Enjoy from far and wide…
 
 
 

Enjoy from far and wide…

Some Skunk Funk

Performance: April 19, 2013 in KUK Aarau
 
The Swiss Youth Jazz Orchestra play the original scores written for the WDR recording Some Skunk Funk together with the Brecker Brothers Band Reunion. Enhancing the sections are some top musicians in the international orchestral scene and recording industry.

Randy Brecker (tp), Ada Rovatti Brecker (ts), Ryan Quigley (Ltp), Markus Hauser (as), Marques Young (tb), Mitch Stein (g), Oli Rockberger (p), Neil Jason (b), Rodney Holmes (dr)

Directing the ensemble is Pepe Lienhard, Switzerland’s legendary band leader and music director who will also accompany the orchestra as a flautist.
This opportunity to work on this production at such a high level promises an enriching and memorable experience for the young members of the orchestra.
 

Swiss Youth Jazz Orchestra
For more updates and details please click HERE…
 
 

Konzert: 20. April 2013 in KUK Aarau
 
Das Swiss Youth World-Music Ensemble spielen ein origenellen Werk von Fritz & Helen Renold The Unseen Hand – A Gospel Oratorium zusammen mit Top-Musikern des Genres und internationalen Musikszene.

African Gospel Night

Konzert: 20. April 2013 in KUK Aarau
 
Das Swiss Youth World-Music Ensemble spielen ein origenellen Werk von Fritz & Helen Renold The Unseen Hand – A Gospel Oratorium zusammen mit Top-Musikern des Genres und internationalen Musikszene.

Valérie Ekoume (v), Michael Bradley (v), Rashad McPherson (v), Max Helfenstein (tp/flh), Vernon Ice Black (g), ATN Stadwijk (p), Kai Eckhardt (b), Olivier Seriba (perc.), Dana Hawkins (dr)

Das Ensemble ist von Fritz Renold geleitet, Jazzaar Festivals gründer und Musikalischer Leiter.
Diese Möglichkeit, auf dieser Produktion auf einem hohen Niveau arbeiten verspricht eine bereichernde und unvergessliche Erfahrung für die jungen Mitglieder des Orchesters.
 

Swiss Youth World-Music Ensemble

For more updates and details please click HIER klicken…

Download PDF of Poster Battle of Bands

Battle of Bands – Vol 9

You Don’t Want to Miss the 2013 Friendly Battle!

January 11, 2013

Brugg Salzhaus

Time: 20:00h

Jazz Orchestra Aarau VS Fachhochschule (FHS) – Bigband

January 17, 2013

Wettingen, Löwenscheune

Time: 20:00h

Jazz Orchestra Aarau VS Bigband Wettingen

January 18, 2013

Aarau, Aula Alte Kanti

Time: 20:00h

Jazz Orchestra Aarau VS Bigband Wettingen

Download PDF of Poster Battle of Bands

Jazzaar Festival – 21st Edition

2013 Application Announcement

Closing Date 25th January 2013

April 14 – 20, 2013

in Aarau, Switzerland

For Youth Musicians between the age of 14 – 24 Years
From All Switzerland!

Participation Fee: FREE

Attention: Participants require a good command of the English Language!

All communication will be in English!

Participants engage in a week-long rehearsal of one of two programs with new arrangements for a weekend performance!

Both productions are supervised and accompanied by an international all-star cast.

Click links below for more details.

I. Brecker Reunion Band & Swiss Youth Jazz Orchestra

II. African Gospel Music & Swiss Youth Pops Orchestra

Auditions will be held in case applications exceed demand.

Auditions on 16. February, 2013 in Aarau

Participants will be chosen based on level of musicianship and delight in crossover projects.

Closing Date 25th January 2013

Participation Fee: FREE

Download PDF: Flyer Jazzkurs 2012 mit Anmeldung

Jazzkurs – Einführung in die Welt des Jazz

Jazzaar Festival 2013

The idea of a jazz-Broadway recording in which a single artist (or duo or band) devotes a whole album to music from a single show goes back at least as far as 1944. That’s when trumpeter and bandleader Charlie Spivak, on a set of 78 rpm records, played four selections from “Porgy & Bess” (even then regarded as an American classic). And in the decades since, which have seen the breakout success of “Porgy” albums by the combinations of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald (1957) and Miles Davis and Gil Evans (1958), the “folk opera” by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward is almost certainly the most covered score in jazz history. So it’s not altogether surprising that the latest jazz-show album to cross the doorstep is “A Different Porgy & Another Bess” by the Brussels Jazz Orchestra.

