Jazz (and related styles) Recordings

Here are a bunch of Jazz projects I’ve done over the years encompassing small group, big band, latin jazz and everything in between.

This was a really fun recording. The arrangement is by my friend Bob Elkjer and is for expanded jazz rhythm section, with harp replacing the piano. Featured on Steel Drum is the amazing Othello Mollineaux.  
Personnel: Marc Wolfley, drums; Mike Sharfe, fretless bass; Michelle Gwynne, harp; Charlie Schweitzer, percussion 

Here's a big band arrangement of a famous Garaj Mahal tune. During one of my last years teaching at CCM we had a bunch of Garaj Mahal tunes (great group!) written up for big band and Fareed from Garaj came in to guest on them. Here's one of my favorites from that project! 

Pat Metheny’s The Heat of the Day was one of the most challenging big band recordings I’ve ever done, not because of the nature of the ensemble but because the music is so complex and diverse: a big band with a complicated hand clap arrangement and a couple layers of virtual instruments to cover the parts that Pat Metheny would have played. This really tested both my recording/mixing skills and my music production chops. This was the final major work of gifted writer/arranger/orchestrator Joe Price. Many thanks to Dom Marino for assisting with the overdubs and orchestration.

Here are two cuts from Steve’s Out Loud CD which has turned out to be a strong international seller for him amongst the guitar-freak crowd all over the planet. When I would see Steve on gigs (Aja, Savoy Truffle) we would always catch up on the new countries he’s added: “Hey Steve! Anything new?”  “Romania this week!!!” Steve is a great guitarist and this recording landed him a spot in the Guitar Player magazine top 10 Showcase out in San Francisco in 2009.

This was one of my favorite small group recordings of all time! Local ‘supergroup’ Crackpot Theory came in and cut ten absolutely first rate modern jazz cuts and we had a great time doing it! The results speak for themselves.

Here's a really well done jazz/swing treatment of the Nutcracker by the master, Duke Ellington. For some reason I had never heard of the existence of this piece until they decided to record it at school but it's really well done by the band and I really got in there and gave it the full mix treatment. So glad to have had a hand in this one.

This recording was done as a part of the King Records Tribute album put out in 2002 by the Inclusion Network. It featured Cincinnati bands doing classic King Records songs but in a new way. This was Pat’s arrangement of Cold Sweat, featuring the enigmatic Bill Wood on lead vocals.

This is a great Mike Patterson arrangement of the Charlie Parker standard done up for standard big band instrumentation (4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 5 saxes, piano, bass, drums, guitar). There are some expanded woodwind parts on here too. I’ve always found big band recording to be very challenging due to the sheer size of the band and so many players involved (18 sets of headphones, trying to get isolation amongst the instruments without destroying sightlines; takes about 4 hours to set up for this) all coupled with the fact that the band performs all live to 24-tracks.