Jazz Articles about Wayne Bergeron

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Doc Stewart and Big Band Resuscitation: Code Blue!

by Edward Blanco
May 19, 2014

Those who subscribe to the notion that big band music is a dying musical art form, are obviously unaware of Chris “Doc “ Stewart and his star-studded Resuscitation big band that have just given the genre a shot in the arm, a jolt of electricity and some life-saving musical medicine with the amazing Code Blue! An alto saxophonist by passion and pleasure, Stewart is actually an emergency room doctor with the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ, practicing the trade for ...

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Dave Slonaker Big Band: Intrada

by Jack Bowers
March 28, 2014

Don't be put off by the name. Intrada, composer / arranger Dave Slonaker points out, is “a musical form often composed as a prelude, overture or fanfare," one whose upbeat phrases give rise to an exhilarating curtain-raiser on Slonaker's initial big-band recording. Rest assured this is a world-class ensemble and there's no doubt whose steady hand is at the helm: Slonaker wrote every number save the standard “It's Only a Paper Moon" and arranged the complete package. ...

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Wayne Bergeron: Plays Well with Others

by Jack Bowers
July 17, 2007

The “report card on trumpeter Wayne Bergeron is accurate--he definitely Plays Well with Others. While that alone would be enough to endorse Bergeron's second album as leader of his own big band, it is only one aspect of a superlative studio date on which the “others include a number of the Los Angeles area's busiest and most talented studio musicians and sidemen.

The ensemble is sharp and congenial, the charts amiable and inventive, the soloists resourceful and impressive. And to ...

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Wayne Bergeron/Rich Wetzel: Wayne Bergeron with Rich Wetzel's Groovin' Higher Jazz Orchestra

by Harvey Siders
December 13, 2002

There is a "young man with a horn" in Tacoma, WA, named Rich Wetzel, who has taken on a millennial mission to re-create, preserve and in some instances update the big band excitement of that golden age called the Swing Era. Wetzel, far from unknown, is an established Holton-Leblanc trumpet clinician. And his dedication to the past has attracted musicians from the Puget Sound area who share his vision and admire his untiring efforts to acquire charts from the libraries ...

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Rich Wetzel's Groovin' Higher Jazz Orchestra: Live!

by Jack Bowers
December 1, 2002

Trumpeter Rich Wetzel may be leading a pretty darned good big band out on the left coast in Tacoma, WA, but it’s hard to say for sure, as the evidence on the band’s second album, Live!, suggests that the microphones may have been inadvertently placed somewhere north of Seattle. We exaggerate, of course, to make a point, which is that the over-all sound quality on the album is, shall we say, somewhat less than pristine--although there’s no doubt that it ...

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Wayne Bergeron: You Call This a Living?

by Jack Bowers
August 2, 2002

A rather slow summer for big-band albums has been redeemed in part by a number of trumpet-driven treasures -- Daniel Barry with Seattle's Jazz Police, Jon Faddis leading the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Alumni Band, Carl Saunders' dynamic Be Bop Big Band and this terrific new release by Wayne Bergeron's battle-hardened crew of southern California heavyweights who swing their way through everything from sparkling originals by Gordon Goodwin, Tom Kubis and Nick Lane to Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky's “Waltz of the Flowers" ...

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Rich Wetzel and his Groovin Higher Jazz Orchestra: Live at Jazzbones

by Harvey Siders
April 12, 2002

Jazz and Blues come in all hues. The basic sounds of jazz and blues that we have been weaned on are so enduring, so indestructible, they show up in rock, country, pop, Dixieland, every idiom from Afro-Cuban to Zydeco... from hip-hop to be-bop. They also form the basis of much of the big band swing heard on a new, double disc, Live At Jazz Bones, featuring the Groovin' Higher Jazz Orchestra.Its leader, trumpeter Rich Wetzel, has gathered, with ...