Results for "Al Yankee"

Al Yankee

"Modern Sounds," or: Running a Marathon in Full Body Armor

by Jack Bowers
November 8, 2011

From October 19-25 Betty and I were at the Los Angeles Marriott Airport Hotel to attend Modern Sounds, the L.A. Jazz Institute's four-day salute to West Coast jazz, followed by a day-long tribute to Stan Kenton on the hundredth anniversary of the legendary bandleader's birth. We arrived a day early to be primed and ready for ...

BuJazzO: That's German for Swinging Big Band Jazz

by Jack Bowers
September 4, 2011

On August 8, my friend Wes Pfarner and I drove to Santa Fe for a once-in-a lifetime event: a performance by the German Federal Youth Jazz Orchestra, better known to big band enthusiasts by its more condensed and colorful name, BuJazzO. The twenty-piece ensemble, directed by Jiggs Whigham, an American trombonist and educator from Cleveland, Ohio, ...

Big Band Jazz: It's Not Just for Guys Anymore

by Jack Bowers
August 4, 2011

Back in the early '90s, Stanley Kay, one-time back-up drummer for the incomparable Buddy Rich, later a manager of such artists as Maurice Hines, Michelle Lee and Paul Burke and the entertainment director for the New York Yankees, had a good idea: the time had come, he reasoned, to assemble an all-woman big band that would ...

"A Swingin' Affair" Outshines Its Name

by Jack Bowers
June 8, 2009

With an appreciative bow and genial tip of the hat to the late Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra, the Los Angeles Jazz Institute named its semi-annual big-band soiree May 21-24 at the Sheraton LAX Four Points Hotel “A Swingin' Affair." Was the event able to live up to its name? In the immortal words of ...