Jazz Articles about Stan Kenton

Stan Kenton: Contemporary Concepts

by Russell Moon
November 3, 2003

Here's your trivia question for today: Who was the third man to be elected to Downbeat Magazine's Hall of Fame, the year before Duke Ellington? You guessed right if you said Stan Kenton.

Contemporary Concepts was recorded in July of 1955, and it offers six standards arranged by Bill Holman and one by Gerry Mulligan. The Mulligan chart, "Limelight," is easily recognizable and prefigures his work for his Concert Jazz Band five years later.

There is ...

Stan Kenton: With the Danish Radio Big Band

by Jack Bowers
February 3, 2003

In March 1966 Stan Kenton spent a week in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the invitation of Ib Glindemann, director of the New Dance Band of Radio Denmark (popularly known as the Danish Radio Big Band, now the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra). During that time he conducted the DRBB in concert at Copenhagen’s Radio Concert Hall. As a part of its fiftieth anniversary celebration, Storyville Records has made the concert performance available on CD, and if the sound were better it would ...

The Stan Kenton Orchestra: Stompin' at Newport

by Jack Bowers
February 3, 2003

Today, more than four decades after the fact, the music on the Stan Kenton Orchestra’s memorable appearance at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival sounds as fresh and invigorating as ever, even though there is nothing on this long-overdue release from Pablo that Kenton fans won’t have heard perhaps hundreds of times on other occasions. From Bill Holman’s suitably named “The Opener” to Marty Paich’s “The Big Chase,” which closes the concert, the orchestra traverses familiar ground with such indispensable numbers ...

Stan Kenton: Adventures in Time

by William Grim
January 25, 2003

Out of the entire recorded oeuvre of the Stan Kenton Orchestra, Adventures in Time is one of the most adventurous and musically satisfying records. The album features eight compositions by Johnny Richards arranged in a suitelike totality, with the title "A Concerto for Orchestra."

If Richard's "Concerto for Orchestra" bears little harmonic resemblance to the composition of the same name by Bela Bartok, the overall conception of the work is indeed influenced by the Hungarian master. Richards treats ...

Stan Kenton: Stan Kenton Conducts the Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra

by William Grim
November 16, 2002

This album is a compilation of the best compositions from the first season of Stan Kenton's Neophonic Orchestra, an early attempt to create a jazz orchestra in residence that didn't travel the country doing one- nighters. Although the organization only lasted for three seasons, it was an artistic success and is a model now employed by many in-residence jazz ensembles throughout the country.

The record was also nominated for a Grammy Award in 1966, and it ...

Stan Kenton: Adventures in Blues

by William Grim
November 16, 2002

This is one of the best albums made by the mellophonium band of Stan Kenton, which featured a complete section of mellophoniums (an instrument somewhere between a French horn and a flugelhorn), in addition to the usual components of trumpets, trombones, saxophones and rhythm. This may be the most swinging of all of Kenton's albums because the arrangements were done by Gene Roland, the most consistently swinging of all of the great arrangers who honed their talents writing for the ...

Stan Kenton: Adventures in Jazz

by William Grim
November 13, 2002

This is one of the finest albums ever recorded by the remarkable Stan Kenton Orchestra. It features two compositions by the composer/trombonist/drummer Dee Barton, "Turtle Talk" and "Waltz of the Prophets," that are among the best-known works from the Kenton library. Barton later went on to fame (like those other Kenton stalwarts, Pete Rugolo and Lennie Niehaus) as a composer for films such as Clint Eastwood's Play Misty for Me. The CD includes a well-known version of the song “Misty," ...