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Kendrick
Oliver '95: New Life for the Big-Band Idiom
by Ed Hazell : Berklee
Today
Kendrick
Oliver and the New Life Jazz Orchestra are on a mission. "We're
on a mission to bring back big-band swing and then take it
where it's never gone before," he says. "My personal
vision is to see an audience where a 12-year-old and a 75-year-old
are enjoying the same music. And I believe that that can happen.
Hip-hop hasn't done that, a lot of music has never done that,
but I think big-band swing can do that." With their debut
CD just out and a Berklee alumni grant to fund middle- and
high-school education programs, the 27-year-old tuba player
and his 19-piece band of twenty-somethings are well on the
way to fulfilling their mission.
Oliver,
who graduated from Houston's High School for the Visual and
Performing Arts (where pianist Jason Moran was a classmate),
never envisioned leading his own band when he came to Berklee
in 1994. But in his sophomore year, the arranging and music-business
major joined the committee that plans Black History Month
events at the college. As the committee decided who the featured
artist should be, "We started throwing around names,
and I suggested Roy Hargrove," Oliver remembers. "He's
from Texas, like me, and he was my idol growing up."
Oliver also suggested presenting Hargrove with a student big
band, "not thinking they would ask me to lead it, but
that's what they did. I sat there kind of stunned—I'd
never considered it before; but it was a challenge and a responsibility,
so I took it. I put a band together with the help of faculty
members including Bill Pierce, Andy McGhee, Ron Savage, Ron
Mahdi, and a lot of support, particularly from Dr. Warrick
Carter, Berklee's dean of faculty at the time."
As
they worked toward the concert date, Oliver grew to understand
that big bands are more than a collection of people merely
sitting down to jam. "You have to learn to play in a
section, learn how to sacrifice your personal sound to get
that one big sound. We had some struggles at first. But before
you know it, I had a big band and this show with Roy Hargrove.
And it was a slammin' success."
Encouraged
by that initial success, Oliver decided to keep a band going
after graduation. Six band members from the original show
signed on, and the remainder were recent Berklee grads living
in the Boston area. Eight years later, Oliver estimates that
85 per cent of the original crew is still together and they
have built an enthusiastic following in Boston and New England.
Some of the players have migrated to New York, where band
members like trumpeter Jeremy Pelt '98, tenor saxophonist
Jimmy Greene, and alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon '98 are now
much in demand. But they always return to Boston when Oliver
calls. The orchestra's debut CD, Welcome to New Life (Sphere),
illustrates why musicians and audiences alike find Oliver's
big band so hard to resist. Recorded live at Scullers Jazz
Club, one of the band's favorite Boston haunts, the album
captures the group's electrifying dance-floor revival-meeting
style. Drawing on swing staples such as Basie's "Jumpin'
at the Woodside" and swinging versions of gospel tunes
like "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho," the style
is strictly swing era. But the mood is far from the solemn
historicism heard from a lot of jazz repertory orchestras.
New Life expresses wild joy with an artistic precision that
is authentic to the reckless spirit of the 1930s and uniquely
their own. From the gleaming power of the trombones to the
vocal warmth of the saxophones to the relentless groove of
the rhythm section, there isn't a note out of place or a misjudged
riff. The band's sheer visceral pleasure in playing is palpable
and soloists like Pelt, Zenon, and tenor saxophonist Jason
Anderson '97 (who also pens many of the charts) only add to
the celebratory atmosphere.
Go-for-broke
swing and orchestral punch only partly account for the band's
power and appeal. Oliver manages to instill in the music a
heavy dose of spiritual uplift, without a hint of proselytizing.
"I grew up in the church, so it's a very big influence
personally," he explains. "I love God and I love
big-band music, and I was determined in my own mind to put
those two together. I've had nothing but good luck with it;
people have welcomed it with open arms."
Other
than a busy summer schedule of appearances at the Newport
Jazz Festival, Tanglewood, and elsewhere, Oliver is also preparing
an education program called Sing, Swing, Stomp, Shout!: The
Art of Big Band, which is funded by a $5,000 Berklee alumni
grant. "We're going into the high schools to reinforce
the power and excitement of the swing big bands," Oliver
says. "What we're trying to do is not only instill the
swing but re-establish the excitement in the music, so that
the kids can understand the spirit of it and why it was once
so popular."
That
spirit is the key to New Life's success. "I always tell
an audience the same thing I tell the band," Oliver says.
"We don't have a lot of rules here, but you have to have
a good time. We want the audience to have as good a time as
we're having. And we don't have to compromise our music to
do that."
If
you are interested in purchasing a copy [click
here]
For
Press Related Information Contact:
Sphere Entertainment, LLC
PO Box 231084
Boston, MA 02123
(617) 308.9325
info@sphereentertainment.net
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