A true Band on the Wall favourite, the jazz ensemble Yellowjackets return to our stage with a fresh new LP, 'Parallel Motion'.
As a tight, longstanding jazz ensemble, Yellowjackets has explored a universe all its own of electroacoustic 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.
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 hadbeen 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.
A standing show.
Ages 10+ (Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult)
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