Jim Scharnberg

Jim Self: My America 2: Destinations

by Jack Bowers
January 15, 2023

Tuba maestro Jim Self's My America 2: Destinations is a successor of sorts to the album My America, recorded and released some twenty years before, also on Self's Basset Hound label. While personnel has inevitably changed (only trombonist Bill Booth returns from that earlier album), Self has employed the services of the same arranger, Kim Scharnberg—and thank goodness for that! Although Self and his eleven-member supporting cast acquit themselves well, it is Scharnberg's ingenious charts that make this engine run. ...