ENSEMBLES:
SWING WING | PALOMAR QUARTET |
CANARY COTTAGE DANCE ORCHESTRA | MANHATTAN HOT CLUB |
BIX CENTENNIAL ALL-STARS | SEVEN SONS OF ROSY |
ROOF GARDEN JASS BAND
DAN LEVINSON and His SWING WING
with Molly Ryan
Dan Levinson and His Swing Wing—named after bandleader Paul Whiteman's "band within a band" during the 1930s—brings together some of the finest musicians in the New York area. The repertoire of this seven-piece group includes the music made famous by such pre-eminent Swing Era small bands as Tommy Dorsey's Clambake Seven, Bob Crosby's Bobcats, the John Kirby Sextet, Bud Freeman's Summa Cum Laude Orchestra, and others, expertly blending written music with free-wheeling improvisation. Molly Ryan's lush, elegant voice adds a dash of spice to the ensemble, recalling the style of the legendary big band singers of the '30s. Their debut CD, At the Codfish Ball (Loup-garous LG-2004), is due out at the end of 2008.
SAMPLE TRACKS - Molly Ryan with Dan
Click to enlarge photo of Dan Levinson and His Swing Wing:
DAN LEVINSON'S PALOMAR QUARTET
with Molly Ryan
In 1935 Benny Goodman began performing with a trio consisting of Teddy Wilson on piano and Gene Krupa on drums. The following year he added Lionel Hampton on vibes. This landmark quartet paved the way for two major breakthroughs in American music: the birth of small group swing and the integration of African American musicians into white bands.
Today the music of the Benny Goodman Quartet is as fresh and exciting as it was seventy years ago. With the brilliant, Wilsonesque flourishes of pianist Mark Shane, the virtuosic mallet work of 19-year-old vibes prodigy Matt Hoffmann, and the hard-driving intensity of drummer Kevin Dorn, each member Dan Levinson's Palomar Quartet channels his counterpart in the Goodman group with the skill and authenticity of a true follower. Molly Ryan evokes the elegant sounds of Goodman vocalists Helen Ward and Martha Tilton with such an uncanny flair that she sounds as though she stepped out of a time machine.
This dazzling little group, which in its relatively short existence has already performed for sellout audiences in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida, proves that music doesn't have to be loud to swing.
SAMPLE TRACKS - Molly Ryan with Dan
Click to enlarge photo of Dan Levinson's Palomar Quartet:
DAN LEVINSON and His
CANARY COTTAGE DANCE ORCHESTRA
It's 1917. You and your sweetie have just stepped into Doraldina's Montmartre in the Winter Garden Building on Broadway, just as the orchestra is starting to play. The verse is vaguely familiar, but when you hear the first strain of the chorus, the words come back like an old friend: "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile…."
The band you're listening to might well sound like the Canary Cottage Dance Orchestra - a six-piece ensemble consisting of violin, C-melody saxophone, trombone, piano, banjo, and drums, plus a barbershop quartet and the charming vocals of Molly Ryan. This unique group is devoted exclusively to "rag-a-jazz," a hybrid style of dance music that existed briefly from the mid teens through the early twenties, while ragtime was evolving into jazz. The Canary Cottage Dance Orchestra's spirited repertoire includes one-steps, two-steps, fox-trots, waltzes, and other dances popular at the dawn of jazz. Their debut CD, Crinoline Days (Stomp Off CD1400) was released 2005, followed by Steppin' Around (Stomp Off CD1415) in 2007. Listen…dance…and sing!
SAMPLE TRACKS
Click to enlarge photo of Dan Levinson & His Canary Cottage Dance Orch.:
THE MANHATTAN HOT CLUB
Jazz manouche—literally “gypsy jazz”—is the name given to a kind of music born in France in the early 1930s. But for the huge mass of devoted performers and followers throughout the world today, it’s more than a kind of music—it’s a way of life; it’s a religion. The Lord and Master of jazz manouche was Django Reinhardt, a gypsy born in Belgium in 1910. He began playing guitar when he was very young, but at the age of eighteen, his left hand was severely burned when his caravan caught on fire. His third and fourth fingers were deformed and virtually useless. When he finally began performing again, he emerged a better guitar player than he was before the accident. The violinist Itzhak Perlman once said, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
In 1934 Django began a series of recordings with a group called the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. These recordings have become the foundation for a massive legacy of Django aficionados throughout the world. Clarinetist Dan Levinson was bitten by the Django bug while living in Paris in the early 1990s, and since then has been searching for opportunities to play jazz manouche in New York. In 2004 he met guitarist Tom Landman and the two of them organized the Manhattan Hot Club. Since then, the group has been making Django’s music accessible to the New York audience through their monthly appearances at Terra Blues in Greenwich Village.
