Jackets XL (Mack Avenue)
Yellowjackets
Released November 2020
Grammy Nominee for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album 2022
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_noYS9qdwb2SqvpFjUCFP3PebtiXtYR9f4
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3OeeKfK9hNDe57rF9FVI7u?si=z_oOzVM2Rb6T5psFt-Lahw
About:
As a tight, longstanding jazz ensemble, Yellowjackets has explored a universe all its own of electro-acoustic soundscapes in its nearly four-decade history. Since the band’s eponymous 1981 debut album, Yellowjackets has consistently forged ahead with innovative and challenging artistic statements. For Jackets XL, its 25th album and fourth for Mack Avenue Music Group, the band continues to stretch and reinvent itself with an exciting, full-bodied collaboration with the superb WDR Big Band of Cologne, Germany. The project combines the shapeshifting, multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning quartet with the renowned big band, re-imagining well-known band originals with dynamic new arrangements that feature twists and turns, textures and colors, moving harmonies and bold solos.
“This band has never been one to rest on its laurels,” says tenor saxophonist/EWI player Bob Mintzer, a Yellowjacket since 1990 and the WDR Big Band principal conductor since 2016. “The Yellowjackets are very adept at reinventing. The four of us are the most adaptable musicians I’ve ever worked with. Any setting, any style, we know we can do it. As for the WDR, they’re one of the best large jazz ensembles in the world. I knew the two groups would make for a nice marriage.” The band also comprises founder, keyboardist Russell Ferrante, drummer Will Kennedy and electric bassist Dane Alderson in his third recording for the group.
Ferrante welcomed the project given that he had been involved in playing Mintzer’s arrangements in different settings over the years. “But this was going to be different,” he says. “Since we were already in the orbit of big bands, Bob suggested that we pick tunes that were fan favorites through the years and make them fresh to keep the listeners interested. Bob rearranged ‘Mile High’ [Four Corners, 1987], which we had stopped playing in recent years. Bob changed it up and took it to different places. Another is ‘Revelation’ [Shades, 1986], which we always played as an encore. Bob went to the basics, bringing back the gospel roots, and arranged it for how we sound today.”
“’Mile High’ was one of the songs from the 80s,” Mintzer adds. “It had a pop feel back then. But the new arrangement fits with the sound of the Yellowjackets today. It’s like brand new music. We just took the ensemble and put a big band on top.”
While Mintzer rearranged seven of the ten tunes (he says it’s almost like watching your children grow up), also in the mix were two arrangements by Vince Mendoza who had a long history with the WDR Big Band and today serves as its composer in residence. Both the lyrical gem “Even Song” with its rock charge [Run for Your Life, 1993] and the swing-with-gusto “Downtown” [Live Wires (Live at the Roxy), 1991] feature his arrangements. Ferrante wrote a new arrangement for his song “Coherence” from the band’s 2016 Cohearence album. “I wanted to give it a more orchestral feel beyond just the big band sound,” he says. “I wanted to include different instrumentation like muted trumpet, French horn, trombones. I had been inspired by Maria Schneider’s music. I bought a package from her website of her tune ’Hang Gliding.’ I studied the score, watched a video of her band performing it. As a result, I made ‘Coherence’ rounder, writing other lines and counter melodies.”
In addition to the oldies, two new Ferrante songs were added into the mix, including the upbeat “One Day,” a scamper featuring Mintzer on EWI. It was originally written for 2018’s studio album Raising Our Voice but didn’t make the final sequence. Then there’s “Tokyo Tale” that Mintzer comments on: “Russ wrote this in his systematic way. He composed it, developed it, wrote it down and sent me a small band arrangement done for his USC students.”
The challenge, Ferrante says, was relinquishing the total freedom of the quartet setting. “As a band you can change parts and make things different. But with the big band you have tight arrangements. There’s no freelancing. Even when you’re playing the notes that you know so well, the big band arrangements mean that you have to read the music and be really focused. Otherwise things can stick out.” With its pockets of halcyon, buoyance, mystery, tumult, groove and whimsy, Jackets XL plays out as a multifaceted documentation of how far the band has come. “It was like putting a new set of clothes on,” Mintzer says. “This represents how the Yellowjackets play now.”
