Jazz Articles

David Berger Jazz Orchestra: Colorizing the Classics: David Berger's Tribute to Harry Warren

by Tom Greenland
March 5, 2010

Arranger/recomposer David Berger's music is likely to prompt mixed reactions for its mixing of traditional values with creative originality, somewhat akin to Ted Turner's colorizing of classic black and white films. Colorizing the Classics is a big-band follow-up to I Had the Craziest Dream (Such Sweet Thunder, 2008), an octet outing also championing the works of Harry Warren, an important but under-recognized composer of movie musicals. Digging through the Warren family archives, Berger discovered a trove of ...

David Berger Octet: I Had the Craziest Dream

by Jack Bowers
August 14, 2009

David Berger Octet I Had the Craziest Dream Such Sweet Thunder 2008

Composer / arranger / scholar / historian / educator David Berger, who uses groups of various sizes to adorn his musical framework, has chosen an octet to record I Had the Craziest Dream, subtitled The Music of Harry Warren. If you're thinking “Harry who?," think instead “Chattanooga Choo-Choo," “Lulu's Back in Town," “There Will Never Be Another You," “At Last," ...

David Berger Octet featuring Harry Allen and Joe Temperley: I Had The Craziest Dream: The Music of Harry Warren

by Michael Steinman
August 5, 2008

David Berger's credentials are wide-ranging and impeccable: transcribing 500 Ellington recordings, leading the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, teaching at the Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard. I Had the Craziest Dream is precise, hot and lively, honoring Harry Warren, a deserving 20th-century popular composer less well known than Berlin, Gershwin, or Porter. In addition to the 12 songs on this CD, Warren created “You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me," “There Will Never Be Another You" and over two ...

Champian Fulton: Champian

by George Kanzler
February 11, 2008

Nobody does Duke-style big band music better than David Berger's Sultans of Swing, so just hearing this big band so attuned to swing with such Ellington-ian touches as muted lead and solo brass voices, and weaving saxophones and clarinets is a joy. That the arrangements all feature singer Champian Fulton is not always such a plus. Berger, like his idol the Duke, seems less perspicacious in his appraisal of singers than instrumentalists. But Ellington rarely featured a singer for more ...

Champian Fulton: Champian

by Budd Kopman
September 24, 2007

Anyone who wants to know what old-time swing and big band music is all about--or, for that matter, longs to revisit it--must check out Champian, which features vocalist Champian Fulton with David Berger & The Sultans of Swing. Furthermore, anyone who wants a definition of adult sensuality and sexiness, as relayed in the words of a song and how they are delivered, would do well to listen carefully to the interplay between Fulton and Berger's band playing his top-notch arrangements. ...

David Berger and the Sultans of Swing: The Harlem Nutcracker

by Budd Kopman
December 18, 2006

It is that time of year again, and David Berger's adaptation and extension of Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn's Harlem Nutcracker suite is one swinging way to enjoy music of this season. This release is a reissue of the original. The short story is that Berger, an expert on Ellington and a top notch transcriber, was asked to write ninety more minutes of music for a new show put together by the Donald Byrd Dance Foundation. The show toured ...

David Berger & The Sultans of Swing: Hindustan

by Elliott Simon
July 8, 2006

Recording a band in the studio during the peak of a tour can yield a session that reflects the synergy gained from repeated nights on the road. Hindustan is just such an occasion, capturing the breadth of this large, swinging aggregation on a varied program of standards and new music written especially for these players. The original opener, “Stompin' on a Riff, starts innocently enough as pianist Isaac Ben Ayala, bassist Dennis Irwin and drummer Jimmy Madison ...

David Berger & the Sultans of Swing: Hindustan

by Jack Bowers
May 21, 2006

David Berger not only leads a terrific band, he also has a wicked sense of humor. Hindustan, the fourth album by his intrepid Sultans of Swing, comes complete with a cover photo of camels being led by turbaned Bedouins across blazing desert sands as the sun sinks slowly in the west. So where was it recorded? In sweltering Malmo, Sweden, of course, during a Scandinavian tour last autumn.

Berger and the Sultans are throwbacks to a heady time when thousands ...

David Berger and the Sultans of Swing: Marlowe

by Jack Bowers
November 19, 2004

David Berger, an avowed admirer of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, writes, as Ellington and Strayhorn often did, music with a purpose, evocative themes that paint graphic sound pictures designed to summon a visceral response from his audience. And so it is with Berger's latest album, Marlowe, which consists of two suites--"Windows on the World," solemnizing the World Trade Center disaster of September 11, 2001, and its aftermath; and “Marlowe," consuming more than 38 of the album's nearly 62 minutes ...

David Berger and the Sultans of Swing: Doin' the Do!

by Jack Bowers
April 12, 2002

A generous helping of well-cooked nouveau swing by David Berger's undeniably talented Sultans of Swing that's easy to swallow but doesn't sharpen one's craving for more of the same.Berger arranged everything except the album's bonus track, Duke Ellington / Mildred Hill's “Birthday Jam," which he transcribed. While the charts are admirable, the music itself is on the whole less than exhilarating, especially the eight vocals (on thirteen tracks), half a dozen by Aria Hendricks, the others by trombonist ...