Mack Avenue Music Group Congratulates Christian McBride and Yellowjackets on GRAMMY Award Nominations

Mack Avenue Music Group Congratulates

Christian McBride and Yellowjackets on

64th Annual GRAMMY® Award Nominations

Nominated for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album:

Christian McBride Big Band's For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver

and Yellowjackets + WDR Big Band's Jackets XL

Christian McBride Big Band's For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver

In September 1966, organist Jimmy Smith and guitarist Wes Montgomery got together at Rudy Van Gelder’s famed studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Over the course of three days, the two jazz icons recorded the material for two now-classic albums: The Dynamic Duo (1966) and Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes (1968), backed by a big band featuring arrangements by the great Oliver Nelson.

That pair of electrifying outings would prove seminal for another dynamic duo over the ensuing decades: bass great Christian McBride and master organist Joey DeFrancesco would wear out the grooves on their copies of the Smith/Montgomery summit meetings during their high school days, and both would remain touchstones throughout a friendship and collaboration that has lasted nearly 40 years. Now, the pair pay tribute with For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver, the third release by the GRAMMY® Award-winning Christian McBride Big Band.

For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver echoes the format of the original Smith/Montgomery summit meetings, with a balance of big band and quartet tracks. To complete the core band, McBride called on another longtime friend and collaborator, Mark Whitfield, to play the Montgomery role, while regular CMBB drummer Quincy Phillips anchors the ensemble.

The 17-piece Christian McBride Big Band has become one of the most scintillating large ensembles on the modern jazz scene since its 2011 Mack Avenue Music Group debut, The Good Feeling. Both that album and its successor, 2017’s Bringin’ It, garnered GRAMMY® Awards in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble category. The stellar band has remained remarkably consistent throughout that history, a testament to the camaraderie and joyous vibe of McBride’s intensely swinging ensemble.

The CMBB features a host of elite musicians mixing renowned veterans with rising stars, most of them bandleaders in their own right: trumpeters Frank Greene, Freddie Hendrix, Brandon Lee, Nabate Isles and Anthony Hervey; trombonists Michael Dease, Steve Davis, James Burton and Douglas Purviance; and saxophonists Steve Wilson, Todd Bashore, Ron Blake, Dan Pratt and Carl Maraghi.

Christian McBride Big Band · For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver

Mack Avenue Records · Release Date: September 25, 2020

Yellowjackets + WDR Big Band's Jackets XL

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 and is available everywhere today.

“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.

The challenge in recording with a big band, 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, buoyancy, 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.”

Yellowjackets + WDR Big Band · Jackets XL

Mack Avenue Records · Release Date: November 6, 2020

Yellowjackets - Raising Our Voice (MACK AVENUE RECORDS September 14, 2018)

GRAMMY® Award-winning Yellowjackets

Return with New Album & Collaboration

with Vocalist Luciana Souza

Raising Our Voice

Available September 14 on Mack Avenue Records

While the Los Angeles-based Yellowjackets have been a creative force on the jazz scene since 1981 when they recorded their eponymous debut, their fourth Mack Avenue Records album, Raising Our Voice, once again ups the ante with bold new strides by inviting vocalist extraordinaire Luciana Souza to collaborate with the group for seven of its thirteen tunes as well as subtly taking a resistant stand against the status quo of the cultural and political undercurrent of our times.

The Yellowjackets have consistently forged ahead in their evolving artistic statements. The band has recorded close to 30 albums, been nominated for 17 GRAMMY® Awards, and has adventurously amplified the eclectic, electro-acoustic soundscape, creating a unique jazz sound since its fusion beginnings.

“The band keeps moving forward,” says saxophonist Bob Mintzer who joined the group in 1990. “It’s one of the few partnership bands in the last four decades. It’s democratic, laissez-faire and accommodating to everyone in the band to contribute. We’re constantly reinventing ourselves as a reflection of what’s happening in the world.”

The Jackets are comprised of pianist/keyboardist/co-founder Russell Ferrante, bassist Dane Alderson in his second recording with the group and drummer Will Kennedy, who joined the band in 1987 and then in 2000 took a 10-year hiatus before returning to the drum chair. As a relative outsider, Souza contributes wordless vocals as well as songs sung in Portuguese and English. She was quickly won over by the band.

