Eyal Vilner Big Band SWINGIN’ UPTOWN

July 15, 2024

EYAL VILNER BIG BAND

SWINGIN’ UPTOWN

Independent label

Eyal Vilner, alto saxophone/clarinet/flute/conductor/arranger/composer; Jon Thomas & Jordan Piper, piano; Ian Hutchison, bass; Eran Fink, drums; Imani Rousselle, vocals; WOODWINDS: Bill Tod & Jordan Pettay, alto saxophone; Julieta Eugenio, Michael Hashim & Evan Arntzen, tenor saxophone; Josh Lee & Eden Bareket, baritone saxophone. TRUMPETS: John Lake, Brandon Lee, Bryan Davis, Michael Sailors & James Zollar. TROMBONES: Robert Edwards, Mariel Bildsten & Ron Wilkins, (bass trombone).

Eyal Vilner is obsessed with big bands that were prominent and popular during the years when jitterbug dance halls thrived. On this project, he reaches back to those 1920 to 1940-days when big band music was all the rage.

“I see the Lindy Hop and Vernacular Jazz Dance as an important part of the roots of jazz. When I started exploring and learning these dances, it felt like it completed the picture for me and gave me a deeper understanding of the music, its tradition and history, and of the community from which it came,” Vilner explains his great appreciation of big band dance music.

The title tune, “Swingin’ Uptown” races across my listening room with speed and energy. This is the Vilner Big Band’s seventh album. His big band has performed all over the world for the past fifteen years. This band is smokin’ hot and comfortable as a group that knows the leader and its members more like a family than a job.

The addition of Imani Rousselle’s soulful lead vocals on “Tell Me Pretty Baby” adds a taste of the blues to the project. I can just picture a dancehall full of dancers squeezed up against each other like paper and glue.

“Jazz music and jazz dance are inseparable. They grew together, influenced and inspired each other. Appreciating and immersing myself in this part of Black American culture has given me a deeper understanding of the music I fell in love with as a teenager,” Vilner writes in his press package.

Vilner has added six original compositions, penned especially for this album. They blend in perfectly with tunes that Billy Eckstein made popular, or standards like “Blue Skies” that Irving Berlin contributed to the great American songbook, and Louie Jordan’s “Is You Is or Is you Ain’t My Baby.” Vilner’s tunes like “Bumpy Tour Bus” and the title tune sound just like music from the era he loves. His tunes add a fresh, contemporary perspective to a historic and beautiful time when jazz big bands were thriving.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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