Track Listing:
1. Downtown (Russell Ferrante) 06:30
2. Dewey (Russell Ferrante / Jimmy Haslip) 07:28
3. Mile High (Russell Ferrante / Bill Gable / Jimmy Haslip / William Kennedy / Marc Russo) 05:11
4. The Red Sea (Bob Mintzer) 07:43
5. Even Song (Russell Ferrante / Jimmy Haslip / William Kennedy) 08:23
6. One Day (Robert Mintzer) 06:32
7. Tokyo Tale (Russell Ferrante) 07:43
8. Imperial Strut (Russell Ferrante) 05:53
9. Coherence (Russell Ferrante) 07:35
10. Revelation (Russell Ferrante / Lorraine Perry) 06:21
Personnel:
Russell Ferrante: piano, synths
Will Kennedy: drums, synths
Dane Alderson: electric bass
Bob Mintzer: saxophones, bass clarinet, EWI, flute
WDR Big Band Cologne:
Paul Shigihara: guitar
Wim Both, Rob Bruynen, Andy Haderer, Ruud Breuls: trumpets
Ludwig Nuss, Raphael Klemm, Andy Hunter, Mattis Cederberg: trombones Johan Hörlen, Kristina Brodersen, Olivier Peters, Paul Heller, Jens Neufang: saxes, woodwinds
Recorded at Studio 4 Des WDR Köln
Producers: Bob Mintzer, Joachim Becker, Christian Schmitt
Recorded and Mixed by Walter Platte
Assistant Engineer: Jannis Lehnert
Mastered by Marko Schneider
Photography: Roberto Cifarelli
Art Direction: Raj Naik
Review:
The Yellowjackets are an anomaly in contemporary jazz. They actually began their career playing accessible fusion, then evolved toward pop-friendly smooth jazz. Over the decades, lineup changes engendered a widening musical philosophy that embraced post-bop, global polyrhythms, and expansive arrangements. They’ve become one of the most innovative electro-acoustic jazz ensembles. Keyboardist/composer Russell Ferrante, the group’s founder, was joined by drummer Will Kennedy in 1987 and saxophonist/EWI player/arranger/composer Bob Mintzer in 1990. Bassist Dane Alderson made his debut on 2016’s Cohearance. Jackets XL is a collection of imaginatively rearranged crowd and catalog favorites. Mintzer enlisted the famed WDR Big Band from Koln, Germany as collaborators (he has been their principal conductor since 2016). Seven of the ten tunes here, creating a seamless interaction between ensembles.
The material is drawn mainly from the ’80s and ’90s, though there are a couple of 21st century selections included. “Downtown,” from 1988’s Politics, was originally recorded as a fusion jam drenched in Weather Report’s influence. This version, arranged by Vince Mendoza, has a faster tempo with knotty hard bop cadences, brighter harmonic colors from the woodwinds and reeds, and skittering double-timed snare, with popping brass, and a roiling bass solo. Ferrante’s “Dewey” was recorded as a tribute to Miles Davis in 1992. A muted trumpet guided the lyric in a lithe, silky funk tune comprised of vamps. This version is darker and deeper, as the brass section claims the lone trumpet’s role; it’s appended by lush keyboard vamps and drop-beat snare. Mintzer’s EWI offers a snaky, welcoming solo atop expansive brass and reed harmonics, syncopated rhythms, and gritty funk keyboards. “Mile High,” from 1987’s Four Corners, was a pop tune that borrowed from the arrangements and production used on Tears for Fears’ multi-platinum “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” Here, the original tune’s vamp remains, but everything else has been altered. Mintzer’s tenor-articulated melody is adorned by piano, woody rim shots, and layered brass and reeds, all guided by a pulsing, hypnotic bassline. The new version of 1993’s “Even Song” by Mintzer weds slippery R&B to horn arrangements reminiscent of Tower of Power. “One Day,” an unreleased jam from 2018, offers the most creative use of Mintzer’s EWI in a post-bop setting, and is righteously juxtaposed with Ferrante’s groove-oriented electric piano playing. In 1981, “Imperial Strut” was a guitar-based funky fusion number; here it’s been liberated from Ferrante’s wedding stride piano to post-bop, with fingerpopping horn cadences, twisting synth and EWI interludes, and a rolling funk bassline. Closer “Revelation” swings with gospel horns and pumping acoustic piano. The influence of the Jazz Crusaders’ early arrangement style on Mintzer’s gloriously kinetic chart cannot be overstated. Jackets XL offers not only a seamless, sophisticated, kaleidoscopic jazz collaboration, and it also reveals Yellowjackets’ musical evolution through taste, variety, imagination, and genuine surprise. They welcome listeners into their party as participants, not merely as observers. Enjoy.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)
