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Mike Westbrook Orchestra: On Duke's Birthday
ByWestbrook doesn't quite qualify as Britain's best kept jazz secretthat honor falls to Tony Haynes and his Grand Union Orchestra, whose sui generis big band music also presses too many cross-artform buttons to be easily embraced by jazz critics, the music business or the wider mediabut his and Haynes' situations are analogous.
On Duke's Birthday, a 1984 concert recording originally released on HatART as a double-LP in 1985, is one of Westbrook's most straight-ahead, "pure music" albums. 1984 was the tenth anniversary of Duke Ellington's passing, and Westbrook was commissioned by the Temps Du Jazz festival in Amiens, France to compose a work to mark the occasion. While there are Ellingtonian echoessignature Ellington soloists trumpeter Cootie Williams, trombonist Tricky Sam Nanton and baritone saxophonist Harry Carney, for example, are occasionally evokedthere are probably no more than can be heard in most post-Ellington large group jazz. The album is no pastiche or revivalit is instead an exposition of Westbrook's own sumptuous and detailed writing and his genius, shared with Ellington, for hard-wiring soloists into the bigger picture.
The five individual pieces making up the suite typically start with simple, three or four note motifs, which are developed and reconstructed by a constantly evolving succession of orchestral voicings, rhythm shifts and solo passages, the latter written into the arrangements by Westbrook rather than left open-ended. Dominique Pifarely (violin), Georgie Born (cello), Chris Biscoe (saxophones), Danilo Terenzi (trombone) and Brian Godding (guitar) are amongst those shining memorably.
There are wistful moments, like those beginning "On Duke's Birthday 1" and "2," but the abiding mood is one of joy and celebrationreaching its peak during the second half of the 21-minute "East Stratford Too-Doo" (the punning title presumably giving a nod to the radical, long-surviving Theatre Royal in London's deprived Stratford East neighborhood), and its exuberant solo passages for Pifarely, Biscoe (on alto saxophone) and Terenzi.
An enduring album of idiosyncratically conceived and brilliantly realized orchestral jazz.
Track Listing
Checking In At Hotel Le Prieure; On Duke's Birthday 1; East Stratford Too-Doo; On Duke's Birthday 2; Music Is....
Personnel
Mike Westbrook
composer / conductorMike Westbrook: piano; Dominique Pifarely: violin; Georgie Born: cello; Brian Godding: electric guitar; Chris Biscoe: alto, soprano and baritone saxophones, piccolo, alto clarinet; Danilo Terenzi: trombone; Kate Westbrook: tenor horn, piccolo, bamboo flute, voice; Phil Minton: trumpet, voice; Stuart Brooks: trumpet, voice; Steve Cook: bass guitar; Tony Marsh: drums.
Album information
Title: On Duke's Birthday | Year Released: 2007 | Record Label: Hat Hut Records
Comments
About Mike Westbrook
Instrument: Composer / conductor
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