Orchestra Jazz Siciliana: Plays The Music Of Carla Bley - LP 180g Vinyl

In response to "an offer they couldn't refuse", the Watt Works family agreed to release this album of Carla Bley's music recorded by the Orchestra Jazz Siciliana, a cigar-chewing, black-hatted, 17-piece big band, who pack more than a few loaded horn cases between them. The orchestra is augmented by Bley band regulars Steve Swallow and Gary Valente, in equally minacious mood, on these live sessions recorded in Palermo in the spring of 1989.

The Sicilian Orchestra tackles compositions previously heard on the Carla Bley albums Musique Mecanique, I Hate To Sing, Dinner Music, Duets, Live! and Heavy Heart, and though Bley herself is conducting, the orchestra's approach transforms the material or, to put it another way, returns it to the jazz tradition. Traditions die hard in Sicily, and this orchestra swings powerfully in the grand manner, like a Mediterranean Basie unit, almost, but for Carla's irrepressible sense of satire and piquant chord changes.

Bley's tunes, hardy perennials, thrive in this climate. Orchestra Jazz Siciliana Plays The Music Of Carla Bley is a valuable addition to the Bley canon for the new light it throws on the pieces. "Baby Baby", for example, previously heard only in skeletal form on the Bley/Swallow Duets album, turns out to be a compelling blowing vehicle, with Valente and trumpeter Massimo Greco raging over its loping, Latinate rhythm. Interesting, too, to have a big band version of "Dreams So Real" after Gary Burton's two tender passes at it on Dreams So Real and Picture This and the (10-piece) Bley Band's more matter-of-fact reading on Dinner Music.

The Sicilian musicians don't appear daunted by previous interpretations, and guitarist Pino Greco studiously avoids sounding like Pat Metheny, Mick Goodrick, Eric Gale, or Cornell Dupree – no small achievement – finding something of his own to say in biting, blues-drenched phrasings. Though Gary Valente's blasting trombone takes the lion's share of the solos here (he's a proven and very authoritative exponent of Bley's music), the Sicilian soloists also make a strong impression. Alessandro Palacino's snake-charming soprano sax on "Egyptian" (a tune which receives its premier recording here), Stefano D'Anna's elegant tenor on "440", Orazio Maugeri's stinging alto on "Blunt Object"...these are but a few of the highlights of the hard-driving music of the Orchestra Jazz Siciliana, reworking the compositions of Carla