The jazz-Broadway vogue began properly in 1956 with “Shelly Manne & His Friends: Modern Jazz Performances of Songs From ‘My Fair Lady,’” a best-selling LP that launched an entire cottage industry of jazz-show hybrids, many by the drummer Manne himself and his No. 1 “friend,” the pianist André Previn. The new Brussels Jazz Orchestra release joins last year’s “Fleet Street” by Terry Vosbein and the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra (featuring music from Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”), and “Three Penny Opera Live in Aarau” by the Renolds Jazz Orchestra, in showing that jazz interpretations of Broadway scores by full-sized orchestras is thriving.

“A Different Porgy & Another Bess” comes out of the long history of vocal-driven interpretations of the folk opera, which often involve juxtapositions of elements from classical and pop music, as well as jazz and Broadway. As in the versions by, say, Ray Charles and Cleo Laine or Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne, all the songs written for male characters are sung by David Linx and the female parts are handled by Portuguese singer Maria João. But that is the only way this version is in the least traditional: The 11 orchestrations, each by a different arranger, paint an array of tonal pictures behind and around the singers, including lots of funk backbeats.

“I Love You, Porgy” (the Catfish Row ebonics having now been dropped) immerses both singers in a dizzying backdrop of swirling counterpoint; the melody and the narrative would be hard to follow if we didn’t know the material so well. “Clara, Clara, Don’t Be Downhearted,” one of Heyward’s gospel-styled texts, achieves an entirely different and more secular feel from the prayer it usually is. Sung by Ms. João in a tight, pinched voice, it’s now more swinger than spiritual. At different points, a Fender Rhodes piano takes a solo, and Ms. João harmonizes wordlessly with the horns. Like most jazz-show albums, “A Different Porgy & Another Bess” picks and chooses from the full score, and reorders the songs for its own purposes.

“Three Penny Opera Live in Aarau” by the Renolds Jazz Orchestra, however, offers the complete Kurt Weill score from beginning to end, rendered instrumentally, with an all-star orchestra that includes such American headliners as the trumpeter Randy Brecker, saxophonist Bobby Watson, trombonist Buster Cooper and drummer Victor Lewis. Given the completeness of the project—a full two hours long—it is especially puzzling that the Weill estate decided to suppress the recording. The double album was taped live in Switzerland in 2000. But, according to a press release from the Shanti Records label, the estate decided after the concert was finally released in 2011 that it didn’t approve of the “rearrangements” (by pianist Christian Jacob) and demanded that the CDs be withdrawn from the market. In addition to following the show order, Mr. Jacob’s charts generally retain the tempos and moods of each piece—very effectively in the “The Jealous Duet,” where Polly Peachum and Lucy Brown are played instrumentally by a feuding trumpet and trombone, their animosity resolved by an alto saxophone that takes the ballad part of the melody. It’s impossible to understand the rationale of the composer’s estate—this is an inspired interpretation of a work by a composer who was a major jazz fan himself. Surely Weill would have wanted it to be heard.

“Fleet Street” is another stunner, the work of Mr. Vosbein, a composer and arranger who teaches composition at Washington and Lee University and is far from a household name. This full-length instrumental treatment of “Sweeney Todd,” Mr. Sondheim’s 1979 masterpiece, is not only a tribute to Mr. Sondheim, but also to bandleader Stan Kenton; the overall groove and tonal colors of “Fleet Street” owe much to Kenton’s classic 1962 jazz version of “West Side Story” (with lyrics also by Mr. Sondheim).

Like Kenton’s arranger Johnny Richards, Mr. Vosbein relies heavily on deeply voiced trombones to paint a dark, somber portrait—highly suited to a heavy melodrama about serial killing and cannibalism. But while “West Side Story” is a dance-oriented show with lots of songs in tempo, Mr. Vosbein has to look hard for lighter moments in the “Sweeney Todd” score, and he makes the most of them. “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” is almost a throwaway on stage, but it now becomes a major part of “Fleet Street,” as do the two versions of “Johanna” (reflecting the way it’s sung in Act 1, as a ballad, and Act 2, much more upbeat).

