feature photo: Matt Hurley
As we’ve noticed from time to time, large jazz ensembles aren’t required to follow a certain template and the ones that don’t tend to be the ones you should be paying the most attention to. Take, for instance, the Wing Walker Orchestra.
Though around for about six years, the WWO has finally put their performances to wax under the supervision of Grammy-nominated producer Alan Ferber and are set to release their debut album Hazel. The video premiering above heralds its arrival with a trailer that shows the band in action within the studio making this record.
Every big band has a linchpin, and The Wing Walker Orchestra’s is Drew Williams, its bass clarinetist and primary composer. He’s currently thirty years old and I mention his age because it’s likely his youthfulness that leads him to be more open to more contemporary musical currents and inject those into his music. The multi-reedist played rock in high school, studied classical music in college and graduate studies in jazz composition. That’s probably why the WWO music has electronica touches a la Radiohead and covers a tUnE-yArDs song (“Look Around”), while the through-composed suite has a classically cinematic flair to it.
This footage captures the performance of a segment of that seven-part “Hazel” suite which makes up the bulk of the album. Here you see a collection of eleven young musicians who are beginning to impact the East Cost jazz scene at large, including Williams, saxophonists Brad Mulholland and Eric Trudel, trumpeters Danny Gouker and John Blevins, trombonists Karl Lyden and Nick Grinder, electric guitarist Jeff McLaughlin, pianist Marta Sánchez, bassist Adam Hopkins and drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell.
Hazel is coming from eyes&ears Records on February 15, 2019.
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