by Susan Kepecs
Today’s incarnation of Birdland, the famous midtown Manhattan
jazz club, is not the place Jack Kerouac famously called a bop joint – just
like today’s jazz bears only occasional resemblance to the bop traditions of
the late ‘40s through mid-‘60s, the original nightspot’s heyday. But Birdland, reborn in a new midtown
location in the ‘90s, has had a hand in the current jazz resurgence – and like
the club, the Birdland Big Band, which has played there every Friday night
since 2006, serves up a new take on an old form. The brassy, full-throttle music machine is
taking its act on the road this month, and making a stop at Overture’s Capitol
Theater this coming Tuesday, Oct. 23.
The Birdland Big
Band is the brainchild of drummer Tommy Igoe, who toured with Blood, Sweat and
Tears and became the principal drummer and conductor for the original Broadway
production of Lion King. But Igoe was
born to big band jazz – his father, the late drummer Sonny Igoe, played with Woody Herman and Benny Goodman. I had a chance to ask Igoe (Tommy, that is)
about his own 15-piece orchestra (for the lineup, go to http://www.tommyigoe.com/bands/birdland-big-band/)
last week.
Cultural Oyster: What made you decide to
start a big band, in these times when there are so few large jazz ensembles working?
Igoe: The big band approach is
in my background – when I was 18 I went on the road with the Glenn Miller
Orchestra. A slot opened up at Birdland and I asked them to give me a shot, to build
something there that stood out – and they gave me the chance. For a while I did Lion King at the same time
– the band was only one show a week, and it didn’t conflict.
CulturalOyster: I read that you recently
moved to the Bay Area, where you’re now doing a much buzzed-about Monday night
gig.
Igoe: I go back and forth, and
I have two bands – but this tour is about THE Birdland band, the exact same
band that plays in Manhattan. It’s grown
beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, especially mine. When we started there was nobody in the
club. Half a year out the club was about
half full and within a year you couldn’t get in. We’ve been the most popular weekly jazz event
in New York for a couple of years now.
CulturalOyster: Your sound is so
different from the other big jazz bands working today – in some ways it’s
closer to the big Latin bands like Machito’s, or Tito Puente’s, than to, say,
the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra.
Igoe: We’re not trying to be a
jazz band or a Latin band. We’re trying
to be a music event. Being a jazz band
is too narrow a scope, at least for me.
I want to play music from every corner of the world in one show. If you bring someone who loves music, even if
they’d never heard jazz or a large ensemble, they’d love the experience. The problem is that people try to compare us
with what else is out there, or they try to tie us to the big band legacy – so
many bands look backwards and play the same old standards over and over. We try our best to look forward while
acknowledging where we came from. We
want to make our mark in the twenty-first century. Music from everywhere – that’s our mission
statement.
CulturalOyster: Is that because the
world we live in is so globally interconnected?
Igoe: It’s that, but it’s also
because I’m a drummer. I like lots of
rhythmic excitement, and I think the audience does too. People are hearing much
more authentic music from around the world than ever before. The days of playing a full night of swing and
calling it satisfactory for a twenty-first century audience are over. Today’s audience comes in with a much more
varied expectation.
CulturalOyster: What makes you decide to
add a tune to your repertory?
Igoe: Because I’m not a
composer, I’m not locked into any dogma.
I get to pick and choose anything I want, from anywhere. There are tunes I’ve always wanted to play
that have never been done by a large ensemble, or haven’t been done justice
to. Our album [Eleven, the band’s 2012
release on CD Baby, up for four Grammys next year] is a perfect example of our
artistic schizophrenia – it’s got music from Argentina, the Caribbean, a tune
by the hot [Dominican-born] composer Michel Camilo, a Herbie Hancock piece – it’s
literally all over the map, which is exactly the way we like it. We do pay tribute to where we came from –
like with Bobby Timmons’ “Moanin’” [a CulturalOyster favorite, recorded in 1958
by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers].
CulturalOyster: Is there a new album in
the works?
Igoe: There’s always a new
album in the works. Once the Grammys are
over we’ll go right back into the studio and make a new one.
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