It's About Time - The Chris McDonald Jazz Orchestra
McDonald’s compositions are wonderfully structured and infectiously melodic, giving the players some substantial musical territory to explore...
It’s About Time
Artist: The Chris McDonald Jazz Orchestra
Label: Constant Dreamer Records
10 tracks / 51:14
From Count Basie to Chicago and beyond, the big-band sound has permeated popular music. A good horn arrangement lends a sense of funk, a blast of power, a touch of class – and Chris McDonald has been one of the great composer/arrangers of big band music for decades. It’s About Time is a project McDonald has wanted to create for many years – a collection of eight originals and two covers, performed by a collection of some of Nashville’s best players as well as some special guest artists known collectively as The Chris McDonald Jazz Orchestra. Co-produced by McDonald and Dan Rudin, the album is a sonic delight, vibrant and full, giving proper aural space to soloists and fully textured beds of sound to the ensemble. Bass lines wind distinctively through the underbelly of the tunes and the incredible drummers explode brilliantly with every fill and pattern (It’s About Time is a double reference to McDonald’s desire to complete this album and his appreciation of great drummers).
McDonald’s arrangements of “Roundabout” and “You Can Have Me Anytime” manage to transform the songs into jazz showcases. The pure joy of hearing great musicians playing these stellar arrangements of songs we’re already familiar with is worth the price of admission. Thankfully, McDonald’s original compositions are wonderfully structured and infectiously melodic, giving the players some substantial musical territory to explore.
The project opens with the Yes classic (“Roundabout”) and it’s an absolute barn-burner, transforming the song into a big-band explosion, covering every riff that you're waiting to hear and then-some. Keith Carlock’s drums are explosive, Mark Douthit’s sax wails, and guitarist Tom Hemby’s solo manages to go everywhere it possibly can. McDonald sets himself up for a difficult task having to live up to the energy of the opener but his original material succeeds, as the following track, a rocking shuffle called “Stranger Danger” demonstrates. The succeeding songs feature Latin influence (“Bondade Mora Aqui” and “Corean Fantasy”), moody ballads (“If the Things We Said Were True”), cool, Basie-inspired night club vibes (“Just Take My Hand”) and jazz-rock influences that would be at home with the likes of Steely Dan (the epic, powerful “A Song is but a Dream”). The second of the pair of cover tunes is Boz Scaggs’ “You Can Have Me Anytime,” with a lovely melancholy mood enhanced by Bob McChesney’s beautiful trombone solo.
A glance at my notes calls out the flute solo, bass lines, and hot horn parts on “Corean Fantasy,” the spectacular percussion on “Bondade Mora Aqui,” the guitar solo in “A Song is Nothing But a Dream”… There are so many stand-out performances on this project that it would be fruitless to try to mention them all since I’d end up including virtually every solo if I was being accurate. What can you say about players like Carlock and Dennis Chambers (drums), Jeff Coffin (sax and Flute), Mark Douthit (tenor sax), Roy Agee, Roger Bissell, James Pankow and Bob McChesney (trombone), Gary Lunn and Craig Nelson (bass), Pat Coil (piano and Hammond), Tom Hemby and Pat Bergeson (guitar) …and that’s just a handful!
You might basically be a rock n’ roller like I am, but trust me – there’s nothing like a hot horn section coming through the speakers. BS&T, Chicago, Edgar Winter’s White Trash, Earth, Wind & Fire, Seawind… the list could go on and on. None of these would be called ‘big band’ groups but they all owe to the big band era on some level. It’s About Time does contemporary Big Band Jazz just about as well as it can be done. You should check it out. And if you don’t yet have any big band jazz in your collection, well …isn’t it about time?
- Bert Saraco
4 1/2 tocks
You can see concert photography (including pictures of Ed Palermo’s Big Band) by Bert Saraco at this link: www.facebook.com/express.image
