|
Baritone Saxophone Band
This week, Dee Dee Bridgewater introduces a pride of baritone saxophones, onstage at the 2005 International Association for Jazz Education convention in Long Beach, Calif. They roar, the audience cheers back.
|
The first great baritone player was Harry Carney with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The first "superstar" was Gerry Mulligan, a New Yorker living in Los Angeles. In the early 1950s his innovative, piano-free quartet became internationally famous.
|
After he died in 1996, the Baritone Saxophone Band premiered a tribute performance at the Jazz and Image Festival in Rome, Italy. They've been playing together, on and off, ever since. You'll love their sound and how FAST they move it around.
They're Ronnie Cuber, Howard Johnson and Gary Smulyan. Smulyan has made a number of recordings under his own name, with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and Dave Holland Big Band. He was on JazzSet for ten seasons with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band.
Johnson's big, dark sound anchored the Gil Evans Orchestra. He also plays tuba with his own multi-tuba ensemble, Gravity. Cuber was an early-achiever, barely out of his teens when he was working with Maynard Ferguson, George Benson, and making pop sessions from Aretha to Zappa. Cuber plays lead, does all the arranging for the group, and is the spokesman.
Tune in to can hear each man in action, one at a time and -- even better -- all together.
|
