Internet Café. And while Monday evenings remain the prime time for big band activity, numerous other big bands, some with international reputations (such as the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Mingus Big Band, Chico O’Farrill’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, and bands led by John Fedchock, Bobby Watson, and Frank Foster), appear around town, some regularly, others sporadically. Although they do not per- form frequently in their home city, two all-women big bands are also based in New York: Diva (No Man’s Band) and the Kit McClure Band. All week long a procession of big bands can be found rehearsing in the Local 802 Union Hall or uptown at Boys Harbor.2 In October 1997, the month of our tour, nineteen bands rehearsed at the hall. NEW YORKESTRAS New Yorkers’ imaginations operate on a large scale. At gatherings of the city’s social elite, the size of the band remains a measure of status and wealth. New York club date agencies continue to sell bands by the number of pieces; the ballrooms of posh hotels have rather large minimums negotiated with the musicians union, Local 802.3 The abundance of musicians, capacious venues such as grand ballrooms and concert halls, and demands of the entertain- ment industry for arranged and elaborate music have stimulated the appetite for large ensembles. “There’s far more of everything in New York City,” says David Berger, who has been active as a player, composer, and leader since the early 1970s. “It’s much easier to fill them [big bands] in New York because there are so many players.” Bill Kirchner hardly exaggerates when he states, “Only in New York 28 new york city big band scenes is it possible to have big bands from certain apartment buildings.” Jazz mu- sicians have taken over buildings in Brooklyn, and in Manhattan 350 West 55th Street has long been occupied by musicians, and Manhattan Plaza has provided subsidized housing for hundreds of people in the arts since the mid-1970s. The number of big bands in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, the only other cities with enough jazz musicians to support a fair number of bands, is dwarfed by the number in New York. The appendix gives a far from exhaustive list (omitting many dance and nos- talgia bands) of big bands active in New York in 1997–98. New York is also distinguished by its players’ high level of musicianship. The intensely competitive environment pushes players to improve. A “New York caliber” band, according to Kirchner, has “killers in every chair,” not just in a few featured positions. Every horn player is likely to be an accom- plished soloist and improviser as well as a proficient section or lead player. Bandleaders can draw from a large pool of solid and imaginative rhythm sec- tion players. To unify the members of a band in a common conception of swing, the drummer and bass player must provide a strong foundation and intense groove. A good big band drummer not only reads proficiently but also is strong enough to pull everyone together, a much more difficult task than in a small group. Too much activity from the rhythm section can throw the band off balance or obscure the arrangement’s figures.