On Sunday 27 October I saw the Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band at Cafe Oto. This 17 piece ensemble from Japan played the gamut of modern big band music, starting off with the stomping rhythm of Stone Stone Stone (I believe). One of the glories of this orchestra is that it functions as separate bands within the band, the sectional conductors calling out changes for their own ensembles. This makes for great excitement and dynamism, a feeling that each moment, each break is special. During the evening they covered nearly every known genre from French Romanticism to Northern Soul, I heard the systems music of Steve Reich for a few bars, and plenty of Sun Ra, spinning off into atonal galaxies. You never knew what was coming next, yet it was all held together, with the great joy and happiness evident within this big band.
It took me some time to appreciate big bands, they seemed too amorphous and maybe old fashioned, belonging to a previous generation. I was brought up on The Beatles, you could hear what everyone was doing, and hear exactly how they all worked in unison and why every component was vital. They had the power of amplification on their side to make even four people sound like an orchestra. However before electrification and the public address system took over, all bands had to be large, simply to make enough noise to fill the hall. So back in the 30s big bands ruled the roost and they played acoustically. That now seems admirable to me, I want to hear the musician, not the processing. So what is a big band? Basically it should contain at least 10 performers and a brass section, that is the limit of my definition. It is a very open category, the keynote being dynamic excitement.
Probably the first big band sound I loved would be the fabulous arrangements by Nelson Riddle for Frank Sinatra, without even thinking they were a big band. I got into a great deal of trouble at Sounds (a rock music weekly) for making Songs for Swinging’ Lovers (1956) the No. 3 in my Top 10 albums of all time, which meant it would have appeared in their Top 100 – I had to remove it! While that album may have been too jolly for Sounds, I wonder if my first truly memorable gig by a live big band, Sun Ra at The Venue in 1983, would have been acceptable with the album Jazz in Silhouette (1959)? I was to see the Sun Ra Arkestra at Cafe Oto many more times from 2009 to 2014, cementing my love of this music. In fact thinking back, I had bought Escalator over the Hill by Carla Bley in 1972 while still at school, yet I did not even think of this as jazz or big band at the time, more like experimental rock featuring Jack Bruce. I guess what made these records acceptable was the pulsing and dynamic rhythm section, after all big band music was originally made for dancers.
In my pantheon of great big bands there many are I have discovered over the years. You can’t go wrong with anything by Duke Ellington, and my first choice of his would be Ellington Uptown (1952) featuring A Tone Parallel to Harlem (Harlem Suite). Another great modernist composer is Stan Kenton, you can hardly believe this music was made back in the early 50s, and albums such as Innovations in Modern Music (1950) feature a 37 piece orchestra with a 14 piece string section. Following up on some of Kenton’s inventiveness there is Don Ellis who brought a swaggering 60s feel to big band music, and if that’s a bit much try Gil Evans, famous for his work with Miles Davis. A contemporary acolyte of Gil Evans, who has also worked with David Bowie, is Maria Schneider with several Grammy Awards to her name – check out Data Lords (2020).
Closer to home there is the fabulous Spanner Big Band, playing modern arrangements of 50s classics from Mingus, Ellington and Basie as well as a few reorchestrated pop tunes. They are led by the dynamic Dan Spanner and regularly play at the Three Compasses in Hornsey for free. Also recommended are Orquesta Esterlar, a community-based Cuban big band, playing monthly at The Post Bar in Tottenham, and that’s free as well. So do go along…it’s always a privilege to see a crazy big band and financially these days they are performing for the love of it. You can tell from the smiles, on your face and theirs.
