I am very excited to share an upcoming concert with you all. Over the last few years I have been collecting and transcribing music from the Lee Konitz Meets Jimmy Giuffre album, an album from 1959 that I’ve always loved. I have 5 of the 9 charts, and to augment I have a couple of my own arrangements along with some recent finds from the Library of Congress that I mentioned in my previous post about Gerry Mulligan. There aren’t that many recordings for 5 saxes and rhythm, so it’s been fun finding music to add to the rep. I have been fortunate to be in contact with Lee about this project, and we were even able to have a nice reading session up at City College this past spring. And through it all I’ve been talking and working with the great tenorist Ted Brown, who played on the original recording.
Ted will be our special guest for the upcoming concert at the Drawing Room in Downtown Brooklyn and I truly hope you can make it. Tickets are very limited, and you can get them here: Eventbrite. Please also check out the Facebook event: Jon De Lucia Octet. This will be a great intimate venue for this music, with a great band. I’ll be playing lead alto on this one, and on second we’ll have John Ludlow, a great young altoist and protege of Hal McKusick, who played on the original Giuffre/Lee recording. John actually plays the horn used on the recording! Tenors will be covered by the great Jay Rattman and Marc Schwartz, with Ted as guest soloist. Andrew Hadro joins us on bari. In the rhythm section I am honored to have Ray Gallon on piano, along with Aidan O’Donnell and the brilliant Steve Little on the drums.
The date is October 22nd, a Saturday evening. This is sure to be a special performance and I hope you will join us!
I will also mention that we have a little series going in October. Marc Schwartz’s Octet, in which I play tenor, will be at the Drawing Room the following weekend, on the 29th. Here’s his event listing: Facebook Event.