The indefatigable Gigi Campi has wisely offered us a second chance to experience the ART of Francy Boland via compact discs. Virtually all of the music created by the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band has been (or will be) re-issued. Several of Gigi's great packages come at premium prices. Double CD sets complete with comprehensive booklets are combined in heavy fabric or metal cases. These are numbered limited editions produced for the Serious Jazz Collectors "who care enough to hear the very best." Hallmarks, indeed!

Other re-issues in the on-going Campi program are found on the Emanon label of Germany and are not numbered. They will still be hard to find unless one has an import source who will go the extra mile. Maybe two...

It's hoped that Gigi has total control of all CBBB masterworks -- music which was originally released on LPs by various different labels worldwide. If so, we can expect a treasury of creative big band GOLD, some of which may be unreleased (new) compositions. And, with luck, Campi will also re-release the fabulous "Red", "White", and "Blue" series by Boland's THE Orchestra on CD.

Several friends (musicians) in Europe have agreed that the music field there, Jazz in particular, has tightened up in terms of funds for creative music projects. Jazz continues to be a highly respected ART form, but the concept of "the bottom line" is now a serious factor. One tragedy of this trend is a new direction taken by the stunning Metropole Orchestra of Holland. The M.O. has for more than twenty years remained the epitome of integrity in both music and creative Jazz ART performed by a full orchestra. It is, in fact, a superb big band surrounded by strings and woodwinds. And over the years the M.O. has enjoyed the love-work of the greatest composer-arrangers east of the Atlantic. Suddenly, all the years of quiet magnificence are to be destroyed by utilizing the "names" of the American pop-jazz scene. The writers who've given dozens of years in building the reputation of the Metropole Orchestra will be the victims of group amputation -- that of being chopped off at their ankles.

Today, as in the U.S., the men who create monumental music for Jazz Orchestras in Europe are struggling to survive. Opportunities are fewer, and commissions have gone the way of the Berlin Wall. While their music is re-issued on CDs, much of their new works go unperformed -- and unrecorded. Francy knows there will never be another Clarke-Boland Big Band. That era will never be duplicated. But there's still hope, economics aside, that an energy force with a dream like Gigi Campi's will surface to give new life to the International Big Band Jazz World. Hope and dreams seem somehow connected - particularly in Jazz.

Thank you Gigi. Thank you Francy. And many thanks to you, Rob Pronk.