Click to enlarge photo of the Manhattan Hot Club:
THE BIX CENTENNIAL ALL-STARS
Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke was one of the greatest jazz soloists of all time. After his premature death in 1931 at the age of 28, he became the first and most enduring jazz legend. His crystal-clear sound, melodic conception and driving, inventive solos inspired the likes of Benny Goodman, Bing Crosby, Hoagy Carmichael, Bobby Hackett, and Lester Young. Louis Armstrong said of Beiderbecke, "Every note he blew was so beautiful…he was a born genius." His short and tragic life, lived at full tilt in the roaring '20s, inspired the book Young Man with a Horn,later made into a film starring Kirk Douglas.
In honor of Beiderbecke's 100th birthday, concert promoter Doug LaPasta commissioned Dan Levinson and premier jazz cornetist Peter Ecklund to write new arrangements of some Beiderbecke's classic numbers. With a stellar 12-piece ensemble including cornet kings Randy Sandke, Jon-Erik Kellso and Randy Reinhart, along with Dan Barrett, Scott Robinson, Dan Levinson, Mark Shane, Howard Alden, Vince Giordano, Greg Cohen, Joe Ascione, and others, Mr. LaPasta produced a superb recorded tribute to Beiderbecke entitled Celebrating Bix. Released on the Arbors Jazz label in 2003, the CD has rapidly gained critical acclaim worldwide. Highlights include the three-cornet harmonizations of Beiderbecke's solos, scored by Mr. Ecklund.
The Bix Centennial All-Stars have appeared at the Wildflower Music Festival in Pennsylvania and in concert in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Selections from Celebrating Bix were performed at the JVC jazz festival's centennial tribute to Beiderbecke in 2003.
SAMPLE TRACKS
Click to enlarge photo of the Bix Centennial All-Stars:
DAN LEVINSON’S SEVEN SONS OF ROSY
During a career that spanned eight decades, James Eugene “Rosy” McHargue (1902-1999) was known and respected as a clarinetist, arranger, singer of novelty songs, and as a brilliant performer on the rarely heard C-melody saxophone. In his later years he became a friend and mentor to aspiring young musicians such as Dan Levinson, to whom he bequeathed a trunk full of arrangements, many of which had never been recorded.
In honor of Rosy’s 100th birthday, Dan produced a recorded tribute to his mentor, using musicians Rosy knew and respected. Where the Morning Glories Grow: A Centennial Remembrance of Rosy McHargue, released in 2002 on the Loup-garous label, is a loving testimonial to the man and his music—novelty songs, hot jazz stomps, and tender, heart-wrenching tales of lost love—all arranged by Rosy and recorded for the first time. Some of the songs include the barbershop harmony vocals—sung by members of the ensemble—that made Rosy’s band distinguishable from all the others. Dan has augmented the repertoire of the Seven Sons of Rosy by adding numbers Rosy performed with his outstanding band in the 1950s, Rosy McHargue’s Ragtimers.
The Seven Sons of Rosy have appeared at the Bickford Theatre in Morristown, New Jersey, the Hot Steamed Jazz Festival in Essex, Connecticut, and for three consecutive years at the Orange County Classic Jazz Festival in Southern California. They are a truly unique group, a tasty blend of spirited, freewheeling traditional jazz and sentimental, dreamy melodies that will stay with you long after the dance has ended.
SAMPLE TRACKS
Click to enlarge photo of Dan Levinson's Seven Sons of Rosy:
DAN LEVINSON'S ROOF GARDEN JASS BAND
In 1987, Dan Levinson, then a senior at New York University, organized a five-piece band for a concert celebrating the 70th anniversary of recorded jazz. The phenomenal success of that event inspired a repeat performance across the continent in the Roof Garden of Los Angeles' famous Variety Arts Center, from which the band took its name. Since then, the Roof Garden Jass Band has performed for jazz societies throughout the Northeast, as well as at the Tribute to Bix Beiderbecke Festival in Wisconsin, the Orange County Classic Jazz Festival in California, and Dick Hyman's Jazz in July Festival at the 92nd Street Y in New York. The band has also been an annual fixture at the Hot Steamed Jazz Festival in Essex, Connecticut since 1998.
Initially, the Roof Garden Jass Band's repertoire consisted solely of Dan's note-for-note "transcriptions" of records made by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the group that made the first jazz recordings in 1917. Over the years, however, Dan has expanded the band's repertoire to include the music of the Original Memphis Five, the Louisiana Five, the Frisco Jazz Band, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, the Georgians, and other "rag-a-jazz" bands active before King Oliver made his historic recordings in 1923. The Roof Garden Jass Band is the only band in existence devoted exclusively to this neglected era, a time when jazz—or "jass" as it was often called—still retained many elements of ragtime. In those evolutionary days, jazz bands played for dancers, and the music was almost entirely ensemble rather than a succession of instrumental solos.
The Roof Garden Jass Band's debut CD, Salutes the ODJB and the Beginning of Recorded Jazz, was released in 1998 on the Loup-garous label, followed by Blue Roses of Far and Near (2000) and Echoes in the Wax (2003), both released on the Stomp Off label.
SAMPLE TRACKS
RGJB Cylinder Recordings
Click to enlarge photo of Dan Levinson's Roof Garden Jass Band:
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