Enter: The Studio (Lab 2010)

As of Friday, May 28 The One O’Clock Lab Band finished recording tracks and initial mixing of Lab 2010! As proud as I was of Lab 2009, I can tell you that this one is even stronger (note to future alumni: I will say that about every successive year, nuthin’ personal 🙂 Every single track is strong, with great student charts (a hallmark of NT Jazz), the latest by Neil Slater, one by myself, a great arrangement by Fred Sturm and the first installment from the Maynard Ferguson Library: Slide Hampton’s classic  Newport.

Here is the debut of the track list:

1. House of Cards (by student composer Kevin Swaim: a great opener! Subtitled: “Godzilla Eats Jim McNeely”…you’ll have to check it out to see why that is a very apropos title.)

2. Fly Me to the Moon (the great Bart Howard standard arranged by recent NT Jazz grad Dave Richards. Inspired by and adapted from the wonderful Tierny Sutton Band version on Dancing in the Dark this is a beautiful and very unusual treatment of a classic)

3. New Cydonia (this is my programmatic answer to the question: “What if jazz had originated on Mars?” By incorporating ancient Earthly textures borrowed from India, Australia, and The Middle East, and wrapping them up into a broken ECM Bossa and adding a killer woodwind soli with guitar lead….well you get the idea: a very unusual piece. The band KILLED on it!)

4. The Oracle (a burning new composition by student composer Kevin Swaim. This piece utilizes the “drums-n-bass” or “”breakbeat” groove to great effect. A romantic epic of the first order, one of the most fully developed pieces that I’ve heard, with an ending that will leave you emotionally drained!)

5. Not Yet (the newest offering by my hero Neil Slater! With typical Slaterian sophisticated changes and a seamless form. Neil’s last three pieces have been explorations into the subtleties of serious modern straight ahead. It takes an amazingly mature rhythm section to get close to what these pieces call for, luckily we have one!  Neil continues to amaze)

6. Prime Directive (a wonderful arrangement of the original by Dave Holland on the CD of the same name by student arranger Josh Dresser. Josh takes Dave’s composition through some very cool twists and turns including a beautiful “floating chorale” in the middle)

7. Newport (A classic by the great Slide Hampton. This is the first piece to be recorded from the Maynard Ferguson library since UNT acquired the entire collection in 2008. We have had it in the book for a while and we decided it was time to digitize! Slide wrote this when he was 19! A true genius)

8. Pretzel Logic (The great composer/arranger/educator Fred Sturm put together a marvelous project for the HR Big Band of The Music of Steely Dan titled “Do It Again” While the entire project was brilliant, “Pretzel” really jumped out to me and the band really wanted to record it. I’ve known Fred for a long time and I think this is one of his most beautiful works. Bass and alto flutes and vibes…very Gil-like!)

9. Sword Fight (A KILLIN’ closer by Dave Richards that features the dueling voices of two super-talented trombonists: Luke Brimhall and Kevin Hicks. Fans of the 1980’s editions of the One O’Clock will recognize an homage to Bret Zvacek on the end. A great way to close a CD!)

So, the studio! Here are my impressions:

First of all, I am a huge fan of the whole studio hang! And sadly, jazz musicians don’t often get to see the inside of a studio these days. In fact, legend has it that every time a jazz musician gets to record a project in a real recording studio…an angel get’s its wings (have I worn that out yet?) All that technology, the dancing lights, the huge computer monitors, the large booth window that looks like you are on the bridge of The Enterprise digging something very hip on-screen (just a matter of time before I reference something Trekkified in each post FYI), the comfy leather couches, the air conditioning, the bottomless coffee pot…oh yes…..I am a fan of the studio hang. A place where you are concerned with archiving your art at the highest possible level, then you go into the booth to hear it played back at you on state-of-the-art speakers. It just don’t git much better for a jazz musician!

So how cool is it for me now to see these young jazz virtuosos getting the chance to enjoy said comfy artistic hang as well? Even if the industry doesn’t seem to be interested in doing it, we here at UNT are doing our part. Every year since the early 1960’s the One O’Clock has recorded its annual “Lab” project. It has become the largest body of recorded jazz in all of academia (and YES, it will soon be available on iTunes…cool stuff for a future blog!) And on top of that, Jay Saunders is brilliantly carrying on the work of Jim Riggs in recording the Two O’Clock Lab Band and getting their music out…plus Stefan Karlsson has been recording our small groups every year and regularly releases a compilation of their wonderful music! And on top of all that, there is the large body of work that Paris Rutherford and The Jazz Singers has put together along with recent efforts by Fred Hamilton’s guitar groups: The L5 and the Super 400 and the jazz trombone ensemble’s new release “The U-Tubes”. So, the art lives on. Between UNT recording this and you guys buying it, we will be doing a great deal towards getting these great students the careers they deserve.

And who, you may ask, engineers all of this wonderful One O’Clock stuff? Well, since 1986 it has been one guy. The Merlin of Pro Tools, The Prince of the Sound Booth, The Emperor of Electronic Elocution, The Munificent Maestro of the Microphone…Phil Bulla! Neil Slater knew Phil back in the day when Neil was working in New York. At the time, Phil was a bass trombonist who had played with Buddy Rich and Gerry Mulligan, then worked his way into the Broadway pit-orchestra scene. Eventually Phil got into the recording biz and brought all of his knowledge of what a big band should sound like with him (A sound engineer quality so rare these day as to qualify the owner of such a spot on the endangered species list….right next to jazz millionaire) In 1986 when the One O’Clock was in Manhattan for the Eastern Brass Conference (I was on the band at that time and remember it well), Neil asked Phil to engineer our project With Respect to Stan which was a collection of great pieces from the Stan Kenton library.

The Merlin of Pro Tools...Phil Bulla

As an aside (I enjoy digressing almost as much as I dig parenthesis)…that was an amazing recording session (With Respect to Stan). Trumpet greats Marvin Stamm and Jon Faddis were in attendance and did their best to crack up the One O’Clock guys in the midst of their most difficult takes. They weren’t successful, but gave it a great try (cracked ME up a bunch!)! In the section back then was Frank Greene and Mike Williams, who have both gone on to become giants in the lead trumpet world. Maybe it was that early training in concentration that helped?

We all loved Phil’s work on that project so much that Neil asked him to become the official One O’Clock engineer for all of the CDs since then. And I carried on that tradition (I ain’t no dummy!…well, not in THIS case anyway) by inviting Phil to engineer and mix my own projects, Maynard Ferguson’s final CD The One and Only, and my first two projects as director of the One O’Clock: Lab 2009 and Lab 2010. Phil is the man, and a big reason for our recorded success.

So, back to the studio: The One O’Clock “tracked” (recorded as a live group) on Sunday, May 23, and Monday, May 24. Then Phil and I went back to the studio to get the basic mix together from Tuesday-Friday. On any of the pieces that students wrote or arranged, they were invited to join us. What a treat to see these guys in action! Not only being able to write such music and get it recorded, but then to come in after the fact and work with one of the best in the business to bring your music to life! Such a deal.

So there you have it. The One O’Clock in the studio and all is right with the world. And what about the artwork for this year’s CD? Almost as hotly anticipated as the music itself. Well, this year I put out the call via the internet to all hungry young graphic artists across the world as a competition. The winner is a super talented guy from the U.K. who was the unanimous choice of the One O’Clock. I will post his artwork and a bit more about him in future blogs.

Stay tuned: Lab 2010 will be available soon!