Wigan Youth Jazz Orchestra

Wigan Youth Jazz Orchestra: Yesterdays Today

by Jack Bowers
May 1, 1999

This is the ninth recording by Great Britain’s well–endowed Wigan Youth Jazz Orchestra, and as is always the case, director Ian Darrington’s troops are lean, mean and ready to rumble, as one can readily hear from the first buoyant phrases of Mike Tomaro’s rollicking “Blues for Hire.” While it’s difficult to take issue with anything WYJO does, the way in which the ensemble was recorded is another matter altogether. The disc embodies a recessed and reverberant “concert hall” quality that ...