“They’re killers,” she says. “They’re so serious yet also so much fun. We laughed a lot during the sessions. Their curiosity is alive, and their joy is to make great music. I was originally going to just do three songs, but it ended up that I’m on over half the record.”

The collection features three old Yellowjackets tunes arranged for a fresh ride with Souza’s contributions, two co-writes with Ferrante and Souza, three new originals each for Ferrante and Mintzer, and Alderson’s first original piece for the band along with two short electronics interludes.

Unlike the last album, 2016’s Cohearence, where the music was toured before the studio recordings, Raising Our Voice grew organically from the collaborative nature of the sessions. “There was a gap between the last album and this one,” says Ferrante. “We hadn’t been playing a lot live, so most of these tunes came alive in the studio and were sparked by the electricity and chemistry with Luciana.”

Kennedy adds, “This is the album where we were the least prepared for the writing and rehearsals. It was a bit of a cram. But that gave it an excitement. And then Luciana, who came in at the last moment, was a great discovery for bringing her talents as a gift to the band.”

The Ferrante and Souza collaboration began years earlier when talking about working together. “As they were thinking of the next album, Russ came to the house and we went into my studio and we talked,” explains Souza. “He played some music and I sang along, and it was very sweet and unguarded.”

“We looked through some music that had a Brazilian feel to it,” Ferrante says. “We chose songs that lyrically fit her musicality.”

Raising Our Voice leads off with the vibrant reworking of the grooved “Man Facing North” (originally recorded on the Jackets’ 1993 album Like a River). Ferrante on piano and Mintzer on tenor sax take swinging breaks while Souza follows Alderson’s bass lines and sings counterpoint to the tenor with sweet, lilting wordless vocals that lift the song with storytelling.

Other Souza conversation-like contributions include the gorgeous ballad “Quiet” (she wrote the first half with Portuguese and English lyrics and Ferrante wrote the second half), the reworking of the Brazilian-tinged “Timeline” (a Ferrante composition from the Jackets’ 2011 album of the same name with Souza taking the lead with wordless vocals and conversing with Mintzer) and another re-orchestrated band number, “Solitude” from Like a River, written by Ferrante, with new Portuguese lyrics by the singer who playfully engages in a fetching call-and-response with both Alderson and Mintzer.

Souza also heartens Ferrante’s sprightly “Everyone Else Is Taken” and spices his mysterious “In Search Of” which was inspired from a quote by Thomas Merton: “There is no one so wrong as the one who knows all the answers.”

Ferrante contributes the moving, introspective tune “Mutuality,” based on the Martin Luther King Jr. speech, “Network of Mutuality.” In the midst of Souza’s musing support, the harmony goes through every key (minor and major). “This is a good example of making a statement but on a subtle side,” he says. “It really connects to the title of the album, which has a political slant. It’s about waking up to see what’s going on. A lot of musicians get in their own bubbles of charts and harmony, but don’t connect to the world we live in. We need to be less preoccupied and see the urgency of making music as a resistance.”

Mintzer’s three new songs include the deep-grooved “Ecuador” (his tenor saxophone takes the tasty role of a rhythmic instrument) and the upbeat “Strange Times.” He also contributes the most unusual Yellowjackets tune, “Swinging With It,” a pure swinger complete with walking bass lines. “Straight-ahead music is a big part of my legacy,” he says.

A key component to Raising Our Voice is the band’s stellar rhythm section of Kennedy and Alderson. “We provide a good foundation for our other band mates to stand on” says Kennedy. “Inspired by music from around the world, we all listen, grow, and incorporate those influences in our sound.”

“They gave me the freedom to explore,” says Alderson, the Perth, West Australia native who now lives in Virginia. “I’m a huge fan of the RC-300 Loop Station by Boss combined with the Roland VB99 midi unit, which I used on the two short pieces, ‘Emerge’ and ‘Divert.’”

Alderson’s first full composition for the Jackets is the upbeat “Brotherly,” which buoys with his tumbling bass lines. “It was just a bag of ideas at first,” he says. “But then I corresponded with Will and we talked about grooves. We’re both big fans of the UK band Brotherly, so we were influenced by it when we put this tune together.”

“It’s a different and unusual snapshot of where the Yellowjackets are today,” says Kennedy. “We’re getting older, but we’re still inspired and listening.”

