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MP3 Bob Erlendson - All About Jazz, Vol. 2
7 MP3 Songs in this album (47:02) !
Related styles: Jazz: Big Band, Jazz: Bebop, Instrumental
People who are interested in Bill Evans Boss Brass Herbie Hancock should consider this download.
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A Jazzman’s passions
At 80, Bob Erlendson finds the perfect octet
Published March 31, 2011 by Dennis Slater in Music Previews
Canadian jazz ledgend and Calgary resident Bob Erlendson has found his dream octet. The real winner? Us.
Listen up, jazz fans: Friday is a watershed for one of Canada’s most important jazz pianists — one who just happens to live in Calgary. Bob Erlendson is celebrating the release of volume two of his All About Jazz CD series, and if that wasn’t enough, he’ll be recording the gig for volume three of the series, backed by the who’s-who in Calgary jazz.
Now 80, with an impressive five decades as a composer, performer and teacher, Erlendson is still a dynamic showman. What drives him? Erlendson says it’s the same thing that motivated him when he was younger.
“I like to play the piano,” he says. “I know that in certain aspects, I’m a better player now than I ever was. If there’s a flaw, it’s in not getting quite enough practicing in and not enough challenges of being out performing for people. Because I’ve always loved that.”
And he’s up for the challenge. While performing is one of his passions, composing — particularly for octet arrangements — is another. Octets have fascinated him since the 1950s, and that passion can be pinned to one time and place: Montreal, 1954.
That was the year Erlendson and his friend saxophonist Don Thompson saw the famous jazzman Illinois Jacquet in concert.
“Don said, ‘Why don’t we try (an octet),’ because we’d been lucky enough to see Illinois Jacquet’s octet in Montreal in ’54. It was a really good band, three good saxophone players, a trumpet player and a trombone player and a nice rhythm section. Illinois was Don’s hero, so to get to see him in person was great. But to actually hear him with an octet was something else.“
In the years following, Erlendson composed for octets. He and Thompson shopped the idea around, but in late ’50s in Toronto, where he was then living, interest was slim.
“The drag was from there until late ’58 we only ended up with five different jobs with that band,” he explains. “There just wasn’t much outlet for it. We had the charts and we’d done some rehearsals but there were only the five jobs.”
Opportunities aside, the octet’s form, and its little-big-band sound, continued to fascinate Erlendson. So he kept writing, kept creating and salting those compositions away. And it’s those compositions that formed the seed of 2007’s live All About Jazz Volume 1. Now, the series’ second chapter announces itself in a gig that will feature Al Muirhead on trumpet, Eric Friedenberg, Ian Clayton and Gerry Hebert on saxes, Carsten Rubeling on trombone, Simon Fisk (bass), and Tyler Hornby (drums). It doesn’t get better than this.
For Erlendson, though, it’s still about performing, composing and staying ready for that next gig.
“I don’t have any big picture,” he says of the future. “Other than, say, writing a couple more tunes, looking over the octet book and realizing... at least one-third of the tunes I’ve written I haven’t even got an octet version. So, even if the job’s two years away, if I’ve got them written down on paper, they can be used. All I can say is I feel healthy. I’m going to keep playing.”
Lucky for us.
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