Jazz Articles about Stan Kenton

Stan Kenton: The Innovations Orchestra

by William Grim
November 13, 2002

In 1950 and 1951 Stan Kenton assembled a 40-piece orchestra (his standard 19-piece big band supplemented by strings) and presented the first significant attempt at evolving the dance band into an ensemble more closely resembling the symphony orchestra. The resulting music was what later came to be known as "third stream," that is, combining the elements of big band jazz and symphonic music into a unique hybrid. The Innovations Orchestra was an outstanding musical success, but from a financial standpoint, ...

Stan Kenton: Easy Go

by William Grim
November 3, 2002

Easy Go is a compilation of straight ahead charts recorded by the Kenton band in the years 1950-52 between tours of the Innovations Orchestra. While an artistic triumph, the Innovations Orchestra was not so successful financially, and Kenton had to record a number of albums devoted to just dance and swing tunes to recuperate his losses. Nevertheless, these recordings feature the Kenton band at its most swinging and most relaxed. And all the critics who have said that Kenton never ...

Stan Kenton: Kenton Showcase

by William Grim
October 14, 2002

This re-release is composed of two Kenton albums from the 1950s showcasing the arrangements of Bill Russo and Bill Holman. Russo and Holman were more responsible for defining the Kenton sound than any other arrangers besides Kenton himself and Peter Rugolo. It is a testament to the greatest of Kenton's bands that they could acccomodate both the edgy intellectualism of Russo and the easy going swing of Holman at the same time.

One of Russo's ...

Stan Kenton: Standards in Silhouette

by William Grim
October 8, 2002

There was always much more to the Stan Kenton band than stratospheric trumpets and walls of sound. Nobody could play a ballad quite like Kenton. Lugubious tempos so slow they added an extra dimension of emotion to the overall effect. Dynamic control so profound that it seemed at times almost superhuman. And arrangements of such startling harmonic complexity that they breathed life into even the most hackneyed tunes from Tin Pan Alley.

Standards in Silhouette is one of ...

Stan Kenton: Stompin' At Newport

by David Rickert
August 9, 2002

For Stan Kenton fans this CD is legendary, rumored to exist but never released. Simply put, Norman Granz recorded one of the finest editions of the Kenton band at the 1957 Newport festival, but the recording was never issued until now. Stompin’ At Newport is a fairly comprehensive overview of what Kenton was up to at the time, with classic tunes such as “Intermission Riff” and ”The Peanut Vendor” interspersed with more recent experiments such as “La Suerte De Los ...

Stan Kenton: Sketches on Standards

by Jack Bowers
June 1, 2002

Like Portraits on Standards, which was released earlier by Capitol / Blue Note, Sketches is by and large an eleborate showcase for several of the wonderful soloists who earned their reputations with Stan Kenton’s pace–setting orchestra in the early ’50s when these recordings were made. As on Portraits, most of the arrangements are by Bill (now William) Russo or Stan himself, in this case seven by Russo, three by Kenton, two by Joe Coccia (“Spring Is Here,” “I’m Glad There ...

Stan Kenton Orchestra: Live

by Dave Nathan
February 1, 2001

Big bands may have started to disappear from the entertainment scene after War World II; but not Stan Kenton's. Unlike those other groups which hung in there like Ellington and Basie, Kenton virtually discarded playing for dance dates concentrating more and more on concerts. This allowed him to develop and play arrangements which became more complex and some claimed, pretentious, culminating in the controversial 23-piece Los Angeles Neophonic Orch. of 1965. The group at this hitherto unreleased 1971 Clearwater concert ...