Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra: Soft Lights and Hot Music - Live at the Village Vanguard

Soft Lights and Hot Music MEL LEWIS liner notes

To have kept a big band alive for more than 22 years is a monumental achievement in and of itself. To have kept it not only alive but fresh and creative and ever-surprising is a near miracle. This marvelous recording proves that Mel Lewis has indeed wrought wonders. "I didn't have the nerve to say it," the man who's rightly been called the best of all big-band drummers told me, "but during our European tour [in the summer of 1988] several promoters we'd worked with before came up and declared, 'This is the best band you've been associated with -- from the beginning.' I'd felt it, but now I know it." After hearing this music, you'll know it too. This band is a team with a sound and spirit that are its own, capable of brilliant execution (some of the charts they cut here are tough), but also (and this is essential to a jazz orchestra) with a looseness and impetuousness that infuse the music with swing and life. The bottom line, of course, is the drummer-leader-in the words of Stanley Crouch (once a drummer himself). "a wonder of precision and passion." But another clue is that the lead players in the horn sections (Earl Gardner, trumpet; John Mosca, trombone; Dick Oatts, alto saxophone) are long-term occupants of their key chairs, as are most of their section mates. Stability of personnel has been a characteristic of all great jazz bands, and it breeds consistency, an all-important ingredient.