Mintzer sees a bright future for the Yellowjackets. “What attracts me about the group is how stylistically broad we are,” he says. “There are no barriers. We’re free to try new things without making the music overly complex. I always say this is the band you always wanted to be in. We’ll see where we go next.”

YELLOWJACKETS - COHERENCE (2016)

Label: Mack Avenue

Source: Axs - Carol Banks Weber 

 Coherence plays a huge role in the Yellowjackets’ third Mack Avenue album — the latest in a string of hit-makers in a 35-year period. In a play on the word but not the meaning, the modern jazz-R&B quartet came out of the studio after almost two days with 10 originally composed and arranged compositions for the fusion set.

Cohearence showcases the musicians as composers and as a cohesive collective of lyrical instrumentalists fond of improvising on the spot, adding to an already solid, harmonious foundation on the written charts. The album will come out on April 22.

Original founder Russell Ferrante (keys) is sustained by longtime Yellowjackets recruits Bob Mintzer (reeds) and Will Kennedy (drums), along with hot newcomer Dane Alderson, an Australian electric bassist. Ferrante, Kennedy, and Mintzer contributed nine of the 10 songs for the new album, with one special cover of a folk song,” Shenandoah,” from the final episode of HBO’s “The Newsroom.” All of the musicians who currently make up the Yellowjackets weighed in on the final product in progress.

The album title refers to the band’s constant, its strength in numbers. “It means we're all connected to what we're doing as a band,” Ferrante explained in a March 4 DL Media release. “We're making harmonious statements.” Those statements rely on an inherent synergy that balances harmony, feel, chops, and a sweet spot for the melodic, rhythmic beat.

The Yellowjackets first branded their melodic, rhythmic, electric fusion with guitarist Robben Ford in a time 35 years ago when musicians were going acoustic jazz. Needless to say, their jazz counterparts questioned the fusion funk slide as a step back.

Thirty-five years later, who’s laughing now? The Yellowjackets are still going strong, continuing to find newer fusions in a sound that just keeps growing. The band took longer than normal to workshop and vet the songs from this upcoming release. They performed the songs live last year for five months while on the road before going into the studio to record.

“We spent a lot more time with the music than we usually do before we record. We rehearsed the songs by playing them live, so that when we went into the studio we weren't just playing our first impressions of the music. Then, we recorded totally live in less than two days,” Ferrante elaborated. The keyboardist flexes his composing acumen, writing five of the 10 songs on the album.

“We write music that reflects what fascinates us; music that's worth exploring,” Ferrante said. “I compose to work though ideas and workshop a piece, bring it into the laboratory to work on the compositional elements and make the piece a vehicle for improvisation.”

In the two advanced preview tracks sent to media, it’s very clear the Yellowjackets still have their accessible R&B fusion vibe – a modern riff from the revered, upstanding jazz fusion ensemble of the 1970s Weather Report. The Yellowjackets’ vibe easily crosses over into the mainstream market, making them one of the most imitated fusion bands around.

The opening track, Ferrante’s “Golden State,” references the band’s jazz-funk heyday of the 1980s. It’s rhythmically sound, one step away from a dance beat, but grounded in jazz by Mintzer’s sax. Ferrante wrote about the relentless, neverending rush hour of Interstate 5’s North-South Freeway up and down California — in left-hand piano triplet rhythm and riffs connecting harmoniously with sax. “I wanted to capture the energy and activity of the I-5,” Ferrante explained.

Another patented Yellowjackets number is “Eddie’s In The House,” a vibrant R&B, funked-up ode to the late jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris, who influenced Ferrante greatly. Harris and pianist Les McCann’s 1969 soul-jazz album Swiss Movement became a bridge from R&B to jazz for the prolific composer.

“There's a lot of gratitude,” Ferrante said about the Yellowjackets’ 35 years making jazz-funk fusion. “It's never been a given to us that we'd continue to be able to have the opportunity to write and record for that length of time. But you couldn't have that in place unless you had a band of generous, giving musicians, none of whom have ever been ego'ed out.”

1  Golden State   
2  Guarded Optimism   
3  Anticipation   
4  Inevitable Outcome   
5  Trane Changing   
6  Eddie's in the House
7  Fran's Scene   
8  Child's Play   
9  Shenandoah   
10 Cohearance

Russell Ferrante (keys)
Bob Mintzer (reeds)
Will Kennedy (drums)
Dane Alderson (electric bass)

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