One can only hope that this is hardly the conclusion of the tradition: I’d love to hear the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra commission an interpretation of “The Book of Mormon” or the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra’s takes on “Evita” and “In the Heights.” The combination of jazz and musical theater proves that there’s more than one way to tell a story.

Die Plätze haben ausgereicht, und der Saal brodelt, als ungefähr jede der 14 Nummern bejubelt wird, und das mit bestem Grund, denn das mit 18 Musikern (davon nur zwei junge Damen) fast kammermusikalisch besetzte Orchester soundet mit seinem Durchschnittsalter von 18 Jahren (!) daher wie alte Jazzhasen, ist exakt vorbereitet, konzentriert, diszipliniert und dennoch losgelassen.

Richtig sympathisch

Nichts an diesem Orchester ist in die Jahre gekommen, auch nicht Professor Bernd Konrad, Leiter seit Gründung 1981, der diesen Geburtstag auch in seiner eigentlichen Heimatstadt Konstanz feiern wollte. Im Gegenteil: Die musikalischen Qualitäten der jungen Jazzer nehmen zu, da die „Jazz-Pädagogik“ diesen Musikstil in professionelle Höhen emporhebt. Und „da oben“ wird unter Bernd Konrads eher zurückhaltendem Dirigat musiziert. Dass Konrad die Stücke anmoderiert, aus der Jazzschule plaudert und seine Schüler namentlich vorstellt, macht die Sache richtig sympathisch und der Saal applaudiert ermunternd, als der Leiter meint, man würde künftig gerne eher alle fünf Jahre in Konstanz spielen als nur wie bisher einmal in jedem der drei Jahrzehnte.

„The New Song“ (Fritz Renold) gibt die Richtung vor: Kaum Standards, viel Neues, Gewagtes, höllisch Schwieriges, Herausforderndes, jazzsymphonisch Zündendes.

Und immer die treibende Kraft der Spannung von Bigband-Tutti und Solo-Chorus, wo sich die jungen Leute die musikalische Klinke in die Hand geben: Satte Saxofonsoli vom kleinen Einwurf bis zur ausgewachsenen Solo-Impro, atemberaubend virtuos mit Snaps und Glissandi („Channel One Suite“ von Bill Raddie); Posaunen- und Trompetenquartett in samtenem Wohlklang und brandheißem Ekstaseschrei und sanft-elegischem Trompeten-Trauersolo in Peter Herbolzheimers „Ballad for a friend“ mit schleppenden Blues-Klängen; ein Vibrafonsolo von enormer Schlagwucht und Treffsicherheit („Count Bubba“ von Gordon Goodwin mit E-Gitarren-Riff); ein Drumssolo überhitzter Ekstase („Channel One“); das Piano-Management vom Akkordspiel bis zum hervortretenden Solo (am Flügel der Konstanzer David Schuckart).

Als ein Vokalterzett von liebenswürdig und schmeichelnd bluesig über rauchig balladesk bis jazzröhrig geben sich Katharina Grebitz aus Kreuzlingen mit sonorer Tiefe und explosivem Stimmtemperament in „Don’t Know Why“ und dem wilden „I’m gonna life“; die Deutschamerikanerin Denise Taylor mit angenehmem Tremolo und feinem Pep im Bossanova „Chega de saudade“ und „Orange Colored Sky“: Philip Braun mit liedhaftem Bariton-Schmelz, aber auch explosivem Fortissimo in „Birds flying“, „Moondance“ und Roger Ciceros flippigem „Frauen regier’n die Welt“-Swing.

Da war im Jubiläumskonzert alles zu hören und zu fühlen, was „gehobenen“ Jazz ausmacht: Glänzende Spieltechnik, groovende Stimmung, satt abgehende Stücke, U-Musik auf E-Musik-Qualität poliert. Unverzichtbar, dieses Orchester, wie das Kultusministerium des Landes anmerkt!