Jazz Articles about Vanguard Jazz Orchestra

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra: Monday Night Live at the Village Vanguard

by J Hunter
August 6, 2008

"The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra holds sway Monday nights"--so says the Village Vanguard's minuscule listing in the “Goings On About Town" section of The New Yorker magazine. Other acts come and go, but the VJO--the hellacious big band once co-captained by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis--just keeps on keeping on. Monday Night Live at the Village Vanguard amply demonstrates why “holds sway" is an excellent description of the orchestra's remarkable ability to mesmerize an audience.

Plenty of big bands ...

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra: Up from the Skies

by Jack Bowers
May 9, 2006

On its fifth album since the passing of co-founder Mel Lewis in 1990, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra turns for a second time to the music of Jim McNeely, the ensemble's pianist/composer in residence and one of the country's outstanding contemporary composer/arrangers. Even though his music has lost none of its resourcefulness or depth, this is a kinder, gentler, more lyrical and even-tempered McNeely than we've heard before, and the enterprise is all the better for it.

The title selection, which ...

The Way: Music of Slide Hampton: Vanguard Jazz Orchestra

by Russ Musto
July 4, 2004

The union of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (VJO) and Slide Hampton is a match made in jazz heaven. The VJO, a sixteen-piece musical organization--the term big band has never been an official assignation for the group--that has been performing on Monday nights at the Village Vanguard for nearly 40 years, remains one of the most vibrant and distinctive larger groups. Founded under the co-leadership of trumpeter Thad Jones and drummer Mel Lewis, the band blended the influences of the former's ...

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra: The Music of Slide Hampton

by Matt Merewitz
May 28, 2004

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra The Way: The Music of Slide Hampton Planet Arts Recordings 2004

As Mitchell Seidel points out in his liner notes to The Way, New York has grown accustomed to the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra’s presence at the Village Vanguard every Monday night for the past 38 years. But this continuity has neither made the band nor it’s repertoire the least bit stale or hackneyed. It has relied on a formula ...

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra: Can I Persuade You?

by Jack Bowers
July 1, 2002

The title song on the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra's latest album was written by the late Julie Cavadini whose untimely passing at age thirty--one in 1988 deprived the Jazz world of one of its more promising big--band composers. Cavadini, to whose memory the album is dedicated, also wrote the lovely and harmonically radiant “Simple Wish," another of her several compositions that have become an indispensable part of the VJO's book. Vanguard, which began life in 1966 as the Thad ...

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra: Can I Persuade You?

by Dave Nathan
June 21, 2002

From its inception in 1966, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra has been a New York institution attracting the best musicians from that City. Typically, when the driving forces for an organization depart, in this case founders Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, their organization eventually falls apart or becomes a tribute band. Not so here, as the music continues on in high form with fresh charts and fueled by some of the Big Apple's premiere jazz artists. That is the ...

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra: Thad Jones Legacy

by Glenn Astarita
April 1, 2000

The “Vanguard Jazz Orchestra” performs eight compositions by the late trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader Thad Jones on Thad Jones Legacy. With this recording the “VJO” utilize Jones’ original arrangements while the opener “A-That’s Freedom” composed by Thad’s equally heralded brother, pianist Hank Jones is befitting of the Basie school. Here, pianist Jim McNeely commences with the customary piano intro followed by a Kansas City style big band arrangement featuring multi-layered horn charts and melodious choruses as the band exhibits ...