It took a German recording team to enable trumpeter/arranger
Randy Sandke to assemble this all-American, 12-piece ensemble for a panorama of New York-inspired tunes, recorded in the Big Apple in the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse as part of the 1999 JVC Jazz Festival. In doing so, he raided
the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, as well as several independent history-minded players in the area, and emerged with a band that fires off the numbers with crisp virtuosity in any idiom called for. Thankfully, there is also more than enough gusto in the playing, due in no small part to the live festival recording situation. "The Harlem Medley," a lengthy leadoff stream of delicacies from the land of
Ellingtonia, gets close enough to the
Ellington sound to convey the idea without being slavishly imitative or ghostly. The
Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra boys know their
Ellington craft well and apply the plunger mutes accordingly. From there, the band doubles back to Dixieland, works its way up to swing, and slides without a glitch into bebop ("Scrapple From the Apple"), a
Mingus shuffle blues ("Nostalgia in Times Square"), transitional
Coltrane ("Grand Central"), and some
Monk ("52nd Street Theme"), before being deposited back in Harlem by -- naturally -- the "'A' Train." In between the main tour stops, Concord Jazz teammates guitarist
Howard Alden and clarinetist
Ken Peplowski serve up another of their fluid duets on
Irving Berlin's "Slumming on Park Avenue." Other high points include clarinetist
Allan Vaché wailing in the trad flagwaver "Chinatown" and trumpeters
Sandke and
Warren Vaché duking it out on "42nd Street." In all, a well-recorded souvenir of what sounds like a heartwarming local celebration. ~ Richard S. Ginell